Concur Invoice Standard Edition Administration Help

February 2021 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

Attendees

Enhanced Employee Attendee Search

These changes are also part of the NextGen UI experience. The production deployment of this change will be conducted in phases over the next few weeks. Individual customers will start seeing this change between January 15 and January 30. Production deployment to the EMEA datacenter has already been completed. The production deployment to the US and China datacenters is still planned.

Beginning with the January 2021 release, users searching for employees to add as attendees to an expense now have additional filter options that can be used to narrow search results, helping make the identification of employees accurate and efficient.

Users searching for employees to add as attendees to an expense now have additional filter options that can be used to narrow search results, helping make the identification of employees accurate and efficient.

Searching for employee attendees has proven difficult as there may have been no fields available to search by other than first name and last name.

With this update, the default advanced search view for employee attendees automatically includes the addition of email addresses and country filters.

This feature update includes the following benefits:

  • Accurate identification of employees, particularly for those with the same first and last name

  • Improved efficiency for employee searches by providing filters that help narrow relevant search results

  • Optional inclusion of inactive employees in attendee searches

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This update helps make searching for employee attendees more efficient.

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 information about the Single Sign-On self-service option, refer to the Shared: Single Sign-On Overview (English Only) and the Shared: Single Sign-On 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).

SAP Concur provides a Single Sign-On self-service option that enables client admins to setup their SAML v2 connections without involving an SAP Concur support representative.

For more information about the Single Sign-On self-service option, refer to the Shared: Single Sign-On Overview (English Only) and the Shared: Single Sign-On Setup Guide (English Only).

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.

  • 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.

Authorized Support Contacts

Security / Data Protection Contact Option Added to SAP Concur Support Portal Profile (Dec 3)

SAP Concur has added an option to the SAP Concur support portal that enables Authorized Support Contacts (ASCs) to designate whether they should be contacted regarding a security or data protection topic.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This enhancement gives clients more control over who in their company is contacted regarding security or data protection topics and provides greater control over which notifications an ASC receives.

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 is in the process of 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 July 31, 2021. 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.

Rotating PGP Key Available for File Transfers (Jan 15)

Files transferred to SAP Concur solutions must be encrypted with the SAP Concur public PGP key, concursolutionsrotate.asc.

concursolutionsrotate.asc

  • Key file is available in client’s root folder

  • Key ID 40AC5D35

  • RSA 4096-bit signing and encryption subkey

  • Key expires every 2 years

  • Client is responsible for replacing the key before it expires

    • Next expiry date: September 4, 2022

    • SAP Concur plans to replace the current rotating public PGP key in the client’s root folder 90 days before the expiration date

The SAP Concur legacy PGP key (key ID D4D727C0) remains supported for existing clients but will be deprecated in the future.

SAP Concur strongly recommends that clients use the more secure rotating public PGP key for file transfers. To facilitate the use of the more secure rotating public PGP key for file transfers, SAP Concur added the key to existing client’s home folders on Friday, January 15, 2021.

This announcement pertains to the following file transfer DNS endpoints:

  • st.concursolutions.com

  • mft-us.concursolutions.com

  • vs.concursolutions.com

  • st-eu.concursolutions.com

  • mft-eu.concursolutions.com

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The rotating public PGP key provides greater security for file transfers.

Financial Integration

Other Current Liabilities QuickBooks Account Type Now Supported

Beginning with the February release, the Other Current Liabilities QuickBooks account type is now supported.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change improves the functionality of the SAP Concur QuickBooks integration with Concur Expense and Concur Invoice.

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.

Release Notes

Preview Release Notes No Longer Published

SAP Concur Technical Publications no longer publish the preview release notes. This change was made to streamline our client communication. With this change, only two sets of release notes are published for each monthly release cycle: draft release notes and final release notes.

The 2021 Release Calendar (English Only) has been updated to reflect this change.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change simplifies the release notes communications.

For more information about the publishing dates for the draft and final release notes, refer to the 2021 Release Calendar (English Only).

User Administration

**Ongoing** New User Administration Pages

On February 11, SAP Concur made new Add User and Edit User pages available to all Standard edition clients. Clients can opt-in to use the new pages and can provide feedback on the pages through a survey.

The functionality of these pages is the same as the functionality of the preexisting Create User and Edit User pages. The format of the pages has changed and the fields on these pages have been reorganized.

On March 11, 2021, the new Add User and Edit User pages will become the default pages and clients will have the option to revert to the current pages.

At a future date, the new Add User and Edit User pages will replace the current Create User and Edit User pages for all clients and the option to revert to the current pages will be removed.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These changes provide a simpler, more efficient experience for user administrators.

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 February 2021 Shared Planned Changes Standard Edition Admin Summary.

Expense Type Import

**Planned Changes** Automation Enhancements

For new and existing clients, the process for entering expense types and account codes will now offer an option to perform bulk updates. Prior to this change, a client manually entered their organization's expense types and account codes across multiple pages in Concur Expense. This time-consuming process was prone to data entry errors and increased configuration time. Now, clients can download, fill out, and upload an Excel template that will be used to automatically import their organization's expense types and account codes.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature will significantly improve the expense type import process for bulk updates, decrease configuration time, reduce the risk of data entry errors, align with the Concur Invoice expense type setup, and help users access the latest expense types quicker than if manually entered.

Financial Integration

**Planned Changes** Sage Intacct Integration (US) (Mar 1)

SAP Concur and Sage are partnering to make accounting for expenses in Sage Intacct easier.

Concur Standard Edition enables participating clients to import Sage Intacct data (source data) into their SAP Concur configuration. This data enables clients to utilize their unique accounting data when entering expenses and/or invoices. The data is updated in SAP Concur regularly. The source data export loads employee and invoice vendors/suppliers from Sage Intacct to SAP Concur during the implementation.

The financial posting process sends expense reports and invoices that are ready to be posted from SAP Concur to Sage Intacct, utilizing APIs from the SAP Concur Platform. SAP Concur sends the expense data as a vendor bill (for cash reimbursements) or as a credit card transaction (for credit card charges). The integration sends the invoice data as a vendor bill. The integration manages the transmission of expense and invoice data from SAP Concur to Sage Intacct, and the transmission of status information back to SAP Concur. The financial posting happens as soon as the report or invoice is approved for payment, without waiting for a batch schedule. The client sees financial posting status information in the audit trail of the expense report or invoice. The expense or invoice processor can view problems with the posting, allowing them to correct errors and re-send the information quickly.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This integration makes it easier for clients to manage their accounting information in both SAP Concur and Sage Intacct.

Product Settings

**Planned Changes** New Payment Types Module

A new Payment Types module will soon be added to the Capturing Spend section in Product Settings. The Payment Types module will include settings and configuration for management of credit card programs and default payment types used to classify employee spending.

Currently, card program settings and configuration are in multiple locations in Product Settings but primarily located in the Credit Cards module. The new Payment Types module will consolidate setup and configuration in one location to simplify card program and payment type management, though functionality fundamentally remains same.

The new Payment Types module features:

  • Consolidated management of card programs and system payment types in one module

  • Three enhanced credit card program workflows with guided configuration for corporate, business, and personal card accounts

  • Improved on-screen messages and prompts to help educate and guide administrators with card program setup

  • A new Payment Types column to identify card program types

  • A new Show filter that allows admins to display all, active, or inactive accounts

  • New up-front card number verification for Expense Pay, which includes an on-screen message displaying supported card ranges

  • New embedded American Express Business Card integration activation

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change provides a streamlined approach for self-service setup and management of card programs. The new user interface design helps improve usability for administrators by providing on-screen messages and guided workflow options tailored for each card program. Additionally, this new design consolidates setup and configuration for company paid expenses in one location.

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