A SAP Concur podcast conversation with Dr. Mark Stirling of Blue dot discusses the complexity of domestic and foreign VAT reclaim. Blue dot finds 23% of expense reports have incorrect tax information, and about 100 VAT rule changes occurred across multiple countries. The discussion also covers the post-pandemic rise of non-trip spend from under 5% to 25%, and the tax treatment of taxable employee benefits and bleisure travel.
A SAP Concur podcast conversation with Zylo co-founder Ben Pippenger discusses SaaS management. The average company spends $65 million annually on SaaS and uses about 323 applications, with nearly 40% going to waste. About 37% of applications are bought by employees via expense reports or P-Cards, accounting for about 7% of overall spend. 55% of applications are misclassified in expense reports.
A SAP Concur blog post argues that aerospace, defense, and government contracting organizations should assess the rushed digital fixes implemented during the pandemic. It cites data showing the T&E spend violation rate skyrocketed 292% from 2019 to 2020, and 90% of decision-makers say there is room to improve how they control spend. Organizations deploying an integrated spend management platform reported $777,000 in annual savings on business travel and expense reporting costs.
SAP Concur article targets higher education and K-12 school districts, emphasizing assessment of pandemic-era digital fixes. Spend management platforms provide real-time visibility, budget control, and improved employee experience. Data shows T&E spend violation rate skyrocketed 292% from 2019 to 2020. Median loss of occupational fraud in education is $56,000. Adopting integrated platforms can save $777,000 annually on travel and expense reporting, increase compliant reports by 65%, and reduce errors by 52%.
SAP Concur article targets aerospace, defense, government contracting, and utilities organizations, emphasizing assessment of pandemic-era digital fixes. Spend management platforms provide real-time visibility, budget control, and improved employee experience. Data shows T&E spend violation rate skyrocketed 292% from 2019 to 2020. 90% of decision-makers say there's room to improve spend control. Adopting integrated platforms can save $777,000 annually on travel and expense reporting, increase compliant reports by 65%, and reduce errors by 52%.
In an SAP Concur podcast, Andrew Walker and Crystal Schoenhals from EY discuss using employee sentiment data to improve employee experience. They note that top reasons employees leave include total compensation, flexibility, benefits, and well-being. Collecting sentiment data must be operationalized and ongoing, not a one-time survey. They advise organizations to proactively understand employee needs and close gaps to retain talent.
This SAP Concur blog post argues that accounts payable (AP) automation doesn't have to be a big-bang project. Companies can start from their current state and take small steps to gradually transition to full automation. The article outlines three common stages: manual paper-based processes, some automation, and full automation. Benefits include greater visibility into spend, improved payment strategy, faster reimbursements, and better cash flow.
This SAP Concur blog post discusses the importance of business expense categories (expense types) and offers three best practices for optimizing expense management: refining existing categories, unpacking the 'Other' or 'Miscellaneous' category, and aligning policies with categories. It cites Penn State University reducing expense types from 1,000 to 200 without losing transparency.
This SAP Concur blog post emphasizes the importance of integrating ERP with travel, expense, and accounts payable data to gain full spend visibility and transform data into actionable insights. It highlights two benefits: greater visibility and increased efficiency, and presents SAP Concur's integration options including pre-built integrations, hosted custom solutions, and client web services.
SAP Concur partner NeoSystems outlines that government contract travel cost reimbursement is governed by FAR 31.205-46, requiring contractor procedures to meet allowability requirements. Key compliance points include: combining visits within the same geographical area into a single trip; using the lowest customary standard coach airfare during normal business hours to the maximum extent possible; and coordinating travel to minimize trips to the same location. Concur Expense tracks GSA per diem rates, integrates with TMCs, and automatically separates unallowable costs.
A SAP Concur blog post discusses how academic medical centers can fuel innovation by automating expense processes. It notes that doctors spend less than a third of their time treating patients, with the majority spent on administrative tasks. Automation can reduce administrative burden, simplify reporting and reimbursement, and help manage grant spending.
A SAP Concur blog post shares a podcast conversation with Lyndon Group about optimizing T&E management during disruption. Lyndon Group won the SAP Concur Partner Growth award for helping customers optimize platforms. The conversation covers ERP transitions, automation, policy creation, auditing, and regulatory changes. Key advice includes early involvement in ERP planning, leveraging automation, clear policies, and healthy auditing.
SAP Concur explores how to leverage financial data to drive innovation. The article emphasizes the need to consolidate disparate spending data, centralize it through automated spend management systems, and use AI to analyze trends and improve efficiency. Industry benchmarks, leading indicators, and lagging indicators help businesses measure performance and identify innovation opportunities.
An SAP Concur blog post cites GBTA data to highlight the high cost of manual expense report processing, with an average cost of $58 per report and 19% of reports containing errors. The article recommends automating workflows, integrating with accounting systems, and implementing corporate card policies to reduce manual effort, improve data accuracy, lower costs, and increase employee satisfaction.
An SAP Concur podcast conversation highlights Penn State University's collaboration with Huron to innovatively use Concur Request to manage corporate and P-Card spend, enabling pre-approval before expenses are incurred. Penn State University has been a pioneer in expense management technology since the 1980s and reconnected with Huron through the SAP Concur higher education community. Outcomes include reducing over 500 expense GL accounts to under 200, simplifying ERP migration, and reducing training needs for new tools because users were already familiar with the SAP Concur platform.
The SAP Concur blog addresses accounts payable (AP) professionals, recommending continuous learning, peer networks, and industry events to sharpen skills and influence. It cites a survey of 500 finance and IT leaders at small and midsized firms, with nearly half (47%) saying the pandemic exposed inefficient business processes. It also introduces tools like Spend Impact Analyzer and promotes AP Recognition Week each October.
SAP Concur announces six Innovation Award winners at Fusion: Siemens, Vodafone, CAF America, Bishop-Wisecarver, Serco, and Keppel Corporation, recognizing their innovation and business transformation using SAP Concur solutions.
SAP Concur published a case study on how investment advisory firm Mairs & Power automated its accounts payable processes by implementing Concur Invoice. The firm, with over $9.5 billion in managed assets, previously had its finance team bogged down by administrative tasks. After implementing Concur Invoice, Accountant and Financial Analyst Luke Odegaard gained an entire day every week back to focus on strategic growth. The company also gained better visibility into invoicing and expenses to support business decisions.
The article notes that SMBs face challenges including improving employee productivity, cash flow, and visibility. Travel and expense is the second largest controllable area of business spend, and automation can help address these issues. However, more than 70% of small businesses say lack of IT expertise causes them to delay implementing IT solutions. The article cites DRC Capital, a 16-person company, as an example that small businesses can also benefit from automation, achieving faster processing, time savings, greater employee satisfaction, and cost savings.
This SAP Concur blog post stresses that while pursuing growth, companies must adhere to expense policies and regulations. Compliance is not a necessary evil but essential to protect against overspending, fraud, and fines. It recommends using automation for real-time reviews, intelligent flagging, and analytics to build a culture of compliance, making compliant spending easier than non-compliant.
At SAP Concur Fusion in Orlando, SAP Concur recognized six 2022 Innovation Award winners: Infineon, IDP Education, NTT DATA Philippines, Ocean Network Express, Dover Corporation and The Walt Disney Company. Their projects span travel-compliance risk engines, invoice capture, faster expense reimbursement, global policy consolidation and single-instance deployment.
A SAP Concur podcast conversation with Deloitte explores how accounts payable (AP) automation empowers employees and enhances strategic value. Deloitte specialist Oren Geshuri notes that AP has traditionally been viewed as a non-strategic area; automation does not eliminate people but frees AP teams from paper-based processes to focus on more strategic work. COVID-19 served as a litmus test for organizational survivability: organizations that had already automated could quickly shift to remote work, while those without automation struggled with paper invoices that couldn't be taken home. The discussion also covers talent retention, employee experience, and the impact of automation on overal…
The U.S. Department of Defense awarded SAP Concur a single-award production contract for the MyTravel program to modernize its travel and expense management. The DoD spends $10 billion annually on travel, processing over 4 million TDY vouchers. The prototype processed over $1 million in reimbursements, increased touchless fulfillment from 30% to 80%, reduced process workflow by 45%, and increased lowest logical airfare from 48% to 60%.
SAP Concur blog and WSJ podcast discuss T&E compliance. T&E fraud is a human problem; when employees book and expense themselves, they can easily fall outside policy accidentally or purposely. Random audits are like looking for a needle in a haystack. AI and machine learning can help build a culture of compliance, automatically auditing every transaction and detecting fraud, errors, and misuse.
A SAP Concur blog post explores how businesses can control costs and drive savings by gaining a holistic view of spend data. It notes that employee-initiated spend is difficult to control and fragmented across channels, and timely consolidated reporting to departmental managers is crucial for managing actual spend against budget. Automating travel and expense processes is a critical first step but not the only action. Integrating all employee spending, from p-cards to invoices, helps align spending with strategic priorities, stay nimble, and redirect funds. SAP Concur solutions capture and consolidate all travel, expense, and invoice data, providing real-time transparency to forecast costs,…
A SAP Concur blog post offers a 90-day framework for new finance leaders, starting with understanding the company's finance processes and best practices. It recommends diving into the numbers and knowing spend, gathering primary reports such as the income statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet, budget vs. actual reports, annual reports, accounts receivable aging report, and current and past forecasts. If finance and accounting processes are automated, real-time data and a clear picture of day-to-day numbers should be available. It also advises learning industry financial best practices, proactively learning finance systems, understanding business fundamentals, and getting a handle on…
A SAP Concur blog post notes that the integration of purchasing cards (p-cards) has freed organizations across industries from paper-based purchase orders. As p-card transaction volumes continue to grow, healthcare organizations are seeking more efficient ways to increase control and visibility over this spend category. Manually managing p-cards slows down the AP process, causes missed rebates, and can lead to waste, out-of-policy spending, and fraudulent activity. SAP Concur's Company Bill Statements solution simplifies and centralizes the p-card process, enabling purchase-to-general-ledger completion in days rather than weeks.
The article emphasizes the need for flexible processes and sufficient cash flow to handle sudden changes. SAP Concur offers a checklist of seven best practices, including identifying critical processes, automating spend management, cloud access, and data analytics to build resilience.
The article points out that rubber-stamping expense reports can lead to errors and waste. According to GBTA, 19% of expense reports have errors, and it takes an average of 18 minutes and $52 to fix one. Recommendations include digital receipts, streamlined approval workflows, and audits to reduce errors and improve compliance.
The SAP Concur blog discusses challenges faced by higher education finance departments in remote work environments, including unexpected expenses, a surge in invoices and reimbursement requests, and traditional policies that don't fit. The article emphasizes automation, integration, and digitization as key solutions, enabling streamlined workflows, AI-driven auditing, and real-time visibility to control costs and improve compliance.
A SAP Concur blog post introduces its 'Surge Blanket Travel' functionality, designed to help federal government agencies rapidly and efficiently deploy large numbers of relief personnel during simultaneous disasters. The article recounts the record-setting disaster year of 2017 and notes that the previous paper-based travel authorization process was inefficient. The new functionality allows for the deployment of personnel from multiple origins to a common crisis destination using a single travel authorization, enabling a reliable, scalable, compliant, auditable, and agile response.
SAP Concur published a blog post discussing the impact of cash versus credit card spending on corporate savings. The article notes that non-compliant cash spending is difficult to track and can lead to fraud and waste. In contrast, card payments are cheaper, easier to track, and provide better data quality and corporate rebates. It cites Harvard Business Review data indicating that organizations can almost always find 15% to 20% of spending that hasn't been managed closely.
Citing the Cost Saving Methods for T&E Expenses guide co-created by Concur and Rocketrip, the article explores how to build an efficient, employee-friendly travel program. It notes that tickets booked fewer than seven days before departure cost an average of 44% more than those booked 15 or more days in advance. Requiring trip preapproval would cut last-minute travel spending but create more work for managers; a less drastic option is scheduling recurring reminder emails for employees to book a month ahead. The article argues T&E is one of the largest controllable expenses and also one of the most difficult to manage, because normal price considerations don't apply for reimbursable business…
PwC's 2018 Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey found that 49% of organizations globally have been victims of fraud, up from 36% previously. Companies are scrutinizing travel and expense (T&E) spend to prevent and detect fraud. SAP Concur experts answered questions at an ACFE webinar on global expense policy compliance, gift handling, audit rules, automatic corporate card feeds, senior management expense review, and AI detection tools, recommending automation, integration, and proactive reporting to build a best-in-class T&E program.
SAP Concur has released a new eBook, "Why SAP Concur? And the Cost of Doing Nothing," discussing the risks of not investing in automated expense, travel, and invoice management. The article states that 75% of finance leaders say their business often exceeds expense, travel, and invoice budgets; manual processes and siloed data can lead to wasted time, lost productivity, unclaimed VAT, and spiraling costs. SAP Concur says its cloud-based and mobile-optimized tools can help automate processes, increase compliance, and reduce fraud risk.
The article discusses slow adoption of cloud technology for employee spend management in state and local government, citing a GCN survey where 47% of employees said lack of leadership prioritization was the main reason and 80% of respondents said their agency was not open to adopting cloud-based solutions. It outlines three ways technology can help: control employee spend and reduce costs, increase productivity and achieve scalability, and reduce fraud, waste, and abuse. Data cited includes 40% of public sector employees still using pen and paper, over 80% saying expense approval takes two weeks or more, and ACFE finding 18.7% of employee fraud occurs in government entities in 2018.
SAP Concur and Motus experts discuss adjusting mileage programs amid the work-from-anywhere trend. The IRS mileage standard is based on prior-year costs and may not reflect actual employee expenses. The fixed and variable rate (FAVR) method uses current and location-based costs, offering more accuracy and fairness. Mileage is a top-10 expense category in many industries.
A SAP Concur blog post advises small and medium-sized businesses to create or update expense policies to streamline reporting, reviewing, and approval processes. It emphasizes that policies should be clear, easy to find, and highlight benefits, and recommends supplementing policies with automation tools like Concur Expense.
A SAP Concur blog post notes that according to Aberdeen Group, SMBs spend an average of $35.02 to process one expense report. Manual expense reports involve employees sorting receipts, entering data, making copies, following up on missing documentation, and obtaining approvals, which is time-consuming and error-prone. Finance teams also review and reconcile. The article provides a formula: annual hours spent on expense reports multiplied by average hourly rate divided by number of expense reports per year equals cost per report. It recommends automated cloud solutions like Concur Expense, which allows mobile receipt capture, reduces human error, provides near real-time visibility, and scale…
SAP Concur published an article discussing how city governments can improve efficiency through automated expense and accounts payable management. The article notes that remote work and paper invoice backlogs increase management challenges, and recommends integrated expense and AP systems to control costs, track employee spending, and simplify budget management. Automation can increase productivity, reduce errors, improve cash flow, enhance compliance, and reduce fraud risk.