Hi,
Has anyone got any experience (positive and negative) of integrating the expense module of SAP Concur with Epicor 10.2.4.
Personally, I’m keen to trial the Epicor Mobile Expense Entry as it just seems to make more sense to keep everything under one banner , but I’ve been asked the question and have not even lifted the lid on Concur.
Cheers,
Andrew.
We’ve been running Concur for years. We are project-oriented and the goal was to attribute expenses to project phases and service call lines. It has not worked out well. While the idea of integrating best of breed applications to Epicor, the reality hasn’t happened. Not that it can’t happen but it does not simplify the business processes and integrations are not inexpensive. You want REST access to Concur? That’s an extra each month. Want custom reports? You’ll have to invest the time to learn or pay to have them developed.
Is Concur a nice system to do expense reports? The best. Very easy. Allocates expenses to multiple project/phases. Approval process is slick. Mobile app is great. But the integration is not cheap.
Knowing what I know now and we were to decide all over again with the new Expense module for Epicor, like you, I very well might go with the less-featured but better integrated solution from Epicor.
Mark W.
I developed a simple, straight-forward integration between Expensify and Epicor. They (Expensify) have offered great support and I think they offer a nice expense entry system. They don’t charge “extra” for REST API, Exports, Support, etc. For our needs, it handles all the functionality we need for relatively low cost per end-user.
I have always had the feeling the bigger the company – the more expensive and less responsive they become.
It just depends on the size of your organization and how much money is budgeted to IT Operations.
Without giving away any secret sauce, can you generally explain it? Are you working with Projects or WIP in any way? How are validations done in Expensify?
Thanks!!!
Yes, we use Projects (albeit with several customizations and UD fields) and the expenses are being logged to those Projects. Since the Expenses have already been approved in Expensify, they don’t go through Epicor’s approval process.
If interested in the technical details of Expensify, this is the webpage:
There is a user forum and the responses I get from their Support team has been very timely. They actually listen to their Customers’ needs instead of “dictating” to their Customers.
So you import valid Project and Phase IDs into Expensify to make sure they don’t enter closed or invalid Projects/Phases?
This is less about the program itself and more about the simple integration[1].
Mark W.
What can I say? I’m jaded!Morning Mark,
Did you decide on the solution you are going to use?
Kind regards,
Martin.
Mark, any chance things have gotten better?
Our finance department evaluated several programs, and has decided to go with Concur… They want to provide a CSV file for us to load, so I’ve been looking at matching fields against Epicor. I’d like to leave it in the hands of the AP folks, so IT doesn’t have to do a DMT load daily or weekly.
How can I set it up so AP users can paste-insert the data? I could see creating a daily group, then from the CSV, copy and paste into the AP Invoice Entry summary tab to create the Invoice Headers. Would you need to do the lines manually?
Or somehow automate DMT (DMT Tool - #16 by frontierits) where a file is dumped into a folder, and it’s consumed? I would rather go down the REST path than service connect (we don’t own service connect developer), but sounds like REST is additional for Concur. We aren’t LIVE with Concur (and I’m not sure if we’ve signed a contract yet), so maybe there is some leverage to get them to toss in a custom report or REST access.
If I do AP Invoice Load, it looks like there isn’t any part number info to get line details.
We haven’t gone live with Concur but the development is done as already use this approach for upload of credit card statement, travel statement, allowances, etc. The solution is to download file from Concur and upload into a UD table in Epicor and do required validations and generate Job materials, etc and export to upload as AP Invoice using DMT. AP team does everything and love it. Before we used Service Connect and get a away with that as IT needs to be involved with error handling
Service Connect worked fine for us.
It wasn’t a technical problem for us, it was an accounting problem. How to pay in one system and not in another while recognizing expense in the other but not in the paying system. JacJac suggested a reversing entry and if it’s automated that might be the best way to go. If it’s based on memory… 
Thanks everyone!
@Arul - How do you have the DMT set up? Does someone from AP run that? I’m leery of setting up someone outside of an IT Power User as a DMT user… I’m learning about doing a batch file with PowerShell, but it still seems more like security through obscurity…
Yes, we have given access to AP team to run DMT and have no problem with that. I believe with Kinetic forms, we will loose the ability to copy and Paste Insert and will end up in giving DMT access for business users.
We used Service Connect initially but there were lot rules in Service Connect for account mapping. Each time, when users want to change the rules, they come to IT. So I have added all rules in UD Codes so that business manages the data without coming to IT. Also, if there is an error in Service Connect, IT need to look into. With DMT, users sees the error and fix.
In E9 I did it as a screen customization in AP invoice entry. The user would select the csv file from Concur and the customization would parse it and import it into an AP group. I did that after I decided I didn’t like programing with pictures (Service Connect).
Looks like I supported misc lines and job misc lines. I can post the code if you would like, you just have to forgive it being old E9 code.
Thanks for the ideas, guys! Since Concur is month-to-month, we ponied up for Web Services, and will see how that goes. If we’re doing just the company credit card account (one supplier), I think we’ll be able to make it work with just the CSV, as a paste-insert to an AP Misc Invoice as lines… We’ll see once some data gets added and we’re completely onboarded.
Thanks again.