Concur is a cloud-based software platform, officially called SAP Concur, that businesses use to manage employee travel bookings, expense reports, and vendor invoices. It is one of the most widely used corporate spend management tools in the world, owned by the enterprise software company SAP. If you’ve heard the name from a colleague, a job listing, or your company’s finance team, it’s almost certainly referring to this software.
The Three Core Modules
SAP Concur is built around three main products that can be used independently or together.
- Concur Expense lets employees submit expense reports digitally and gives finance teams a centralized view of company spending. Instead of collecting paper receipts and filling out spreadsheets, employees photograph receipts and the system pulls key details automatically.
- Concur Travel is a booking tool for flights, hotels, and rental cars. Companies set travel policies (like spending caps or preferred airlines), and the system guides employees toward compliant bookings. It connects directly with Concur Expense so trip costs flow into expense reports without manual re-entry.
- Concur Invoice automates accounts payable, the process of receiving and paying vendor bills. It replaces manual data entry and paper routing with digital workflows, giving finance teams better visibility into what the company owes and when.
Most people encounter Concur through the Expense module, since it’s the one individual employees interact with regularly. The Travel and Invoice tools are typically managed more heavily by finance and procurement teams.
How Employees Use It Day to Day
The most common interaction with Concur is submitting an expense report after a business meal, flight, or hotel stay. The process centers on a mobile app and a feature called ExpenseIt, which uses image recognition to read receipt details.
You open the app, tap ExpenseIt, and photograph your receipt. The system reads the merchant name, date, total, and other details, then creates a draft expense entry. If you have a multi-page receipt, you can activate a multipage capture mode, photograph each page in sequence, and tap “Done” when finished. From there, you review the entry, fill in any remaining fields (like a project code or business purpose), and save it. Once all your expenses are entered, you submit the report, which routes to your manager for approval and then to your finance team for reimbursement.
For travel booking, employees log in to the Concur Travel portal, search for flights or hotels the same way they would on a consumer travel site, and book from the options that fall within company policy. Out-of-policy choices are flagged or blocked depending on how the company has configured its rules.
Who Uses Concur
Concur is primarily a tool for mid-size and large organizations. Companies with hundreds or thousands of employees traveling and filing expenses benefit most from its automation, policy enforcement, and reporting capabilities. It’s particularly common in industries with heavy business travel: consulting, professional services, technology, and large enterprises with distributed workforces.
Smaller businesses sometimes find it more complex than they need. Competitors like Expensify and Ramp tend to target smaller companies with simpler expense management needs, while platforms like Navan, Coupa, and Emburse compete more directly with Concur in the mid-market and enterprise space. Oracle and Workday also offer overlapping features through their broader business software suites. Concur’s advantage is that it bundles travel, expense, and invoice management into one connected platform rather than handling just one of those functions.
How It Connects to Other Business Systems
Expense and invoice data isn’t useful sitting in isolation. It needs to flow into a company’s accounting or ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, which is the central software that tracks finances, payroll, and operations. Concur offers over 330 prebuilt connectors that link it to popular platforms like NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, ADP, and SAP’s own ERP products. A network of more than 1,200 solution partners extends that further.
For a finance team, this means approved expense reports and invoices can automatically sync to the general ledger without someone manually re-keying data. For employees, it means reimbursements process faster because there are fewer manual handoffs slowing things down.
What It Costs
SAP Concur does not publish standard pricing on its website. Costs are based on the number of users, which modules you need, and the complexity of your setup, so companies typically request a custom quote. Small-business plans exist, but pricing is generally negotiated directly with a sales representative. If your company is evaluating Concur, expect the conversation to start with your employee count and which of the three modules you want.
Why You’re Probably Hearing About It
If you searched “what is Concur,” chances are good that a new employer uses it, a job posting listed it as a required skill, or your company just adopted it. The learning curve is relatively mild for the expense submission side. Most employees only need to know how to photograph receipts, categorize expenses, and submit reports through the app or web portal. The administrative side, configuring policies, approval workflows, and integrations, is where the complexity lives, and that’s typically handled by finance or IT teams.