Visit this page to learn about recommended best practices and helpful hints to improve your Concur experience in booking travel and building expense reports, and to uphold your responsibilities as a steward of the university's financial resources.

Business Purpose for Expense Reporting

Expense report lines in Concur require a clear business purpose, which is defined as one that supports or advances the goals, objectives and mission of the university; and adequately describes the expense as a necessary, reasonable and appropriate business expense for the university.

Review the Concur Business Process document for guidance in creating an expense report with an appropriate business purpose.

Multiple Approver Processes

Since multiple approvers may be required for certain expense reports, units are advised to document who their authorized approvers are, what they are authorized to review/approve and whose expense reports they are responsible to approve (see the Employee Travel & Expense Internal Control guidance for further information and resources). By developing this documented approval process, each approver then becomes an "authorized approver" as stated in the approver attestation in Concur.

If approvers are required from multiple departments, i.e., for joint appointments, units are advised to develop and agree on a similar review and approval business process. For example, a unit administrator may want to be an approver for any expense report that has charges on their ShortCode(s), regardless of a faculty or staff member’s administrative home department.

The employee is responsible to bring forward or communicate any potential conflict of commitment or conflict of interest activities that may arise.

Avoid Submitting Multiple Expense Reports

Concur allows flexibility in creating and submitting expense reports. Multiple submissions, however, result in unnecessary expense to the university, and an extra burden on the expense approver. Best practice is to submit reports once or twice a month by following these steps:

• Create an expense report and continue to add transactions to it throughout the month. Expense reports automatically save after you create the report header.
• The line-level business purpose field does not have to match the report header. Each line-level business purpose can be modified to describe why the expense is necessary to the university.
• Submit the report at least five (5) business days before the end of the month to allow time for the approver(s) to review/approve the report and audit to be completed.

Out-of-pocket Business Expenses are the Exception

Out-of-pocket business expenses can be submitted more frequently to ensure timely reimbursement to the employee. But when possible, combine these expenses into a single report

Check P-Card Activity at least Weekly

Set a weekly or more frequent schedule to check for new P-Card transactions. If new transactions display in the Smart Expense pane, add them to an existing report in preparation for submission of the report toward the end of the month. Do not create a new expense report for one or a few transactions - build the expense report during the month.

By establishing this schedule, you can turn off the e-mail reminder in Concur that notifies you of new P-Card activity. By default, this e-mail reminder is "off", but some employees have opted to turn it on.