Integration of SAP Concur with Other Systems

After the major travel restrictions related to the pandemic were lifted, we began to travel for business purposes again. Therefore, the processes related to bookings and accounting for business travel as well as other employee expenses have been revived.

Employees accustomed to automation can rely on IT systems. They allow them to save time and account for the entire trip online, for instance while waiting for baggage reclaim or during transfers. This undoubtedly increases the comfort of accounting for business trips. The next day after coming back from a business trip the employee can attend to their duties rather than spend time on the cumbersome activity of collecting and describing tickets and invoices related to the trip. More and more employers are focusing on improving the so-called ‘user experience’ in the process of accounting for business travel by means of automated IT systems.

A challenge that the MDDP Outsourcing team has faced recently was actually related to the implementation and integration of the SAP Concur system, which is a very good example of a modern and automatic business travel management solution.

The SAP Concur system includes three basic modules:

• Concur Expense – which makes it possible to generate accurate and timely expense reports;
• Concur Travel – which manages the booking process during business trips;
• Concur Invoice – which manages invoices and speeds up payments.

The process of integration with other systems it is often initiated by travel service providers. These are, for example, car rental companies, hotel chains, etc. A deep integration has been carried out between SAP Concur and the Uber for Business platform. It is possible to set travel-related corporate policies in the application so that the employee is only prompted with the options that they are allowed to use. This solution saves time and helps avoid unnecessary misunderstandings between the company and the employee.

INTEGRATION WITH HR SYSTEMS

Combining SAP Concur with the HR system makes it possible to automatically create an account for a new employee, assign the account according to the company’s hierarchy and set up expense approval paths. It is worth emphasising that in the case of accounting for expenses of higher-level employees, it is possible to configure the system in such a way that the administration of a given employee’s business expenses can be handled by an assistant, and an appropriately set approval path allows for efficient document processing.

In the SAP system, we also have the option to choose whether managers and employees will be able to add further approvers to the report approval path. With this option, after a report is approved or submitted, the manager or employee will see a button that allows them to select another approver. The selected approver will be added to the approval path after them, and then the report will follow the existing path.

The MDDP team, as an outsourcing partner in the field of accounting, HR and payroll, has participated in the integration of SAP Concur with the Enova system. It was necessary to establish a team consisting of experts in the fields of accounting, taxes, HR and payroll as well as SAP and Enova consultants.

Author: Katarzyna Opalko, Accounting Area Manager at MDDP Outsourcing.