June 2018 Expense Standard Edition Admin Summary
Update #1
Admin
In 2017, SAP Concur announced that it was ending support for version 1.0 of the TLS encryption protocol.
Be aware that – targeted for Wednesday, 27 June 2018 – SAP Concur will disable the ability to accept incoming email via TLS 1.0 connectivity for plans@concurtravel.com and plans@tripit.com.
There should be very little customer impact since the vast majority of customers have already disabled the ability to send email via TLS 1.0.
The May release notes included an item named New Cookie Preferences Link in the SAP Concur Footer. It describes cookie-related process changes that were introduced in the May 12 release because of specific consent regulations in Europe.
To ensure that SAP Concur properly responds to the regulations, SAP Concur has enlisted the assistance of TrustArc, a global privacy and data governance provider. Please ensure that your organisation's IT (or similar) department adds TrustArc to its whitelist, so TrustArc can properly monitor and manage these processes.
TrustArc must be whitelisted by domain – not IP – since the IP is variable. Please whitelist these domains:
- trustarc.com
- prefmgr-cookie.truste-svc.net
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: Whitelisting ensures that TrustArc has the proper access to manage consent regulations on behalf of SAP Concur.
**Reminder** New Cookie Consent ProcessEurope has very specific user-consent requirements for cookies. There are two types of consent when allowing cookies to be saved on the user's computer. As described on the following pages, each country decides which option to use. The options are:
- Active consent: The user actively agrees to allow cookies. In this case, SAP Concur is required to obtain user consent before saving any cookies on a user's computer.
- Passive consent: The user does not disallow cookies.
Each country decides which option it wants to use.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These changes keep SAP Concur in compliance with global privacy requirements.
Change Log
Now Logging When a Delegate is AssignedWhen a user adds a delegate, the act of adding will leave an audit trail. The steps for adding a delegate are unchanged and this change includes delegates that are added using either the user interface or an Excel import. This change is only for adding delegates, not for removing them.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change enhances audit capabilities.
Expense Pay - Global
(United States) Additional Card Programme Now Supported for USDExpense Pay – Global for Expense now supports the following credit card programme for the United States Dollar (USD $):
- Silicon Valley Bank MasterCard USD
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This additional option can expedite the processing of credit card expenses.
Japan Public Transportation (JPT)
Jorudan MaintenanceThe Japan Public Transportation (JPT) database of stations and lines received routine maintenance changes such as additions, name changes and removals.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: Lists in Expense continue to reflect JPT's current stations and lines.
Next Generation (NextGen) Expense
**Ongoing** New User Interface for Concur Expense End UsersSAP 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.
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.
QuickBooks
QuickBooks Connector: Ending Support for QuickBooks 2015Per Intuit, after 31 May, 2018, access to add-on services will be discontinued for QuickBooks Desktop 2015 (Windows and Mac). This includes all versions of QuickBooks Desktop 2015 (Pro, Premier, Enterprise Solutions, Accountant Edition and Mac). The Concur QuickBooks Connector will still work with QuickBooks 2015. However, Concur Support will no longer provide support for QuickBooks 2015 after 31 May, 2018, to maintain alignment with Intuit’s QuickBooks support policy.
Concur Support will provide support for the following version of QuickBooks:
- QuickBooks 2016
- QuickBooks 2017
- QuickBooks 2018
The currently supported versions of the QuickBooks Web Connector are:
- 2.2.0.71
- 2.2.0.80
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This update aligns the Concur Customer Support policy with the Intuit Support policy for QuickBooks versions.
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.
**Planned Changes** Expense Assistant Can Create Trip-based Expense ClaimsAdmins can now pre-configure Expense Assistant options.
Expense Assistant can automatically create trip-based expense claims and add trip-based expenses to these expense claims. Currently, Expense Assistant automatically creates monthly expense claims as a client's expenses flow into Concur. This is known as creating a calendar-based expense claim.
With this enhancement, Expense Assistant can create either of two types of expense claims: calendar-based and trip-based. When Expense Assistant creates a trip-based expense claim, Expense Assistant will automatically create an expense claim based on a specific trip booked in Concur Travel, and will populate the expense claim with the client's expenses that occur between the trip's start and end dates.
Users using Expense Assistant will only be able to have Expense Assistant automatically create calendar-based or trip-based expense claims, not both types of expense claims.
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature automates more of the expense reporting process, to provide an easier end user experience.
**Planned Changes** Personalised Concur OpenConcur Open is the SAP Concur real-time service status dashboard, which displays outages and incidents for select SAP Concur services and all data centres. Concur Open displays the current service status as well as incident history for the past 20 days.
In a future release, there will be new functionality added to Concur Open. Users will continue to access Concur Open and view Concur service availability. However, in addition, SAP Concur users will be able to log in to Concur Open and:
- View service status for the services and the data centre specific to their company
- Access subscription options for updates about the incidents that affect the services specific to their company
- View service history for the past two years, including detailed root cause analysis information and the actions taken by SAP Concur for each incident
Business Purpose / Client Benefit: Customers use Concur Open to monitor their SAP Concur services outages, status and availability. Adding this new functionality will provide customers a personalised view of their service status and availability. SAP Concur's goal is to provide a more accurate and transparent view of incidents/outages.
**Planned Changes** Support for Plain Text FTP to End on 1 September, 2018SAP Concur announced the End of Support for plain text FTP to transfer data to and from SAP Concur.
Plain text FTP is not a secured protocol and has inherent security vulnerabilities. On 1 September, 2018, Concur Operations will apply a security update to our File Transfer infrastructure, restricting the use of plain text FTP as a part of our ongoing commitment to securing our customers’ data and meeting the audited security requirements of the "Concur Trust Platform".
For more information, refer to the Plain Text FTP Retirement FAQ (English Only).
What This Means – The Client Experience: After 1 September, 2018, uploads of file types such as Employee, List, Attendee and other Import files, as well as downloads of SAE and other Extract files that use Plain Text FTP, will not be accepted via SAP Concur’s Filemover system. This will significantly impact client usage of SAP Concur products such as Concur Travel, Concur Expense and Concur Invoice, as well as integration activities to customers’ financial systems. There will be no exceptions beyond 1 September, 2018.
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
