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Concur Travel and Expense (CTE) Corporate Travel Site

Concur Travel and Expense (CTE) Corporate Travel Site

Old Sep 18, 2014, 9:08 pm
  #46  
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Concur sold to SAP for $8.3B

I have no idea what this may mean for us simple users but thought it was worth posting:

http://seattletimes.com/html/busines...cursapxml.html

I do know it will mean a friend of mine who's a developer on their expense side is going to be better able to afford his son's college expenses next year.

I picked this link because it's their hometown newspaper. Another article mentioned Concur lost $24.3M on $545.8M in sales.
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Old Sep 14, 2015, 11:10 am
  #47  
 
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Super Frustrated - Booking is more expensive than other sites

I am required to book travel through concur for my company but I am consistently running into the issue that i can find cheaper flights on other travel sites (expedia, google flights, etc.) For example, I found a flight to from Minneapolis to Chicago for 125 on Spirit Airlines but the cheapest flight available in concur was more than $200. Has anyone run into the same issue of consistently seeing cheaper prices on other booking sites than concur?

Any insight is appreciated.
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Old Sep 14, 2015, 12:12 pm
  #48  
 
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Originally Posted by furysoccer5
I am required to book travel through concur for my company but I am consistently running into the issue that i can find cheaper flights on other travel sites (expedia, google flights, etc.) For example, I found a flight to from Minneapolis to Chicago for 125 on Spirit Airlines but the cheapest flight available in concur was more than $200. Has anyone run into the same issue of consistently seeing cheaper prices on other booking sites than concur?

Any insight is appreciated.
Spirit charges more to book through an agent than it does to book directly through the airline.
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Old Sep 14, 2015, 1:47 pm
  #49  
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Your employer may have chosen not to book its employees on NK because of its weak schedule and IRROPS handling. While you may have found what you think saves money, in reality and over time, does not.

As to other situations, it will often be the case that there may be a cheaper way to do things, but a successful business focuses on the long-term, not the nickels & dimes.

Bear in mind that Concur is simply a piece of rules-enforcing software. It limits what you may book based on your employer's preferences. Thus, if you think that you are onto something, bring it to your CFO's attention. It has nothing to do with Concur.
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Old Sep 15, 2015, 1:55 pm
  #50  
 
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Originally Posted by Often1
Your employer may have chosen not to book its employees on NK because of its weak schedule and IRROPS handling. While you may have found what you think saves money, in reality and over time, does not.

As to other situations, it will often be the case that there may be a cheaper way to do things, but a successful business focuses on the long-term, not the nickels & dimes.

Bear in mind that Concur is simply a piece of rules-enforcing software. It limits what you may book based on your employer's preferences. Thus, if you think that you are onto something, bring it to your CFO's attention. It has nothing to do with Concur.
One other thing to remember is that the traveler may not be privy to all the rules that Concur is enforcing, and the prices shown may not reflect the actual price the company would pay. For example, I encountered a situation where Concur wouldn't let me book VS, even though it appeared to be much cheaper than BA, for the same JFK-LHR flight. Turned out, when I inquired internally, that the firm got a huge rebate from BA at year end, based on how much was spent, so the net price of the BA ticket was MUCH lower than what showed up in the system. Since the amount of the rebate was confidential, Concur didn't show it, but did use it in the calculation of what was permissible.
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Old Sep 15, 2015, 3:17 pm
  #51  
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In the US that is more commonly a discount rather than a rebate. In addition, there are companies which purchase bulk tickets or participate in pools which purchase bulk tickets.

Unless the traveler is involved in negotiating the terms of his company's travel, he isn't going to know what tickets really cost.

But, even if a specific ticket is more expensive, it is likely that overall the company is saving through the use of a corporate TA, booking software and the overlay which Concur provides.

There are tons of these threads on FT and they all come back to the same thing.
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Old Feb 23, 2016, 8:25 pm
  #52  
 
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Does anyone know if Concur can invoke a MR Plat Override (or similar tools from other programs) to get a room in an otherwise sold out hotel if my number is attached?
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Old Feb 28, 2016, 8:13 pm
  #53  
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Originally Posted by rdurlabhji
Does anyone know if Concur can invoke a MR Plat Override (or similar tools from other programs) to get a room in an otherwise sold out hotel if my number is attached?
If there are no rooms in the on-line inventory Concur can't see it. I've used the SPG Plat Room Guarantee but it can only be done over the phone, so you'd need to involve your live travel staff if the booking needs to go through an official channel.
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Old Mar 9, 2016, 12:22 pm
  #54  
 
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University travel & Concur

Concur is a weird weird beast. For most of the people I've talked to at the university (professors & graduate students), Concur has made booking travel a disaster. People share rooms, they get Airbnb, they take buses -- all stuff which Concur doesn't do very well/at all. However, we are allowed to book if we can find cheaper flights (must be the same as the ones that appear on Concur in every way to qualify for reimbursement) on our own, which I think in the end defeats the University's purpose of calling it a cost-sharing measure. Even though we are spending university/research funding, it still comes out of our personal pot of money for research. For grads, research money can be much more limited. Concur has made it so that I have to spend MORE time looking for flights rather than less. The tips on here about "forcing" the Concur system to find different flights are pretty top-notch. I found an AA flight that Concur priced at ~$400 more, which made me eligible to book it outside of the Concur system.
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Old Mar 11, 2016, 2:33 pm
  #55  
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Originally Posted by goodgracious
Concur is a weird weird beast. For most of the people I've talked to at the university (professors & graduate students), Concur has made booking travel a disaster. People share rooms, they get Airbnb, they take buses -- all stuff which Concur doesn't do very well/at all. However, we are allowed to book if we can find cheaper flights (must be the same as the ones that appear on Concur in every way to qualify for reimbursement) on our own, which I think in the end defeats the University's purpose of calling it a cost-sharing measure. Even though we are spending university/research funding, it still comes out of our personal pot of money for research. For grads, research money can be much more limited. Concur has made it so that I have to spend MORE time looking for flights rather than less. The tips on here about "forcing" the Concur system to find different flights are pretty top-notch. I found an AA flight that Concur priced at ~$400 more, which made me eligible to book it outside of the Concur system.
When did Cornell start using (and requiring) Concur?
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Old Mar 29, 2016, 4:01 pm
  #56  
 
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I've worked for a few companies that "require" us to use concur. I'm not fan. I'm sure there are worse products though.
Much of the issues I have with Concur is related to the back end expense assignments. Most of the major problems with Concur come from your own corporate accounting settings I think.

A couple tips on things I've learned over that past 15 years using this system.
If you want to book a certain flight on a certain carrier my suggestion is the work the flight backward. Go on that airlines website and find the flight you want. For example say I want to fly on AA from DFW to ORD on the 9am flight. I don't want the 6am flight. When you go into Concur set the flight time tight so you need to leave at 9am +/- 1 hour or whatever. Then do the search. It might come up with some alternatives but the tighter and more limited you make the search the better your results will be.

Second tip is once you book the flight, don't, repeat...DO NOT...pick your airline seats through Concur. It will screw you up more than it will help you. I've done this, picked seats on Concur, then gotten an upgrade or MCE seat only to have Concur override it and pull me back to the original seat selected. Just don't do it.

The best blog post on this issue I've found is at:
http://www.travelcodex.com/2015/01/h...travel-concur/
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Old May 11, 2016, 10:16 am
  #57  
 
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I see lots of comments on back-end savings that might not be apparent up front.

The problem is, my team has a tight travel budget like most others I'm sure do. If I have a $1,000 budget for a trip, I can't say "well this ticket is $600 but the company as a whole probably saves money over this $400 ticket."

My manager and his manager (who approve travel) see $600. So I don't get that perspective that a lot of people are sharing here.
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Old May 12, 2016, 5:08 am
  #58  
 
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Originally Posted by BThumme
I see lots of comments on back-end savings that might not be apparent up front.

The problem is, my team has a tight travel budget like most others I'm sure do. If I have a $1,000 budget for a trip, I can't say "well this ticket is $600 but the company as a whole probably saves money over this $400 ticket."

My manager and his manager (who approve travel) see $600. So I don't get that perspective that a lot of people are sharing here.
I'm talking about it in the context of Concur allowing a flight that appears to be more expensive than an alternative, but not allowing the apparently cheaper alternative to be booked. I've had this happen, where (for example), a flight for $1000 on carrier A is listed as out of policy while a flight on carrier B for $1200 is listed as policy compliant. When I asked about what certainly appeared to be a bug, I was informed that it was actually supposed to work that way.

At the company where I used Concur, there wasn't a manager who had to approve specific travel arrangements. Trips needed signoff for some employees, but once the manager signed off on "John has to go to Des Moines on Thursday," then Concur was "in charge" of determining what specific arrangements were allowed.
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Old May 12, 2016, 9:10 am
  #59  
 
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Originally Posted by cestmoi123
I'm talking about it in the context of Concur allowing a flight that appears to be more expensive than an alternative, but not allowing the apparently cheaper alternative to be booked. I've had this happen, where (for example), a flight for $1000 on carrier A is listed as out of policy while a flight on carrier B for $1200 is listed as policy compliant. When I asked about what certainly appeared to be a bug, I was informed that it was actually supposed to work that way.

At the company where I used Concur, there wasn't a manager who had to approve specific travel arrangements. Trips needed signoff for some employees, but once the manager signed off on "John has to go to Des Moines on Thursday," then Concur was "in charge" of determining what specific arrangements were allowed.
Understood. For us, it seems to flag solely on price...which is an issue, because Frontier out of DEN seems to throw out some dirt cheap fares DEN-SFO and DEN-IAH
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Old Sep 20, 2016, 12:48 pm
  #60  
 
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On the hotel side, I see that it allows a few standard rate schedules (AAA/Govt/etc.). There is another corporate code I am allowed to use for certain hotel chains -- is there a way to get it programmed to allow Concur to check it like it does for AAA? I couldn't find a help guide or topic on how to get it 'added' by our administrator or whomever.

Rasheed
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