Brex vs. Concur: Which Is The Best AP Automation Platform?

While Brex initially catered to startup companies by offering software-enabled corporate cards, it subsequently added accounting automation, expense management, and banking services. While using AI to automate several tasks, Brex offers a unified platform to manage travel and expenses.

What does Concur do?

While Brex initially catered to startup companies by offering software-enabled corporate cards, it subsequently added accounting automation, expense management, and banking services. While using AI to automate several tasks, Brex offers a unified platform to manage travel and expenses.

Brex vs Concur: A comparison of features.

How does Brex differ from Concur?

While the two platforms have similar travel and expense management features, there are some ways that Concur differs from Brex.

While Brex focuses on spend management, SAP Concur’s ecosystem includes a wide range of products and services that allow businesses to manage their ERP, CRM, human capital, and supply chain management functions, Concur facilitates procurement processes, such as purchase request, PO creation, and three-way PO matching.

Unlike Brex, which supports direct payments, Concur allows payments through integrations with third-party payment providers.

Concur offers mileage tracking through the Drive app, while Brex lacks this feature.

With Concur, users can access the services of experts to manage expenses, comply with company policies, and create custom reports.

Key features: Brex.

Here are the core capabilities of Brex.

AP automation.

Brex AI automatically maps categories

Brex’s platform automates accounting tasks, offering AI-generated suggestions on merchant mapping and GL coding, checking data for anomalies, and auto-categorizing expenses. Users can import invoices by emailing, forwarding, or uploading them and Brex AI captures itemized details, suggests the corresponding PO, and routes them for approvals.

The platform offers bi-directional syncing with major ERPs while updating transactions. Brex offers multi-subsidiary support allowing users to specify currencies, spend policies, and tax regulations for each subsidy.

Expense management.

Admins can set custom policies by entity, use case, department, and more

Brex’s expense management features centralize spend oversight by integrating various spend categories such as corporate cards, reimbursements, bill payments, and travel. Admins can issue physical and virtual cards with spend limits for recurring and one-time spend across categories, including procurement, travel, and vendors. Brex facilitates reimbursements in local currencies across 70 countries. The platform’s AI streamlines document collection, answers employee queries, and expedites the closing of financial books.

Payments.

Brex automates ACH and check payments

Brex supports recurring and one-off domestic and international payments in 40 currencies. While users can connect their existing bank accounts to manage payments and reimbursements, Brex also offers a business bank account that expands payment options. Users can pay via virtual cards, ACH, wires, and checks from their Brex business bank accounts to over 115 countries.

Travel.

Similar to Concur, Brex offers an integrated T&E platform, connecting with providers and partners to offer access to a global inventory of hotels, flights, and car rentals. Admins can define travel spend limits and policies and manage approvals on the go. Employees can make use of a shared spend limit to book group travel, make itinerary changes, and track their bookings and reimbursements on the mobile app.

Brex integrations.

Brex offers both native and CSV integrations with ERP systems, HRIS, and productivity applications.

Accounting/ERP:

• NetSuite ERP
• Sage Intacct
• QuickBooks
• Xero
• Acumatica (via CSV)
• Chrome River (via CSV)
• SAP Concur
• Coupa Pay

HRIS:

• ADP Workforce Now
• BambooHR
• Deel
• Gusto
• Justworks
• Paychex

Collaboration:

• Pipedream
• Microsoft Teams
• Zapier
• Slack
• WhatsApp
• Zoom

Security/authentication:

• 1Password
• Google Workspace
• Microsoft Azure AD
• Okta

Brex pricing.

Brex pros.

• AI-powered platform: Brex AI offers accounting rule suggestions, auto-categorizes expenses, and provides instant answers to questions on spend.
• Travel management: Admins and employees can use a convenient mobile app to book trips, manage approvals, modify itineraries, and track reimbursements.
• Zero fees for transfers: Brex does not charge for global and domestic ACH, or domestic and international wire transfers.

Brex cons.

• Not an integrated P2P platform: While admins can define purchase spend limits, there are no procurement features, such as PO creation, intake, or vendor portal.
• Low-value rewards: Brex does not offer direct cash-back rewards. Instead, users can redeem the points they earn for card transactions.
• Lacks depth of functionality: While Brex caters to SMBs and startups, it lacks the depth of functionality in AP automation and bill payment that global mid-market and early enterprises require.

Key features: Concur.

Here are Concur’s key features.

Accounting automation.

Concur uses OCR to extract invoice data

SAP Concur offers accounts payable automation through Concur Invoice that can be integrated with Concur Expense and payment providers. Concur Invoice uses OCR and ML technology to extract and validate invoices submitted via various sources, including hardcopy, mail, fax, and email. The platform also pulls PO data and matches invoices against POs. Users can import data from Excel to manage complex invoices while using the distribute feature to charge multiple departments. Dynamic approval workflows route invoices to the right approvers who can review and approve invoices via the mobile app. By integrating Concur Invoice with Payment Manager and Invoice Pay, users can prepare payment batches and automate payments to vendors.

Procurement.

Admins can set custom policies by entity, use case, department, and more

The purchase process can be managed via the add-on Purchase Request module that allows approvers to manage requests before a PO is created. Concur also allows users to import POs via API or FTP. Users can define matching rules based on thresholds, such as quantity or unit price and the system automatically matches invoice lines with relevant PO lines. Matched PO and invoice data sync with ERP or accounting system.

Expense.

Receipt capturing is automated through supplier integrations

Concur offers a range of expense products that integrate with each other to help streamline expense management. Some of these include Concur Expense, which captures receipts and creates expense reports, Concur Request, which offers visibility into spend requests, ExpenseIt, a receipt management app, and Drive, which captures mileage data. In addition, there is a travel management platform that can be combined with Concur Expense to manage travel bookings, approvals, and reimbursements.

Payment solutions.

Integrations with third-party payment providers to manage payments

Concur does not have a direct payment solution. Users can connect their existing bank or integrate Concur Invoice with third-party payment providers within the Concur network to manage payments. Businesses in the US can make use of Invoice Pay and Payment Manager features to automate payments. Unlike many of its competitors, Concur does not offer corporate cards but instead allows users to connect their existing bank cards with Concur Expense.

Concur integrations.

Concur integrates with other products within the SAP ecosystem, in addition to offering open APIs and pre-built integrations.

ERP solutions:

• Xero
• NetSuite
• Sage Intacct
• QuickBooks (Online and Desktop)
• Certinia

Invoicing/payments

• Celigo
• PivotNexus Invoice
• American Express @B2B Payments

Receipts and travel

• Uber
• Lyft
  Booking.com
• Hertz
• Rocketrip
• Aventri

Concur pricing.

Pricing information is not available on SAP Concur’s website. While it does not offer a free plan, the cost depends on the modules selected apart from the volume of invoices and expense reports.

SAP Concur pros.

• Travel management: In addition to a unified T&E experience, Concur allows admins to define trip approval workflows, provide cash advances, and manage bookings via a mobile app.
• Budget management: Admins can define budgets for different spend categories and track them on a centralized dashboard.
• Expert help: Concur users can leverage the help of experts to optimize expense management and compliance.

SAP Concur cons.

• Outdated UI: The learning curve is steep for new users while the time-consuming set up and outdated UI impact overall user experience.
• Poor customer service: Users complain about the prolonged turnaround time for submitting support tickets and receiving responses from the support team.
• No support for multiple entity management: Concur does not offer a centralized platform to manage multiple subsidiary spends, approvals, and reconciliation.
• Lack of touchless invoicing: Concur does not offer a truly touchless invoicing experience.

Why Airbase is the right choice.

Designed to cater to the complex needs of mid-market and enterprise companies, Airbase combines the power of Guided Procurement, AP Automation, Expense Management, and Corporate Cards into one intuitive platform.

Airbase excels in fraud prevention, customer support, user-friendliness, and advanced capabilities, making it a superior choice for comprehensive financial management.

The table below gives you an overview of the areas where Airbase wins over Brex and Concur.

See why Airbase is the best choice — book a demo with us!