January 2019 Expense Standard Edition Admin Summary
Initial Post
Release Notes
Admin | Add IP Addresses to Safe Sender ListSAP Concur is transitioning to a new email infrastructure for outbound email from our services to SAP Concur users. Because of this, companies who filter inbound email based on the sending IP address must add new IP addresses to their Safe Sender list to ensure that their users receive email from SAP Concur.
Initially, the issue described here affected only companies that use Concur Expense. Starting in January, email from other SAP Concur services (such as Travel and Concur Pay) will move to the new email infrastructure.
Concur Expense now automatically adds an Australian employee to an expense claim as an attendee if they are creating an expense with a business meal or other expense that has attendees. Users have the option to remove themselves if they were not actually an attendee.
Previously, Concur Expense prevented Australian employees from being added automatically as attendees when they created expenses with attendees.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This update improves usability when creating expense claims.
Custom Fields | User Input Field is Always Read-OnlyThe User Input field on the Manage Custom Fields page in Cost Tracking is now read-only regardless of whether the associated custom field has been used. The field's outline has been removed to indicate that it is read-only.
Previously, the User Input field on the Manage Custom Fields page would sometimes allow users to change the field type even though the custom field had been used. Additionally, fields in the User Input column often displayed as editable (field outlined) when they were not.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This update improves usability of custom fields.
Expense Pay – Global | (CAD) Additional Card Programme Now SupportedExpense Pay – Global for Concur Expense now supports the following credit card programme for the Canadian Dollar (CAD $):
US Bank VISA CAD
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This additional option can expedite the processing of credit card expenses.
Expense Pay – Global | (USD) New Payment Processing Partner: WUBSPublic sector clients may use Western Union Business Solutions (WUBS) to process their United States Dollar (USD) payments.
The Expense Pay – Global product functions the same way regardless of which payment-processing partner your funding account is configured to use. What is different about WUBS compared to Bambora (or classic Expense Pay) is how your funding accounts are set up in Concur Expense. Each payment-processing partner has unique forms that must be completed, submitted and approved as part of the onboarding process.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This additional payment-processing partner increases the value of the Expense Pay – Global offering.
Expense Pay – Global | (USD / CAD) Update: Retirement of Classic Pay and Migration to Global Pay (Deadline 1 Sept.)SAP Concur’s Expense Pay (classic) products execute payments associated with processing expense claims. To ensure compliance with ever-changing regulatory requirements, tailored to geo-diverse markets, SAP Concur has engaged dedicated, experienced, third party payment-processing partners and developed a next-generation pay product: Expense Pay – Global.
As previously announced in these release notes (September 2017), moving forward, SAP Concur will use one Expense Pay product to service your business anywhere in the world. SAP Concur’s Expense Pay – Global product will replace our existing legacy Expense Pay (classic) offerings (including NA Pay, EMEA Pay and next APA Pay.) For SAP Concur clients with an Expense Pay product, Expense Pay – Global will be our go-forward product. This notification begins our sunset process for all legacy Expense Pay (classic) products.
EXPENSE PAY – NORTH AMERICA AND EXPENSE PAY – EMEA LIMITATIONS
SAP Concur does not support clients adding the following currencies with the classic product: United States Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Mexican Pesos, Euro, Swiss Franc, Danish Krone, Swedish Krona or UK Pounds. If a client has already implemented and is using these currencies with the classic product, they can continue using these until they are migrated to the new platform or until the defined sunset date.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The Expense Pay – Global offering maintains industry best practices for payment processing functionality within SAP Concur.
Next Generation (NextGen) Expense | New User Interface for Concur Expense End Users **Ongoing**Update: In order to respond to and take advantage of feedback from customers, and to align with the SAP Concur commitment to ensure a smooth and successful transition, we are working on a revised deployment strategy for Next Generation Expense.
SAP Concur is dedicated to the consistent improvement of our products, not only the features they provide, but also the experience of using those features. How users interact with technology changes over time, along with needs and expectations. We are constantly listening to our customers and soliciting feedback on how we can improve the user experience.
NextGen Expense is the continued evolution of the SAP Concur user experience. It was built from extensive user research and data analytics that include 680 1:1 conversations, 58 usability studies, 3,000+ survey responses and 1.3B monthly user actions.
Customers will have the ability to preview and then opt in to NextGen Expense before the mandatory cutover.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The result is the next generation of the Expense user interface designed to provide a modern, consistent and streamlined user experience. This technology not only provides an enhanced UI, but also allows SAP Concur to react more quickly to customer requests to meet changing needs as they happen.
Security | Update to File Transfer AuthenticationSAP Concur will update an authentication setting for clients who transfer files to/from SAP Concur, targeting 16 January, 2019. The updated setting will lock out user accounts after five failed authentication attempts. Some accounts are already using this setting, and this change will update all accounts to this setting. This authentication change does not impact the main SAP Concur application login, only the file transfer process.
The affected URLs are:
st.concursolutions.com
st-eu.concursolutions.com
st-cge.concursolutions.com
Clients who have locked themselves out of their accounts should contact SAP Concur Client support to unlock their accounts.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides better security for clients when accessing extract and import files.
Planned Changes
The items in this section are targeted for future releases. Concur reserves the right to postpone implementation of – or completely remove – any enhancement/change mentioned here.
Admin | **Planned Changes** Archive Deactivated User DataAs SAP Concur continues to grow, steps must be taken to enhance and improve the performance of our system so that we can meet customer expectations and the needs of their business.
Our overall goal is to significantly improve the performance of SAP Concur services by reducing the amount of data that is stored in our Production datastore. By reducing the data in the Production system, we can use server memory much more efficiently, which reduces processing time for transactions. For this reason, SAP Concur is developing an archive process for users who have been deactivated by their employers for at least three years. The archive process moves this "deactivated" user data from our Production datastore to a separate Reporting datastore.
User / Client Benefit: Moving deactivated user data will provide faster processing time for transactions. In addition, it provides a more secure environment for inactive users' personal information.
IMPORTANT!
We are currently piloting the process and evaluating the results. Our goal is to ensure that customers are not negatively affected, that we have considered all pertinent scenarios and that the archiving process provides the desired results.
There is no target date for the implementation of this new process. We will announce via release notes well ahead of time.
Admin | **Planned Changes** New SAP Concur Sign In PageSAP Concur is planning to add a new Sign In page, providing an updated login experience for users who log in with a user name and password credentials. Current Single Sign-On (SSO) users will log in without having to enter additional credentials. This feature is planned for 2019.
The new Sign In page feature includes the following:
Two-step login: provides enhanced security, meets current industry standards and provides a better login success rate
Multi-account login: allows administrators to log in with multiple accounts
Password hint removal: provides better security for users and SAP Concur
User avatar: enhances the user experience (planned for a future release)
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides better security and a faster, convenient experience for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.
Budget | **Planned Changes** Workflows for BudgetIn a future release, workflows will be available for Budget. Workflows define how the system routes invoices, expense claims and requests through approval and processing steps. The flexible workflow feature for Budget that SAP Concur offers allows companies to design workflows specifically tailored to their unique needs.
Without budget review, budgets may become fully consumed well before the end of a period or year leaving an organisation with limited options and budget owners with, for example, exceeded budgets. In addition, early spending means that more important (to the organisation) spending will be declined because lesser important spending consumed the budget early on.
Combining budget review in the workflow adds value. Audit rules and workflow step rules can help organisations to add in controls when it makes sense to fine tune to an organisation's specific needs.
Equally important is the determination when a spending item is regarded as committed toward a budget. In most organisations, the commit is when a spending item is paid; it went through most if not all approval steps. In other organisations, the commit occurs much earlier. As soon as a purchase request or an authorisation request is approved, it is regarded as "promised".
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature will provide clients with control over the budget spend to, for example, avoid exceeded budgets too early in a budget period or budget year.
E-Receipts | **Planned Changes** No Longer Automatically Accepted as ReceiptsE-receipt technology is evolving quickly. Today, the receipt handling rules are hardcoded to accept e-receipts to meet image requirements. Moving forward, as e-receipts become more common, and legislation about them becomes more complex, this is not a valid assumption for all countries and circumstances.
Clients who want to maintain their current system behaviour, that is to continue to accept e-receipts to meet image requirements, will need to configure a custom receipt rule.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change will allow clients who use e-receipts to continue to comply with regulatory and contractual requirements for documentation to substantiate an expense.
Product Settings | **Planned Changes** Single Sign-On (SSO) Self-Service Option Coming to SAP ConcurSingle Sign-On allows users to access multiple applications using one set of login credentials. Currently, SAP Concur has two methods for signing in: with a user name and password or using SSO with identity provider (IdP) credentials, such as a user's login credentials for their organisation.
SAP Concur is planning to add a Manage Single Sign-On (SSO) feature to SAP Concur Standard Editions of Expense, Invoice, Travel and Request to provide clients with a self-service option for setting up SSO for their organisation.
The new Manage Single Sign-On (SSO) feature will be accessible from the Access To Concur section of Product Settings.
Single Sign-On can be managed for Standard Travel if it is bundled with Expense, Invoice and/or Request.
For standalone Standard Travel, the Manage Single Sign-On feature will be accessible from the Travel Settings page.
Other SAP Concur products and services are outside the scope of this initial release.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides a self-service option for setting up SSO.
Client Notifications
SAP Concur Non-Affiliated SubprocessorsThe list of non-affiliated subprocessors is available here: SAP Concur list of Subprocessors (English Only)
Monthly Browser CertificationsMonthly browser certifications, both current and planned, are available with the other SAP Concur monthly release notes, accessible from What's New - Standard Edition
