Model Changes

With this release, there is a new travel-allowance-related field for Expense.

Description: The new With Overnight field in the Itineraries folder will allow users to report on additional overnight accommodation information for travel allowances. This field was added to the model for use with a planned future feature.

The new travel-allowance-related field for Expense is located in the following folder:

• Expense > Travel Allowances > Itineraries

Report Changes

The default German benefit-in-kind (BIK) rates used by the Germany – BIK Report are now updated to the 2020 German BIK rates in euros.

• The default BIK amount for Breakfast is €1.80
• The default BIK amount for Lunch is €3.40
• The default BIK amount for Dinner is €3.40

Also, an additional filter was added to the report to capture BIK amounts for Provided meals. Before this update, the Germany – BIK Report only included BIK amounts for External Activity meals.

The Germany – BIK Report is available to Analysis and Intelligence clients in the German market.

WHAT THE USER SEES

The default German BIK rates displayed in the BIK Amounts prompt on the Prompts page now display the 2020 German BIK rates in euros.

LOCATION OF THE REPORT

The report is located here:

• Analysis - Standard Reports > Market Specific Reports
• Intelligence - Standard Reports ‎> Market Specific Reports

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about the Germany – BIK Report, refer to Chapter 13: Folder – Market-Specific Reports in the Standard Reports by Folder guide (English only).

The new Mobile Metrics Details report displays the Concur Expense actions taken by employees over a given time frame through each employee's SAP Concur mobile app. The report includes metrics for the following events:

• ApprovedClaim
• CreatedClaim
• EditedClaim
• RejectedClaim

MOBILE REPORTS UPDATE

SAP Concur is dedicated to providing accurate and reliable report data. After removing the existing mobile reports, we have completed some improvements to provide these four mobile expense metrics in the new Mobile Metrics Details report. The new Mobile Metrics Details report is being provided with only these four mobile expense actions for now. This report is planned to be leveraged as we receive more new mobile actions into this standard report.

REPORT OUTPUT

This report includes these columns:

• Event Count (displays the employee last name, employee first name)
• ApprovedClaim
• CreatedClaim
• EditedClaim
• RejectedClaim
• Total for Events

LOCATION OF THE REPORT

The report is located here:

• Analysis - Standard Reports > Mobile Usage
• Intelligence - Standard Reports ‎> Mobile Usage

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about the Mobile Metrics Details report, refer to Chapter 15: Folder – Mobile Usage in the Standard Reports by Folder guide (English only).

Other Changes

This Release Note is intended for the technical staff responsible for file transmissions with SAP Concur. For our customers and suppliers participating in data exchange, SAP Concur is maintaining our file transfer subsystem to provide greater security for those file transfers.

SAP Concur will begin 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 the end of 2020. 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.

The recent IBM Cognos Fix Pack 13 upgrade impacted the Repeater Cell object functionality for fields in some Analysis and Intelligence reports. Before this Cognos fix pack update, if a report contained fields that were associated with the Repeater Cell object in the Cognos toolbox, when the report was exported to Microsoft Excel, the data from each repeater cell field in the report was exported to a separate column in Excel. After the Cognos Fix Pack 13 upgrade, if you export a report containing fields associated with the Repeater Cell object to Excel, the data from each repeater cell field in the report is merged into a single column in Excel instead of separate columns.

IBM made this update to Cognos so that Excel output would match the format of all other formats.

EXAMPLE

A report contains the Comments field for both the expense claim header and for expense claim entries, and both of these Comments fields are associated with the Repeater Cell object. There are two expense claim header comments and three expense claim entries comments.

Before this update, when the report was exported to Excel, the two comments for the expense claim header were exported to two separate columns, and the three comments for the expense claim entries were exported to three separate columns in Excel.

After the update, the two comments for the expense claim header are exported into one column instead of two columns, and the three comments for the expense claim entries are exported into one column instead of three columns in Excel.

WORKAROUND

If this update affects the Excel output of your reports, modify the report so that the fields that are currently associated with the Repeater Cell object are associated with the Repeater Table object instead of the Repeater Cell object.

When you associate fields with the Repeater Table object, you will also need to define the maximum number of separate columns you want Excel to create for the field by adding the number of columns to the Across property for the Repeater Table object.

For example, if you enter 8 for the Across property, when the report is exported to Excel, up to eight separate columns will be created in Excel for the field. So for the expense claim header Comments field, if there are six comments, six separate columns will be created in Excel. If there are nine comments, eight separate columns will be created in Excel, and the eighth column will contain a combination of the eighth and ninth comment.

When a user signs into SAP Concur, if some products or services are unavailable while other products and services are up and running, a modified version of the user’s Home page appears, providing access to the products and services that are up and running.

Prior to implementing this improvement, if a user attempted to sign in to SAP Concur when one or more products or services was not available, a 503 (service unavailable) message appeared, the user’s Home page could not be accessed, and the user had to wait until all services and products were available before signing in to SAP Concur.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This enhancement enables users to complete tasks that rely on the products and services that are up and running even when other products and services might be unavailable.