Concur Invoice Professional Edition Administration Help

September 2021 Analysis/Intelligence Professional Edition Admin Summary

Initial Post

Release Note Summaries

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

Model Changes

Change to the Paid Date Field

In the Cognos data model, the behaviour of the Paid Date field date in the [Expense].[Claim Dates and Statuses].[Paid Date] and [Expense].[Claim Dates and Statuses].[Paid Date/Time] data items has changed based on changes made to the PAID_DATE field behaviour in the Standard Accounting Extract for Concur Expense in the September 2021 release.

With the September 2021 release, the behaviour of the PAID_DATE field in the Standard Accounting Extract (SAE) (versions 2 and 3) changed for Concur Expense so that the PAID_DATE field is only updated when the following event occurs:

  • When an expense claim’s payment status reaches the end of the payment workflow and is then updated from “Processing Payment/Ready for Extract” to “Paid/Extracted”

Before this update, in the Cognos data model, the Paid Date field date in the [Expense].[Claim Dates and Statuses].[Paid Date] and [Expense].[Claim Dates and Statuses].[Paid Date/Time] data items could be either the date on which the claim was extracted for payment, or the date on which the payment was confirmed.

After this update, the Paid Date field date in the [Expense].[Claim Dates and Statuses].[Paid Date] and [Expense].[Claim Dates and Statuses].[Paid Date/Time] data items is now only the date on which the claim is extracted for payment, and the Paid Date field value is no longer overwritten with the date on which the payment confirmation is received.

To track and capture the payment confirmation date, you can use the [Expense].[Claim Dates and Statuses].[Payment Confirmation Date] data item.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change targets improving analytics and other use cases for anyone relying on the value in this field.

Report Changes

New Report: Germany – BIK Report (TAS) (German-Market-Specific Report)

The Germany – BIK Report (TAS) is a new version of the existing Germany – BIK Report that is specifically designed to provide only data from the new Travel Allowance Service (TAS).

The Germany – BIK Report (TAS) is available to Analysis and Intelligence clients in the German market.

German employees must pay tax on BIK (Benefit in Kind) if they received a free provided meal without having a claim for any per diem that meet all of the BIK criteria:

  • Expense claim where the itinerary duration is less than 8 hours or more than 3 months

    – and –

  • The allowance amount is 0 because the per diem does not apply and the travel allowance has one or more free provided meals entered

This report will assist German clients who need to report the taxable amount for meals that meet the criteria in order to be compliant with German law.

The report lists all of the Concur Expense transactions and corresponding travel allowance and itinerary information that meet the BIK criteria mentioned above, for German employees (where the Employee Country = Germany).

REPORT OUTPUT

The report includes these columns:

  • Employee ID
  • Employee
  • Employee Active Flag
  • Paid Date
  • Sent for Payment Date
  • Claim Name
  • Claim ID
  • Itinerary Start Date
  • Itinerary End Date
  • Rate Location Country/Region
  • Transaction Date
  • Breakfast Provided
  • Lunch Provided
  • Dinner Provided
  • Rate Currency
  • Allowance Date
  • Allowance Amount
  • Total BIK Amount

The amount columns on the Germany – BIK Report (TAS) are calculated using only client amounts. The calculations for the amount columns do not include government amounts.

LOCATION OF THE REPORT

The report is located here:

  • Analysis - Standard Reports > Market Specific Reports
  • Intelligence - Standard Reports ‎> Market Specific Reports

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about the Germany – BIK Report (TAS), refer to Chapter 13: Folder – Market-Specific Reports in the Standard Reports by Folder guide (English only).

Other Changes

File Transfer Updates: **Ongoing** Mandatory SFTP with SSH Key Authentication

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

As of 10 April, 2021, non-SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) protocols and SFTP password authentication are not allowed to connect to SAP Concur for file transfers:

  • Non-SFTP file transfer accounts must switch to SFTP with SSH Key Authentication.

  • SFTP file transfer accounts that use password authentication must switch to SSH key authentication.

  • SFTP password reset requests require the client to provide an SSH key for authentication.

On 12 April 2021, SAP started disabling non-compliant file transfer connections. The process of disabling non-compliant accounts will continue throughout 2021. If you have multiple file transfer connections configured, this change applies to all of your file transfer connections.

This announcement pertains to the following file transfer DNS endpoints:

  • st.concursolutions.com

  • st-eu.concursolutions.com

  • vs.concursolutions.com

  • vs.concurcdc.cn

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

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 suppliers 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 24 January 2022. 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.

File Transfer Updates: Rotating PGP Key Available for File Transfers

Files transferred to SAP Concur products 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: 4 September 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 15 January 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.

Planned Change Summaries

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

Report Changes

**Planned Changes** New Report Views: Report Views for Audit Reports Associated with Verify

Report views for some of the audit reports located in the Audit folder in the Intelligence – Standard Report and Analysis – Standard Report folders will be added to the new sub-folder, Verify.

These report views for the audit reports will be added to the Verify sub-folder because the reports are valid for the Verify feature. This update will make it easy to identify and locate the reports for Verify.

In preparation for this update, the new Verify sub-folder is added to the Audit folder with the September 2021 release. We are targeting to add the new views to the Verify sub-folder with the October 2021 release.

REPORT VIEWS

Report views for the following audit reports will be added to the Verify sub-folder located under the Audit folder:

  • Audit Service Employee Exception Analysis
  • Audit Service Exception Categories
  • Audit Service Exception Categories – Details
  • Audit Service Statistics – Details
  • Audit Service Statistics by Reporting Group
  • Audit Service Statistics Summary
  • Audit Service Statistics with Exception Breakdown

LOCATION OF THE REPORTS

The reports are located here:

  • Analysis - Standard Reports > Audit
  • Intelligence - Standard Reports ‎> Audit

The report views for the reports will be located here:

  • Analysis - Standard Reports > Audit > Verify
  • Intelligence - Standard Reports ‎> Audit > Verify

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about the audit reports, refer to Chapter 4: Folder – Audit in the Standard Reports by Folder guide (English only).

**Planned Changes** Removed Report: User Rating Summary – Travel

The User Rating Summary – Travel report will be removed from the Analysis - Standard Reports folder in Analysis and the Intelligence - Standard Reports folder in Intelligence.

The User Rating Summary – Travel report will be removed from our standard report offering as there has been minimal utilisation, and we want to ensure we are investing in standard reports that bring the most value to our customers.

We are currently working on a new solution for capturing detailed and actionable feedback on our products and services.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information, refer to the Miscellaneous | **Planned Changes** 5-Star Rating Replaced with New Survey release note in the August 2021 Concur Travel release notes (English only).

If you need to retain your existing user rating data, you can download your historical data before the reports are removed.

Additional information will be available in future release notes.

LOCATION OF THE REPORT

The User Rating Summary – Travel report is currently located here:

  • Analysis - Standard Reports > Administration
  • Intelligence - Standard Reports ‎> Administration

Other Changes

**Planned Changes** Upgrade to IBM Cognos Version 11

Analysis and Intelligence are powered by IBM ®Cognos®. Cognos will be updated to v11 for Analysis and Intelligence.

This update will bring some enhancements to Analysis and Intelligence, such as the following:

  • Enhancements to the user interface (UI):
    • More modern-looking interface
    • Instead of hovering over actions such as 'run a report', 'schedule a report' and more menu items, they can be found with just a right click.
  • Existing Report Studio will be renamed to "Report" in Cognos v11
    • Includes data element searching within the Concur Data Warehouse Model

MORE INFORMATION

For more information, refer to Cognos 11 User Interface Update.

Additional information will be available in future release notes.

UPDATE SCHEDULE

The Cognos v11 update will be implemented by pre-designated groups of clients.

More information about communications and timing will be released closer to the update. We plan to update the Analysis/Intelligence UI automatically for each customer over a weekend.

We are updating by entity; customers with multiple entities or test sites may have different update timeframes across all their sites. More information will be provided in future release notes, and you will also receive a 30-day notification before we update your solution.

Due to technical reasons, we are not able to schedule any specific customer’s update; the dates will be pre-determined, and customers cannot move to Cognos v11 earlier or later.

Client Notifications

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

Accessibility Updates

SAP implements changes to better meet current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Information about accessibility-related changes made to SAP Concur solutions is published on a quarterly basis. You can review the quarterly updates on the Accessibility Updates (English only) page.

SAP Concur Non-Affiliated Subprocessors

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

Supported Browsers

Supported browsers are available with the other SAP Concur monthly release notes, accessible from What's New - Professional Edition