2020 Review of Concur Expense

From the 2020 Reviews of Expense Management Systems.

Concur Expense from SAP Concur offers good expense management, along with a variety of integrated solutions for businesses of all sizes.  Entirely web-based, Concur Expense offers solid receipt management and expense report creation. Concur also offers a variety of expense-related applications that are designed to work with Concur Expense to offer greater functionality, including Concur Drive, for those who need automatic distance capture, Concur Detect, an application offered by AppZen that will audit all created expense reports for possible fraud and non-compliance issues, and ExpenseIt, included in the Concur Expense mobile app, which takes receipt management to a whole new level.

Concur also offers a variety of travel expense management applications including Concur Travel, which provides complete online travel booking including travel planning. Concur Request, which streamlines the travel request and approval process, and Concur TripLink, which is designed to provide travelers with real-time alerts while applying negotiated rates and travel policy to each booked trip.  For businesses that need to combine expense and travel management, there is a Travel & Expense plan available.

Concur Expense is web-based and can be utilized on desktop systems or workstation computers. The application also offers full functionality from its mobile apps that are available for both iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. Using the mobile app and a smartphone camera, Concur Expense allows users to easily snap a photo of any receipt and attach it directly to an expense report. Concur Expense uses OCR technology to automatically categorize all line items on the receipt, eliminating the need to enter data manually. Users can review receipt information prior to uploading the receipt to Concur Expense, where receipts are stored in the Concur Receipt Store until ready to be attached to an expense report.

Additional features:

• Global capabilities: SAP Concur helps organizations that operate outside the U.S. by providing a higher level of compliance with European and Asian specific expense rules, like eBunsho in Japan, travel allowances and taxability in Germany and digital compliance in France, Mexico, Spain, etc.
• Partner network: SAP Concur partners like EY provide higher levels of compliance and management of expenses. In fact, no other vendor has the breadth of the SAP Concur App Center.

Concur Expense offers multiple user access levels, with administrators able to email an invitation to employees to sign up for the application. Once users have signed up, they are assigned an access level that corresponds with their role in the organization, providing them with access to features such as expense report creation, report approval, as well as the ability to access and make changes to documents and reports as needed.

Concur Expense includes multi-currency and multi-language capability, making the product a good fit for those that do business globally. Automatic calculations are performed on all foreign currency transactions, which are based on current exchange rates.

Small business owners can opt to use Concur Expense with one of Concur’s travel apps, including Concur TripLink and Concur Travel, while larger businesses can opt to purchase the Travel & Expense plan, which combines the two.

Users can customize the expense report approval process during initial product setup, with an option to use a single approver or multiple approvers if desired. Approvers have the option to approve all expenses, or approve expenses line by line, with unapproved line items returned to the submitter for additional information.

Concur Expense includes a variety of expense management reports, including a Top Spenders Report, a Top Vendors Report, and an Expenses by Type Report. There are also a variety of travel-related reports that can be accesses in Concur Travel. All Concur reports can be emailed to recipients or exported as a CSV file or to Microsoft Excel if further customization is needed.

Concur Expense integrates with a variety of other Concur applications including Concur TripLink, Concur Detect, Concur Drive, and Concur Budget, along with other expense and travel related applications. The product also integrates with numerous third-party applications such as SAP ERP, QuickBooks, ADP, and NetSuite. In addition, Concur offers integration with more than 150 travel, expense invoicing, and related business apps that designed to sync with the core application; extending product functionality. 

Concur EXPENSE offers a variety of support options, including access to the Support Desk, which provides round the clock answers to questions, with support accessible via telephone or chat. A support portal is available for users to pose questions and concerns to support staff and includes a completely searchable knowledge base, where users can search a variety of topics and access articles and documents. The Resource Center offers access to brochures, videos, whitepapers and reports with a Preferred Care option available for larger businesses with a global presence.

Best suited for larger businesses with more complex business expense and travel needs, Concur Expense also offers a plan designed specifically for small businesses. Pricing for all Concur applications is available upon request directly from Concur. A free trial can also be requested from Concur for those interested in the application.

2020 Rating 5 Stars

Strengths:

·        Good integration

·         Excellent reporting

·         Round-the-clock support

Potential Limitations:

·         Smaller businesses may be overwhelmed with features they don’t need

·         Time-consuming setup process

·         Travel and expense plan better suited to larger businesses