Concur Invoice Standard Edition Administration Help

October 2020 Expense Standard Edition Admin Summary

Initial Post

Release Note Summaries

The items in this section are summaries of the release notes for this month. The Standard Edition release notes are accessible from What's New - Standard Edition

Authentication

**Ongoing** Deprecation of Director SAML Service and Migration to SAML v2

These changes are part of the SAP Concur continued commitment to maintaining secure authentication.

Support for the Director SAML service is being deprecated. Travel Management Companies (TMCs) and SAP Concur personnel will soon begin assisting customers who currently use Director SAML to migrate to SAP Concur SAML v2 SSO (SAML v2).

Clients currently using Director SAML are encouraged to migrate to SAML V2 as soon as possible.

Deprecation of support for the Director SAML service is dependent on the following requirements:

  • SAP Concur technicians and TMCs assist existing SAP Concur clients to migrate from the Director SAML service to SAML V2.

  • All clients that currently rely on the Director SAML service have migrated from Director SAML to SAML V2.

Migration from Director SAML to SAML V2 requires the following general steps:

  • The client identifies an admin to act as the SSO admin and assigns the proper permission/role.

  • The SSO admin coordinates with their SAP Concur technician to obtain the SAP Concur SP metadata.

  • The SSO admin configures the SSO settings at the IdP based on information from SP metadata.

  • The SSO admin retrieves IdP metadata from the IdP and delivers the metadata to the SAP Concur technician.

  • The SSO admin adds a few testing users and tests the new SSO connection.

  • With successful testing, the company rolls out SSO to their SAP Concur users.

For more detailed information about migrating to SAML v2, refer to the SSO Service: Overview Guide (English Only) and the Shared: SSO Management Setup Guide (English Only).

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change provides better security and improved support for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

**Ongoing** Deprecation of HMAC and Migration to SAML v2 and the SSO Self-Service Tool

These changes are part of the SAP Concur continued commitment to maintaining secure authentication.

SAP Concur support for Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) is being deprecated. Travel Management Companies (TMCs) and SAP Concur personnel are currently assisting customers who use HMAC to migrate to SAP Concur SAML v2 SSO (SAML v2).

In November of 2020, SAP Concur plans to provide a self-service tool that will enable client admins to setup their SAML v2 connections without involving an SAP Concur support representative.

The HMAC deprecation includes two phases:

PHASE I:

  • Clients must have an identity provider (IdP) or a custom SAML 2.0 compliant solution.

  • Clients begin testing authentication using SAML v2.

  • TMCs prepare to onboard new SAP Concur clients to SAML v2.

  • Once the SSO self-service tool is available, customers will be notified via release notes about the official deprecation date of HMAC. As of the official deprecation date, no new clients can be onboarded using HMAC; new clients must be onboarded to SAML v2.

  • Existing clients using HMAC must migrate to SAML v2.

PHASE II:

  • TMCs have migrated all existing SAP Concur clients from the HMAC service to SAML v2.

  • The HMAC service is deprecated. Phase II is targeted to end mid-year in 2021.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit:This change provides better security and improved support for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

Cards

Create Multiple Card Programs for the Same Billing Recipient, Bill Payor, and Country (Oct 14)

As of October 14, 2020, cards admins can create multiple card programs for a card issuer with the same billing recipient, bill payor, and country. For example, card admins can set up two or more card feed programs with American Express© or Citibank® for the same billing recipient, bill payor, and country.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change provides the ability to add multiple card program for customers who require more than one card feed program with the same billing recipient, bill payor, and country.

File Transfer Updates

**Ongoing** SAP Concur Legacy File Move Migration

This release note is intended for the technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur. For our customers and vendors participating in data exchange, SAP Concur is maintaining our file transfer subsystem to provide greater security for those file transfers.

SAP Concur will begin migrating entities that currently use a legacy process for moving files to a more efficient and secure file routing process that relies on APIs.

Clients whose entities are currently configured to use the legacy process will be migrated to the more efficient process sometime between now and the end of 2020. After they are migrated to the more efficient process, clients will see the following improvement:

  • With the legacy process, clients had to wait for the file move schedule to run at a specified time. With the more efficient and secure API-based process, extracts and other outbound files from SAP Concur will be available within the existing overnight processing period shortly after the files are created.

This announcement pertains to the following file transfer DNS endpoints:

  • st.concursolutions.com

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These changes provide greater security and efficiency for file transfers.

Support for Two SSH Transfer Ciphers Removed From File Transfer for Customers and Vendors (Oct 13)

This release note is intended for technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur solutions. For our customers and vendors participating in data exchange through various secure file transfer protocols, we are making changes that provide greater security for those file transfers.

On October 13, 2020, support for the following SSH transfer ciphers was removed for file transfers:

  • 3des-cbc

  • blowfish-cbc

This announcement pertains to the following file transfer DNS endpoints:

  • st.concursolutions.com

  • st-eu.concursolutions.com

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These changes provide greater security for file transfers.

Financial Integration

Xero Accounting Integration Available in Singapore (Oct 22)

Beginning on October 22, 2020, the following editions of Xero Accounting will be supported in Singapore for integration with Concur Expense Standard Edition and Concur Invoice Standard Edition:

  • Standard

  • Premium

NextGen UI

**Ongoing** Updated User Interface (UI) for Concur Expense End Users

The continued evolution of the Concur Expense solution user interface experience is the result of thoughtful design and research that provides a modern, intuitive, and streamlined experience for creating and submitting expense reports.

Concur Expense customers have the ability to preview and then opt in to the NextGen UI before the mandatory move.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The result is the next generation of the Concur Expense user interface designed to provide a modern, consistent, and streamlined user experience. This technology not only provides an enhanced user interface, but also allows us to react more quickly to customer requests to meet changing needs as they happen.

Product Settings

Option to Switch Back to Legacy Users Page Removed (Sep 24)

On September 24, the option to switch between the new design of the Users page and the legacy design was removed.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The redesign refreshes the look of the user management interface and provides a framework for future improvements to this administrative area.

Planned Change Summaries

The items in this section are summaries of the changes targeted for future releases. SAP Concur reserves the right to postpone implementation of – or completely remove – any enhancement/change mentioned here.

IMPORTANT: These Planned Changes may not be all of the upcoming enhancements and modifications that affect this SAP Concur product or service. The Planned Changes that apply to multiple SAP Concur products and/or services are in a consolidated document. Please review the additional Planned Changes admin summaries available in the October 2020 Shared Planned Changes Standard Edition Admin Summary.

Expense Assistant

**Planned Changes** Delegates Can Receive Expense Assistant Emails

If reports are auto-created using Expense Assistant, delegates who have the appropriate permissions will be copied on the weekly Report Summary emails.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This update enhances the delegate functionality by allowing delegates to receive the weekly Report Summary email.

Expense Pay

**Planned Changes** (Egypt) Updated Bank Account Number Field

To accommodate changes to the Egyptian banking system, Concur Expense will modify the Bank Account Number field in two ways:

  • The character limit of the field will increase from 20 characters to 29 characters.

  • The field will be renamed from Bank Account Number to IBAN.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change provides end users with the ability to enter an IBAN number into their profile to ensure that payments are not rejected by Egypt's banking system.

Client Notifications

The items in this section provide reference material for all clients.

SAP Concur Non-Affiliated Subprocessors

The list of non-affiliated subprocessors is available here: SAP Concur list of Subprocessors (English Only)

Monthly Browser Certifications

Monthly browser certifications, both current and planned, are available with the other SAP Concur monthly release notes, accessible from What's New - Standard Edition