Administration

As shown on the 2017 release calendar, starting in March, Request releases will occur on Saturday instead of Friday. For most users, there is no change; they see the release-related changes on Monday – like they always have. Be aware that, starting in March, any weekend users will likely not see the release-related changes until Sunday.

Concur TripLink and Ctrip

Ctrip and Concur make the process of expensing business travel faster, easier and more accurate for our mutual clients by connecting two industry leading platforms to create a streamlined travel and expense experience. The Ctrip Concur integration enables all Air and Hotel trips booked and managed by Ctrip to be populated automatically in Concur Request and Expense. The Ctrip integration leverages the Request service to allow client companies to have visibility into their business travellers’ travel plans and costs.

This integration includes the following major features:

• Company Level Linkage – This enables the connection of Ctrip and Concur accounts at the company level. Individual travellers do not need to complete any account connection steps.

• Ctrip Trips Appear in Concur Request via TripLink – This integration utilises the Agency Proposal feature. Trips made in Ctrip are sent to Concur after booking. A request is created on behalf of a traveller with the Air and Hotel booking as request segments.

• Ctrip Trips Appear in Concur Available Expenses via TripLink – After the request is approved, the trips may show as an available expense. Clients using Pre-Expense Airfare will see air bookings in Available Expenses once ticketed. The ability to expense hotels will be available once the trip is complete.

• Company Paid Segments – Company paid segments will be sent to Concur, allowing the client to use Expense and Intelligence to track and reconcile all itineraries.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This integration uses TripLink to connect the Ctrip travel platform with Concur Request and Expense. Once the integration is complete, users automatically see their trip segments in Request, then after approval, in Expense, saving time and preventing data entry errors.

Expense

Concur will soon provide an enhanced fiscal calendar for Analysis / Intelligence. A fiscal calendar allows organisations to define their accounting periods independent of the standard calendar year. Many organisations define their own calendars to model their financial reporting to reflect seasons in their business, to compare results with direct competitors and to avoid the busy year-end season in January.

The new fiscal calendar will be available in Reporting Configuration, which is accessed via Administration > Expense.

Expense Pay

Expense Pay admins can now mark an employee's bank account as Active or Inactive from the Payment Manager > Monitor Payee > Employee Banking page.

While a bank account is Inactive, the employee cannot submit new expense claims. Employees, who have entered updated banking information in Profile, can set their account back to Active by selecting Yes in the Active field on the Profile > Bank Information page. If the employee's bank account is marked Inactive by accident, the Expense Pay admin can revert the account to Active on the Employee Banking page, but if the inactivation was done intentionally to ensure that the employee updates their banking profile, the admin should not activate the bank account directly as that is the responsibility of the employee.

The Send to Excel link available in other areas of Concur is now also available for payment demand details.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This functionality adds flexibility for clients and maintains product consistency within Concur.

Expense Pay admins who are setting up their funding account with Beanstream, the Expense Pay – Global payment partner, can now upload documents that Beanstream requires using a new section of the existing funding account setup page.

Supported Configurations

Support for TLS v 1.0 Encryption Protocol to End

Concur announces an End of Support cycle for version 1.0 of the TLS encryption protocol, continuing support for the more secure 1.1 and 1.2 versions of TLS. As background, the TLS protocol allows secure back and forth communications between a phone or computer and a cloud-based service.

Note that, since less than 1% of Concur users are logging in to Concur Solutions using browsers or phones limited to version 1.0, a very small number of users are affected by this support discontinuation.

Please note the new end of support date is May. We have moved the date in order to give our clients ample time to understand and make the required manual changes to their browser's security settings. These changes will be detailed in an upcoming service release.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: Concur is taking this step after careful consideration of both the client’s security and ease of upgrade to the newer, more secure 1.1 and 1.2 versions of TLS. This end of life plan for TLS v 1.0 ensures our clients are communicating with Concur services in a safe and secure manner using TLS v. 1.1 and newer.

Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) version 10 browsers under Concur products will end on 18 August 2017. Concur strongly advises clients using IE v.10 to update to the latest IE browser version before that date, or to install and work with another supported browser.

Terminology

Concur has changed the following Korean term.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change improves accuracy and consistency of the Korean version of the Concur user interface.

In April, Concur will update the following Latin American Spanish terms.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change improves accuracy and consistency of the Latin America - Spanish version of the Concur user interface.

In April, Concur will change the following Italian terms.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change improves accuracy and consistency of the Italian version of the Concur user interface.

Travel Allowance

For any single-day domestic trip, the system provides zero allowance only if the trip duration is less than 8 hours. For trips with exactly 8 hours of travel, the system provides a 50% allowance.

Prior to this change, for trips with exactly 8 hours of travel, the system provided zero allowance.

Business Purpose / Client Benefit: This change allows clients to maintain legal compliance.