Admin

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:

• Be aware that 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, perhaps Expense approval email will be first, and then other Expense notifications will follow.

• There is no assigned end date to the project. Expect that the changes may take longer than a year.

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 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.

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 that email in order to receive the notifications.

It appears that some users are not completing the verification step, so SAP Concur has added a reminder to the subscription page.

For more information about Personalised Concur Open, refer to the Personalised Concur Open fact sheet.

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

NEXT STEPS

If your company is currently using custom fields to store personal or sensitive data (for example, Social Security numbers, family member names or any other personally identifying information), you should plan to remove this information from your existing fields within the service and modify your current configuration.

Refer to the FAQ (English Only) for additional information.

Expense Pay – Global

For Expense Pay – Global clients whose funding accounts use Bambora as the payment-processing partner, it is now possible to manually initiate a debit test (commonly known as a penny test) transaction for Accepted (status) Bambora funding accounts.

The test will debit the amount of 0.01 in the funding account currency (€, £, $ or C$) from the funding account and credit it back to the funding account.

To use the new debit test button, the funding account must meet the following requirements:

• The payment-processing partner must be Bambora.

• The funding account status must be Accepted.

• A funding account must not already be on a temporary hold due to funding failure with Bambora.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The debit test allows clients to confirm that the payment processer (Bambora) can debit their funding account and that the funding account is ready to be used to pay employees and company cards. A client can review their bank statement with their bank to confirm a debit for 0.01 from Bambora before assigning a new funding account to an employee or card batch.

Expense Pay

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

As previously announced in these release notes (September 2017), moving forward, SAP Concur will use one Expense Pay product to service your business anywhere in the world. SAP 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 SAP 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.

EXPENSE PAY – NORTH AMERICA AND EXPENSE PAY – EMEA LIMITATIONS

SAP Concur does not support clients adding the following currencies with the classic product: United States Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Mexican Pesos, Euro, Swiss Franc, Danish Krone, Swedish Krona or UK Pounds. If a client has already implemented and is using these currencies with the classic product, they can continue using these until they are migrated to the new platform or until the defined sunset date.

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

Next Generation (NextGen) Expense

Update: In order to respond to and take advantage of feedback from customers, and to align with SAP Concur’s commitment to ensure a smooth and successful transition, we are working on a revised deployment strategy for Next Generation Expense.

SAP Concur is dedicated to the consistent improvement of our products, not only the features they provide, but also the experience of using those features. How users interact with technology changes over time, along with needs and expectations. We are constantly listening to our customers and soliciting feedback on how we can improve the user experience.

NextGen Expense is the continued evolution of the SAP Concur user experience. It was built from extensive user research and data analytics that include 680 1:1 conversations, 58 usability studies, 3,000+ survey responses and 1.3B monthly user actions.

Customers will have the ability to preview and then opt in to NextGen Expense before the mandatory cutover.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: The result is the next generation of the Expense user interface designed to provide a modern, consistent and streamlined user experience. This technology not only provides an enhanced UI, but also allows SAP Concur to react more quickly to customer requests to meet changing needs as they happen.

Allowance

To support Norwegian statutory changes for clients using travel allowance for Norway, SAP Concur has updated the following functionality:

• calculation of taxable amounts – SAP Concur changed the tax-free limits for travel both inside Norway and abroad.

• calculation of provided meal deductions – SAP Concur changed the logic to calculate the provided meal deductions for state rates based on the full-day rate depending on the accommodation arrangement.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: Businesses maintain best-practice legal compliance.

Admin

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 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 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.

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 login 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, convenient experience for users logging in to SAP Concur products and services.

Budget

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 to, for example, avoid exceeded budgets too early in a budget period or budget year.

Budget Insight

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 the new Budget product that SAP Concur 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 the new Budget product, which gives greater value to clients by making budgets visible, actionable and near real-time.

Company Administration

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 products that provides SAP Concur clients with a self-service option for setting up SSO for their organisation. SSO is currently supported for Concur Expense, Invoice, Request and 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.

E-Receipts

E-receipt technology is evolving quickly. Today, the receipt handling rules are hardcoded to accept e-receipts to meet image requirements. Moving forward, as e-receipts become more common, and legislation about them becomes more complex, this is not a valid assumption for all countries and circumstances.

Clients who want to maintain their current system behaviour, that is to continue to accept e-receipts to meet image requirements, will need to configure a custom receipt rule.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change will allow clients who use e-receipts to continue to comply with regulatory and contractual requirements for documentation to substantiate an expense.

As part of our ongoing commitment to e-receipts and the effortless expense claim, air e-receipts generated by SAP Concur based on ticket and coupon data from GDS and some TripLink transactions are getting a new look.

User/Customer Benefit: This change brings air e-receipts up to SAP Concur’s standard e-receipt format, providing users with a more consistent experience in Concur Expense. The format is also more convenient for users working in NextGen Expense. This change also eliminates a performance/stability issue for end users who would sometimes not see new air e-receipts as quickly as they should.

Passwords

SAP Concur will have a new Forgot Password feature added 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 releases (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 display.
• 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.

Payment Manager

For clients who have Expense Pay or Expense Pay - Global, the Accounting Extract Reconciliation tool was relocated in November 2018 from Tools > Concur Classic Admin to Tools > Payment Manager > Monitor Batches.

The legacy (Concur Classic Admin) access path is Administration > Company > Tools > Concur Classic Admin > Reimbursement Manager > Extract Reconciliation.

The new (Payment Manager) access path is Administration > Company > Tools > Payment Manager > Monitor Batches > Accounting Extract Reconciliation.

The original Reimbursement Manager pages (Administration > Company > Tools > Concur Classic Admin > Reimbursement Manager) will be retired.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change ensures all clients will be using the new page.

Receipts

SAP Concur will soon allow the conversion of paper receipts into digital copies with legal value. Receipt Digitalisation will provide SAP Concur customers the ability to conform a paper receipt into a legal digital copy according to their country's regulatory or government authorities.

Once it is available for general release, this feature will be available to new customers and existing customers in France and those who have configurations in France. Additional countries will be included in future releases.

The initial release for France will include:

• Enabling the conversion of paper receipts into digital copies with legal value

• Viewing the “Certified” status of the receipt in NextGen Expense (planned enhancement)

• Ability to configure an audit rule that looks for expenses with certified receipts

The Receipt Digitalisation feature requires that users must be using the NextGen Expense UI. It is recommended that customers migrate to the NextGen Expense UI before activating this service.

To capture legal receipt images, clients must also be using the SAP Concur mobile app and can use ExpenseIt with the mobile app, though ExpenseIt is not required. The user will take a picture of the paper receipt with the mobile app. Once the picture is taken, the digitisation process will be applied to the image. Once the process is complete, a stamp will display on the receipt image in the mobile app confirming whether the receipt is certified or not.

Receipt images will display for users in NextGen Expense in Available Expenses, Available Receipts and in the expense list.

Approvers and processors will view the digital receipt status in the expense claim and expense list in the existing version of Concur Expense. An audit rule can be created that identifies certified receipts on the expense line item. A new icon will display for receipts that are certified.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This feature provides a paperless receipt option that adheres to local requirements and regulations for paper into digital tax receipt processing and compliance.

Security

The password field in the 100, 300, 305 and 310 record sets will no longer be used to update or bulk reset user passwords. SAP Concur will change the functionality in imports such that the password field is only used when a user account is created. The field will no longer be used to update or bulk reset user passwords. The update and replace password features on the 100 record will no longer be used.

This change impacts the employee import and the user import features.

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.

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

Test User Admin

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.

Training Administration

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: These changes will make the Training Administration feature easier to find and use.