Invoice Capture

A new technology, Textractor, has been added to Invoice Capture. Textractor works with OCR and intelligent technologies as a machine learning component that improves the accuracy of the data extracted from captured invoices.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change improves the overall accuracy and efficiency of data extraction in Invoice Capture.

Payment Manager

As part of the new Invoice Provider ACH feature, clients who purchased Concur Invoice on or before 20 June 2021 and who use Invoice Payment Manager now have the ability to create new payment provider funding accounts on the Funding Accounts page in Invoice Payment Manager.

At this time, only USD ACH payments by Bambora as the provider are supported.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change enables clients to securely set up their bank accounts with payment providers to be used for processing ACH payments to suppliers.

Clients who use Invoice Payment Manager can now download active banking information for suppliers from the Banking Import page.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change gives clients access to active supplier banking information in Concur Invoice.

Pagination has been added to the Funding Account List page in Invoice Payment Manager. A maximum of 25 funding accounts will be displayed on each page.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change improves page performance when a large number of funding accounts are listed.

API

Our API deprecation policy has changed to further align with SAP.

For more information, refer to the SAP Concur Developer Centre release notes.

Authentication

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

SAP Concur support for Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) has been deprecated.

SAP Concur provides a Single Sign-On self-service option that enables client admins to set up 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).

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

In late August, a new Company Request Token self-service tool will be available to SAP Concur admins who have been assigned the Company Admin or Web Services Admin role.

The Company Request Token self-service tool enables clients to generate the Company Request Token that is required to request a JSON web token (JWT) when connecting to APIs on the SAP Concur platform.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: The Company Request Token self-service tool enables clients to generate Company Request Tokens without contacting SAP Concur support. This tool also enables clients to generate a replacement Company Request Token without assistance from SAP Concur support if their Company Request Token expires or is lost.

Client Web Services

Beginning in late August, clients who have SAP Concur Client Web Services can request access to a new application management self-service tool. The application management self-service tool can be enabled by the Client Web Services team for SAP Concur Web Services clients who request it.

When enabled, the tool will be available in the SAP Concur web UI to admin users who have been assigned the Web Services Admin role.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: The application management tool enables clients to generate Client IDs (App IDs) and Client Secrets without contacting SAP Concur support.

On 21 August, the Register Partner Application page will no longer be active and all new authentication applications must use the new application management self-service tool.

The new application management self-service tool replaces the Register Partner Application page.

For more information, refer to the Self-Service Tool for Application Management (English only) release note in this document.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: The new application management tool enables clients who have SAP Concur Client Web Services to generate Client IDs (App IDs) and Client Secrets without contacting SAP Concur support.

The new self-service tool for application management also enables clients to create OAuth 2.0 compliant applications.

OAuth 1.0 was deprecated on 4 February 2017. Refer to the SAP Concur Developer Portal for more information.

Employee Import

SAP Concur has updated the Mobile Phone field in the Profile > Personal Information user interface to allow only digits, dashes, spaces and brackets (released July 2021). Previously, brackets were not allowed and resulted in an error. No other phone number fields, such as Work Phone and Home Phone, have been modified in this manner.

The same modification has been made to the Cell Phone field in the 350 Travel Addendum import file. Specifically, when saving information to the database, SAP Concur will strip out unallowed characters (i.e. anything that is not a digit, space, dash or bracket).

Clients do not need to make any changes to their import files. Everything that is currently in the import file will continue to be allowed. However, the information saved on import in the SAP Concur database, which is returned in subsequent API calls and displayed to the user, will only include the allowed characters in the Cell Phone field.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: SAP Concur is taking steps to standardise customer data to help reduce errors.

File Transfer Updates

This release note is intended for technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur products. For SAP Concur clients 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.

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.

This Release Note is intended for the technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur. For our clients 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.

Miscellaneous

Beginning with the August release, clients can configure a link to their company’s privacy statement. The link will appear in the footer of their SAP Concur site with the text “Customer Privacy Statement”.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change enables clients to meet GDPR and other legal requirements to provide their privacy statement to their customers.

SAP Concur User Assistance

SAP is now publishing the SAP Concur solutions’ online help information on SAP Help Portal (http://help.sap.com). SAP Help Portal has a new look and feel for the help, and additional functionality. The content remains the same.

New functionality:

• Search with advanced options

• Provide feedback on each page

• Change the font size

• Create a custom PDF by selecting a subset of pages in the help

• Share a page via link, email or social media

• Mark pages as favourites, and limit search to only those pages (if logged in to SAP Help Portal, available for free)

Clients can view SAP Concur online help and links to all documentation by accessing the product pages for the relevant product.

Concur Expense:

Concur Invoice:

Concur Request:

Concur Travel:

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This update increases the functionality available in the online help, and consolidates the SAP Concur solutions documentation with other SAP products on the central SAP Help Portal.

Supported Configurations

Because web browsers are frequently updated, for ease of maintenance and to ensure that our documented supported browser information does not become out of date, we no longer publish the specific version data for supported browsers in the Concur Travel & Expense Supported Configurations Guide (English only). In addition, the Monthly Browser Certifications (English only) document is now retired and will no longer be updated with supported browser version information each month.

For the most responsive, reliable and secure user experience with our products, SAP Concur recommends that users implement the most recent technology that is compliant with manufacturer's distribution and your company’s support and security policies.

For more supported browser information, refer to the Concur Travel & Expense Supported Configurations Guide (English only).

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change helps to ensure that the supported browser information in the Concur Travel & Expense Supported Configurations Guide (English only) remains up to date.

Providing up-to-date supported browser information to users ensures that they have a better user experience while accessing the web version of SAP Concur.

Test Entities

When end users, approvers, processors and admins sign in to an SAP Concur test entity, they see that the global banner across the top of the page has changed and that the UI web frame has a unique, identifying colour.

Prior to implementing this change, users saw only a blue global banner across the top of the page. Users might have had issues distinguishing between the test environment and production environment.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: All SAP Concur users now see a more distinct difference between a test entity and production entity. These changes help users to clearly distinguish between test and production entities. These changes might also reduce the likelihood of logging in to the wrong entity and performing critical tasks such as configuration updates and data changes.

Invoice Pay

SAP Concur has been pursuing a multi-year effort to transition our portfolio of payment solutions to partner-enabled solutions. This is evidenced by our robust partner options for Concur Invoice payments.

As part of this announcement, SAP Concur plans to release Invoice Provider ACH, a new feature that will enable clients to directly manage supplier ACH payments in Payment Manager. With this solution, clients can manage delivery of funds and remittance information, as well as tracking returns and failed payments, with minimal impact on suppliers.

For the client, the experience will not change, only Bambora will be the payment provider executing the ACH payments from the client’s bank account to the supplier’s bank account. They will continue to work with Payment Manager to perform the same tasks, now using the new Invoice Provider ACH funding accounts they have set up for this purpose.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change is part of a transition to partner-enabled solutions to support future product enhancements and richer integration.

SAP Concur has been pursuing a multi-year effort to transition our portfolio of payment solutions to partner-enabled solutions. This is evidenced by our robust partner options for Invoice payments.

At this time, SAP Concur is accelerating the decommissioning of the Invoice Pay ACH feature of Concur Invoice as of 1 January 2022. As we move into the next phase of our pay strategy via partner solutions, this decommission will require clients using Invoice Pay ACH to enable alternative solutions as payments will not be made to suppliers starting on 15 November 2021.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change is part of a transition to partner-enabled solutions to support future product enhancements and richer integration.

Payment Manager

SAP Concur plans to add pagination to the Check Configuration List page in Invoice Payment Manager. A maximum of 25 check configurations will be displayed on each page.

Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This change improves page performance when a large number of check configurations are listed.