April 2018 Budget Professional Edition Admin Summary
Last Update: 14th April, 2018
Shared
New Bar Graph in Budget Dashboard
A new bar graph is now available on the Budget Details page of the Budget Dashboard. This graph shows the status of the budget owner's budget periods over a whole year. Clients can view two bars for each budget period; the budget amount (bar in solid colour) and the total spending amount (total spent amount equals part of bar in solid colour, total pending amount equals part of bar in stripes) for a specific period in a quarterly or monthly view. The bar showing the total spending amount is composed of the total spent amount and the total pending amount. Clients can also hover over each bar to view budget details of a specific month.
If a budget is based on a full year, the monthly view shows the budget period amount divided by the number of fiscal periods (typically 12 months) to calculate the monthly budget amounts. For the quarterly view, the budget period amount is multiplied by three to calculate the quarterly budget amount in the chart. The budget consumption (spend and pending) is based on the monthly actuals even for yearly and quarterly budgets.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This feature gives clients a better view of the spending trend of their budgets.
Block Push and Email Notifications if Budget Period Amount is 0
With this release, if a budget period amount is zero (or negative) and an employee submits an expense claim or payment request against that specific budget period, the system will not send out any notifications to budget owners that their budget has reached its limit or is over limit.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This enhancement reduces the number of alerts being sent out, thereby helping clients to concentrate on more urgent notifications.
Budget Tracking Mapping Field Type Filter Option Removed
The Disable Budget Tracking Mapping Field Type Filter option in Budget Settings has been removed. This option disabled the ability to filter on budget tracking mappings field types in the Budget Field Mapping tab (Administration > Invoice > Budget Configuration (left menu) > Budget Tracking Fields.
Instead, clients will receive more guidance when they want to use filters and the filter behaviour will be as follows:
Connected list budget tracking fields can be mapped to connected and single list fields
Single list budget tracking fields can be mapped to connected and single list fields
Free form budget tracking fields can be mapped to connected and single list fields, and to free form (including Boolean) fields
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: The removal of this feature means that Invoice and Expense will guide clients as they select filters, making it easier to choose relevant options for their needs.
Expense
Unexpensed Amounts Now Visible in Expense
In this release, unexpensed amounts will be visible and included in budget calculations for Expense clients. Unexpensed amounts enable budget owners to view the balance of the expense items that have not been submitted yet and is a combination of unsubmitted expense claims and available expenses that are not attached to an expense claim. The unexpensed amounts will show in a new Unexpensed budget bucket in the Budget Dashboard.
Travel bookings and credit card feeds can represent a significant portion of a budget and employees cannot always submit their expense claims within the budget period. Therefore, it is useful for budget owners, who want to see employee-based spend, such as travel booking and credit card feeds when reviewing their budget, to be presented with a reasonable predictor for the spend during a budget period. Since credit card transactions and billing statements (expense claims with credit card transactions) are counted as paid and spent, these transactions, even unsubmitted ones, will show in the Spent budget bucket in the Budget Dashboard. In addition, the credit card transactions will appear in a new Credit Card tab in the Spent section on the Budget Details page of the Budget Dashboard.
Credit card feeds are transmitted once a day during a nightly run (US Pacific Time) and budget will process these feeds shortly after. Since credit card feeds are not provided in real-time, budget cannot process them in real-time either. For now, budget processes all available expenses during that nightly run. Unsubmitted expense claims are processed in real-time the first time they are saved and within ten minutes after the second time they are saved.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This feature gives clients more information about their budget.
Invoice
New Purchase Request Commit Option in Budget Settings
With this release, it is now possible for a purchase request to be marked as spent when the processor approves it. The purchase request will remain marked as spent until it has been matched to an invoice. This means that the system acknowledges the pre-authorisation approval as final approval.
Business Purpose/Client Benefit: This feature makes the approval workflow for purchase requests more efficient.
Client Notifications
SAP Concur Non-Affiliated SubprocessorsThe list of non-affiliated subprocessors is available here: SAP Concur Non-Affiliated Subprocessors (English only)
Monthly Browser CertificationsMonthly browser certifications, both current and planned, are available with the other SAP Concur monthly release notes, accessible from What's New - Professional Edition