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.