All Products

Clients who have many budget items will now be able to find and update these quicker with the new search and filter functionality in Budget Items. Clients can search and filter on budget name, budget description, owner name and owner email.

In addition, there is a list of fiscal years, which clients can use to filter and search for budget items. The list will show the current year as default.

The search and filter functionalities are not applicable to exports at this point.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature makes it easier for clients to search for and update budget items.

Clients who use zero amount budgets to track expense items will now be able to create audit rules to calculate budget percentages for zero amount budget items in Audit Rules to ensure that spend does not hit a zero amount budget. For this feature, clients will be able to use Budget Amount and Budget Remaining Amount options in Audit Rules.

If the remaining budget amount is zero or greater than zero, the total consumption percentage will use zero. If the remaining budget amount is negative, the consumption percentage will use 999.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: These new audit rule options give clients visibility and ensure that spend does not hit a zero amount budget.

To enhance audit rules for Budget, SAP Concur has redesigned the budget audit rules so that Budget has its own new Payment Request Budget Submit event in Audit Rules.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides clients with enhanced support for complex audit rules.

Concur Open and Personalised Concur Open users can subscribe to email notifications about the SAP Concur products they use. As part of the subscription process, SAP Concur sends a verification email to the user. The user must click Verify in the email in order to receive the notifications.

Because some users are not completing the verification step, SAP Concur has added a reminder to the subscription page.

SAP Concur is transitioning to a new email infrastructure for outbound email from our services to SAP Concur users. Because of this, companies who filter inbound email based on the sending IP address must add new IP addresses to their Safe Sender list to ensure that their users receive email from SAP Concur.

Initially, the issue described here affected only companies that use Concur Expense. Starting in January, email from other SAP Concur services (such as Concur Travel and Concur Pay) will move to the new email infrastructure.

We will continue to add other services throughout the first quarter of 2019. Please monitor the release notes for more information about the timing of the additional changes.

SAP Concur has provided a release note about the updated email notifications for several months. Be aware that we will discontinue this release note after this month.

IMPORTANT

Note the following:

• The email content has not changed – just the look and feel has been updated.

• The changes will appear over time. Each product team (Expense, Invoice, Travel, etc.) decides when to use the new format. Timing will be based on resource availability and the priority of other scheduled enhancements.

• Do not expect that all product emails will change at the same time. For example, the Expense approval email might be first, and then other Expense notifications might follow.

• There is no assigned end date for the project. The changes might take longer than a year.

IMPORTANT FOR SSO CLIENTS

For clients who use SSO, a lengthy URL might be replaced with www.concursolutions.com. For example, the URL in the expense claim status change email might be replaced. Because some URLs can reach 200 characters in length, the decision was made to provide the www.concursolutions.com link instead, providing a better experience for users.

The link in the email still works as it always has – redirecting the user for proper SSO authentication. The user can see the underlying URL at any time by hovering the mouse pointer over the www.concursolutions.com link.

This change does not affect those emails where the user clicks a button – instead of a link – to access Concur Expense.

All companies must take all reasonable steps to protect the personal and sensitive information of their employees. Per recommended security-related best practices, custom fields should not contain personal or sensitive data.

In an effort to ensure the ongoing security of our products and services, SAP Concur has issued a new concursolutions.com SSL certificate. The current certificate will expire on 16 March 2019.

Any customer who has pinned this expiring certificate will need to update to the new certificate prior to 16 March 2019. If the pinned certificate is not updated prior to 16 March 2019, your organisation and users will experience disruption to SAP Concur products and services.

Customers who have not pinned the certificate do not need to take any action as the new certificate is updated automatically. Most customers do not pin the certificate.

Please be aware: As an enhancement to our Security and Compliance programme, this certificate will be updated on an annual basis.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This update provides ongoing security for our products and services.

All Products

In a future release, workflows will be available for Budget. Workflows define how the system routes invoices, expense claims and requests through approval and processing steps. The flexible workflow feature for Budget that SAP Concur offers allows companies to design workflows specifically tailored to their unique needs.

Without budget review, budgets may become fully consumed well before the end of a period or year leaving an organisation with limited options and budget owners with, for example, exceeded budgets. In addition, early spending means that more important (to the organisation) spending will be declined because lesser important spending consumed the budget early on.

Combining budget review in the workflow adds value. Audit rules and workflow step rules can help organisations to add in controls when it makes sense to fine tune to an organisation's specific needs.

Equally important is the determination when a spending item is regarded as committed toward a budget. In most organisations, the commit is when a spending item is paid; it went through most if not all approval steps. In other organisations, the commit occurs much earlier. As soon as a purchase request or an authorisation request is approved, it is regarded as "promised".

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature will provide clients with control over the budget spend, for example, to avoid exceeded budgets too early in a budget period or budget year.

SAP Concur will add a new Forgot Password feature to the SAP Concur Sign In page, providing an updated login experience for users who log in with user name and password credentials.

When the new Forgot Password feature is released (targeted for 11 May), the following existing Forgot Password page functionality will be deprecated:

• Security Questions: Users will no longer receive security question prompts for login authentication.

• On-page text: Company custom text will no longer be displayed.

• Password hints: The Send me an email with my password hint option will no longer be available.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides greater security for user passwords and streamlines the user experience.

In a future release, the ability to reset or update user passwords through the User Import and Employee Import features will be removed. The ability to set the password for new users during the initial import through the User Import and Employee import features will still be available.

USER IMPORT

The password field will remain available in the downloadable Excel template, but will only be read during an initial import of the file or when creating a new user in the system. Subsequent uses of the field will be ignored by the system

For general information about this functionality, refer to the Shared: User Import User Guide.

EMPLOYEE IMPORT

The password fields will remain available in the 100, 300, 305 and 310 record sets, but will only be read during an initial import of the file or when creating a new user in the system. Subsequent uses of the field will be ignored by the system. The update and replace password features on the 100 record will no longer be used.

For general information about this functionality, refer to the Shared: Employee Import Specification.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change provides greater security for user passwords.

Composite login functionality allows users to use a login ID that does not include a domain to log in to SAP Concur products.

All users who use only their username (ex: johndoe) to log in will need to use their CTE Login Name rather than their login ID to log in to SAP Concur products.

SAP Concur will no longer support composite login sign-in page URLs. The typical URL for a composite login page includes the name of the entity (ex: entity=pxxxxxxxxx) and looks like this: https://www.concursolutions.com/signin.asp?entity=pxxxxxxxxx

All clients will be using the standard Sign In page to access SAP Concur products. The standard sign in page is located at the following address: https://www.concursolutions.com/nui/signin

Deprecation of the composite login pages for www.concursolutions.com is targeted for 11 May 2019.

EFFECTS ON USERS

Users who log in to a composite login page (https://www.concursolutions.com/signin.asp?entity=pxxxxxxxxx) and do not use the at (@) symbol in their user name will need to contact their company administrator to get their CTE Login Name. User passwords will remain the same.

Single Sign-On functionality is not impacted by this change. The following users will not be impacted because they do not log in using https://www.concursolutions.com:

• SAP Concur web SSO

• SAP Concur Mobile username/password

• SAP Concur Mobile SSO

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: Deprecating this feature improves login stability and login success rates, while reducing login dependency.

Single Sign-On allows users to access multiple applications using one set of login credentials. Currently, SAP Concur has two methods for signing in: with a user name and password or using SSO with identity provider (IdP) credentials, such as a user's login credentials for their organisation.

SAP Concur is planning to add a Manage Single Sign-On (SSO) feature to SAP Concur which provides SAP Concur clients with a self-service option for setting up SSO for their organisation. SSO is currently supported for Concur Expense, Concur Invoice, Concur Request and Concur Travel.

Other SAP Concur products and services are outside the scope of this initial release.

The new Manage Single Sign-On (SSO) feature will be accessible from the Administration > Company > Company Admin page.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides SAP Concur clients with a self-service option for setting up SSO.

To simplify the Training Administration page, the functionality and content will be changing.

In addition to content changes, access to the Training Administration page will move from Company Admin to Tools.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change will allow SAP Concur to devote more resources to development and maintenance of features that are used by many or most of our clients.

SAP Concur is retiring the functionality in the Test User Admin feature that removes the transactions of test users from Concur Expense, Concur Invoice, Concur Travel and Concur Request.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change will allow SAP Concur to devote more resources to development and maintenance of features that are used by many or most of our clients.

SAP Concur is planning to add a new Sign In page, providing an updated login experience for users who log in with a user name and password credentials. Current Single Sign-On (SSO) users will be able to start the SSO login process at www.concursolutions.com. This feature is planned for 2019.

The new Sign In page feature includes the following:

• Two-step login: provides enhanced security, meets current industry standards and provides a better log in success rate

• Multi-account login: allows administrators to log in with multiple accounts (planned for a future release)

• User avatar: enhances the user experience (planned for a future release)

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides better security and a faster, more convenient experience for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

Concur Expense and Concur Request

Budget Insight is a budget management tool that is being retired on 30 June 2019. Clients who want to use budget functionality are recommended to purchase SAP Concur's new Budget product which released earlier this year. The new Budget feature offers greater functionality, an improved UI and additional integrations with SAP Concur products. Most notably is the inclusion of additional expense data from Concur Expense, Concur Invoice, Concur Travel and Concur Request (previously only data from Concur Expense and Concur Request were available).

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The retirement of Budget Insight will provide clients with the opportunity to purchase SAP Concur's new Budget product that gives greater value to clients by making budgets visible, actionable and near real-time.

Concur Invoice

In a future release, SAP Concur will replace instances of the term "payment request" and its iterations with the term "invoice" and its iterations. These changes will be made in the user interface, the Concur Invoice documentation and in all other SAP Concur product documentation where it appears.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change helps to ensure that the terminology used in SAP Concur is consistent with industry standard terminology.