Discovering Concur Request

Concur Request is a preauthorization tool. To begin, you complete a detailed request outlining your expected expenses and then submit them for approval. The request then goes through a thorough approval process and once approved, you have permission to spend that money.  After the money is spent, the company has tools to compare the requested amounts to the actual amounts spent. The company now has visibility to see if you stayed within or went over the approved amounts.

A request is to Concur Request what an expense report is to Concur Expense: It’s the primary document created when using the service. The difference is that you use expense reports to ask for reimbursement for money that has already been spent, while you use requests to ask for permission to spend money. The request helps management determine if the expected expenses are within budget, and if necessary, allocate additional funds for the expenses to take place.

The site can be configured to allow users to create requests in different ways. Users may be able to create the request and manually add the details, create the request and use AI to create the details, or create the request with no details attached. The next unit will cover those options in detail.

Like an expense report, a request has header information that includes the high-level details of the request. This could include the request name and the business purpose, but can also include more detail such as the dates of travel and where you plan to go on a trip.

Requests can also include finer details such as the types of expenses the user plans to incur.

Customers can configure their Concur Request site to include as much, or as little detail as they need for their processes.

Once the request is approved, users can travel and spend that money with the confidence that they've received the required permissions from their management.

Later, users can link their expense report to the previously approved request. The system can compare the actual expenses to the original estimates, notifying management where the user may have gone over the expected amounts so they can take the appropriate action.