Admin

The Users by Browser report is available to all admins working with the Expense, Request, Invoice and/or Travel offerings in both the Professional and Standard product editions.

With this release, the report is available only in CSV format.

This CSV file contains the following fields: Login Name, Email, First Name, Last Name, Last Login Date, IP Address, Login Count, Browser and Browser version.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The report shows admins if users have outdated or unsupported browsers. CSV is the most widely used data format.

Audit Rules

With this release, a new condition is added to the Audit Rules feature. This condition, Dates Overlap Another Claim, is triggered whenever an employee attempts to submit more than a single expense claim within a date range associated with the employee creating the claim.

The audit rule is designed to create an exception whenever the system detects that an employee is submitting a second expense claim within a date range that overlaps a prior (the "first") claim the employee has already submitted. This is done by comparing the claim's Claim Start Date and Claim End Date header values with other submitted claims. If any previously submitted claim falls within that date range, the audit rule is triggered and an exception is displayed.

This allows the client to require that all expenses for a given trip or period are on a single claim. That is, the submitter is prevented from spanning claims with expenses that logically need to be gathered within a single claim.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This enhancement helps clients who must enforce date-driven expense claims by enforcing a rule that these expenses must reside on an expense claim matching that date range. It would typically be used in conjunction with a rule to validate that all expenses on the claim fall within the start and end dates of that claim.

Company Card

Concur now includes support for the AirPlus XML-based invoice job feed in this service release. This feed type supports the native XML format and allows the system to group common invoice transactions under a single Travel Agency invoice number for ease of management by the Card admin using the Central Reconciliation tool.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This enhancement supports superior display and management of invoice transactions by grouping them by Travel Agency number.

Expense Assistant

Expense Assistant will be available for Expense users in September.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature automates more of the expense reporting process, to provide an easier end user experience.

Expense Pay – Global

Expense Pay – Global now supports the following credit card programmes for the United States Dollar (USD $):

• JP Morgan Chase MasterCard/Visa USD
• Citibank MasterCard/Visa USD

All cards use the same Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) format to different bank accounts.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These additional options can expedite the processing of credit card expenses.

These new fields allow users to provide and maintain contact information for each funding account. The contact information can then be used by Concur and Concur’s payment-processing partners to locate the correct person at a client company if a funding issue occurs.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These new fields expedite the process of contacting the correct point person for resolving funding failures.

Expense Pay

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, Concur has engaged dedicated, experienced, third party payment-processing partners and developed a next-generation pay product: Expense Pay – Global.

Moving forward, Concur will use one Expense Pay product to service your business anywhere in the world. 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 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.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The Expense Pay – Global offering maintains industry best practices for payment processing functionality within Concur.

Japan Public Transportation (JPT)

The 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.

Receipts

On the Concur home page, the existing link (for those who have the link) to upload receipts (New > Upload Receipts) will take users to the Available Receipts section of the main Expense page.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The change allows users to upload receipts more efficiently.

The new e-Bunsho Timestamp feature for Japan allows admins to turn on timestamping of receipts for groups of users.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This new feature supports clients in Japan who want to transition to storing time-stamped digital images of receipts instead of paper copies, while maintaining compliance with Japanese government regulations on receipt storage.

Sign In Page for ConcurSolutions.com

With this release, images on the Sign In page will be updated to a new quarterly selection of images.

Travel Allowance

For mixed trips, the user will see domestic allowance given on the first and/or second mixed days of travel based on the merged domestic time from both of those days.

The calculation performed for a multiple-day, mixed trip that combines both foreign and domestic legs is changed for the domestic legs. This change corrects a calculation of zero for domestic travel by now basing the reimbursement on the sum of the domestic travel days, in hours.

Under the new calculation logic, domestic travel leg segments are added together and, if the sum is less than 24 hours, this is represented as the first (domestic) day of travel. If the sum exceeds 24 hours, this is shown as 24 hours for the first day of travel, and the remaining hours as the last day of the trip back to the home country.

On both the days, since foreign travel exists, the rate and deductions are based on the foreign location. Only the allowances for the summed-up time will be added to the total.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change allows clients to maintain best-practice legal compliance.

The following recent changes to the travel allowance feature for Finland have been removed:

• Change to Rate Location and Allowance Determination (described in the August 2017 version of these Release Notes)

• Per Diem Location Based on 24-Hour Day (described in the February 2017 version of these Release Notes)

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These recent changes are not performing as expected and should not be used until the issues can be corrected.

USB IC Card Readers – Japan

The USB IC Card reader solution for capturing Japanese IC Card travel information in Expense utilised a reader connected to a single computer. Because Microsoft is deprecating the ActiveX technology leveraged by this solution, Concur is ending support for the solution.

Important dates:

• On 1 August 2017, Concur discontinued support for this solution.
• After 31 December 2017, the solution is being retired and will no longer work in Concur.

As a replacement, Concur's current solution uses a Network IC Card Reader, which our Japanese clients are already deploying. The Network IC Card Reader has the benefit of allowing multiple users to import transactions at a central location.

For the Network IC Card Reader release note, refer to the October 2016 Expense Professional Edition Admin Summary topic.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This retirement keeps Concur users aligned with current technology.

Admin

For quite some time, In-Product Messaging (IPM) within Concur products has been available for United States (US) customers.

The messaging that is presented to each US user is based on data provided by a well-known US-based "recommendation" engine. That engine, however, is not the best fit for the stricter laws in the European Union (EU). So, in an effort to comply with the EU laws, Concur developed its own recommendation engine for its In-Product Messaging System.

Early Access customers in the EU will be contacted by a Concur representative before enabling this feature. After 60 days, this feature could be enabled for all other customers in the EU. Also, since the new system will provide a better all-around IPM experience for Concur customers, US customers will soon use the new system, too.

Just like today for US users – the content, timing, location and frequency of a message are all defined by each message campaign and by the characteristics of each company and each user.

Legacy Expense Authorisation Request

Concur plans to retire our legacy Expense Authorisation Request feature on 31 March 2018.

Concur offered this feature to some clients prior to the existence of the standalone Concur Request product. We now have feature parity as well as enhanced features and full support on the standalone Request product. Clients that wish to leverage a request capability within Concur should purchase and migrate to the Concur Request product.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This retirement allows Concur to focus development resources on further enhancements to our standalone Concur Request product whose functionality, innovation and value now exceeds that of our legacy feature.

Terminology

In the October release, Concur plans to change the following Czech terms.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These changes will improve the accuracy and consistency of the Czech version of all Concur solutions.

Beginning in the October release and over the next few months, Concur will be changing the following Portuguese (Brazil) terms.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These changes will improve the accuracy and consistency of the Portuguese (Brazil) version of all Concur solutions.

Client Notifications

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

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