Concur vs. Expensify: Which Spend Management Platform is Best?

What does Concur do?

SAP Concur offers an integrated T&E solution that facilitates travel booking, approval, and expense reporting. It later added the AP automation module, which offers the expected functionalities of custom workflows, automated invoice capturing, and ERP synchronization.

What does Expensify do?

Expensify enables businesses to manage expenses by providing tools for bill payments, employee reimbursements, invoicing, and travel booking. While initially focused on receipt scanning technology, the company later added bill payment and corporate card features.

Concur vs Expensify: A comparison of features.

Key features: SAP Concur.

In this section, we will take a look at the features of SAP Concur in more detail.

Travel management.

Concur Travel offers a suite of travel management features to streamline business trip management. Travelers can book compliant trips directly via a mobile app, select flights and hotels from the partner network, and pay for the trip using their corporate cards. Companies can design approval workflows for their unique trip, and employees have the option of requesting cash advances for trips. Users can link their Concur account to TripIt to improve their experience.

Expense.

Concur streamlines expense management with the help of multiple apps. Concur Expense makes it easy for employees to submit their receipts and create expense reports, and managers can approve the spend via a mobile app. The Concur Drive mobile app captures mileage automatically, facilitating effortless expense reporting. Custom trip approval workflows can be tailored to your organization’s needs, including the option to request cash advances.

Invoice.

Although not a comprehensive AP automation solution, Concur’s Invoice module makes the process less tedious. By combining AI, OCR, and machine learning, Invoice extracts invoice details submitted via email, fax, or mobile and routes the invoices through the desired approval workflows. Users can create POs within the platform or import from other sources while Concur matches them with invoices and item receipts through custom integrations with ERP. Concur also offers a Purchase Request module add-on to enable managers to reject or approve purchase requests before spend can occur.

Payment solutions.

Concur does not offer a direct payment solution or virtual cards but helps users manage payments through third-party app integrations. It does have a Payment Manager feature that helps manage bulk payments by creating payment batches.

SAP Concur pricing

SAP Concur has not provided pricing information on its website but is known to have a complex pricing structure. The cost can increase based on the volume of invoices and expense reports.

SAP Concur pros.

• Receipt capture: A mobile app makes it easy for users to capture receipts, book travel, and submit expense reports.
• Travel resources: The platform integrates with travel providers in addition to a travel app that organizes all bookings and provides assistance throughout the journey.
• Inbox for receipts: SAP Concur offers an email inbox for managing receipts.

SAP Concur cons.

• Poor customer service: Customers complain about the inefficient support system and slow turnaround time for support tickets.
• Suboptimal multiple entity management: Lack of a centralized environment to manage multiple subsidiary spends, approvals, and reconciliation.
• Outdated user interface: The interface of the web portal is not intuitive, making the learning curve steep for new users.
• Lack of touchless experience: Concur does not use Gen AI or offer a fully touchless invoicing experience.
• Workflows: The expense management workflows are not streamlined.
• Complex setup: Initial setup and configuration can be time-consuming for some businesses.

Key features: Expensify.

Expense management.

Expensify offers the expected expense management features that you would find in its competitors, such as a receipt scanner, OCR technology to parse the information, and approval workflows. Expensify also pulls expenses from corporate cards and travel apps, such as Uber and Lyft.

However, the process of creating an expense report is not entirely automated. The SmartScan process auto-populates details, such as the amount, date, and merchant but the user has to manually enter the category, description, tax, and tags.

Expensify supports direct ACH reimbursements for companies with a U.S. bank account. Users can link their bank accounts in Canada, the E.U., the U.K., and Australia for international reimbursements. Payments from these linked bank accounts can take up to 4 business days to process.

Invoicing.

Invoicing is a feature that has been recently launched in New Expensify, Expensify’s upgraded version. With this feature, users can create an invoice using pre-built templates while the software calculates discounts, taxes, and other fees. Once the user sends the invoice via email, the platform creates a chat to enable communication with clients.

Bill payments.

Expensify automatically captures bill details using SmartScan and makes it easy for admins to review and process the payments. Businesses can automate the approval and payment process directly from their business bank account.

Users can effortlessly monitor the status of their payments, whether they are paid, due, or overdue, all consolidated within the Expensify app. However, the bill payment module is at a nascent stage and lacks the advanced features that Airbase offers, such as international bill payments and the ability to create and manage purchase orders.

Corporate cards.

With Expensify, users can generate unlimited virtual cards with spend controls and import personal or company-issued credit cards into the platform.

Virtual cards can be used for digital one-time purchases and recurring subscriptions. Expensify also offers its own corporate card with features such as access to travel safety, credit, cashback rewards, and custom approval workflows.

Users can view the transaction details on a reconciliation dashboard while identifying unapproved or unexported expenses.

Expensify pricing.

Expensify pros.

• Real-time visibility: Provides instant insights into expenses, enabling better tracking and budgeting.
• Streamlined compliance: Automates tax rule application and generates audit-ready documentation.
• Effortless reimbursements: Streamlines the reimbursement process with next-day payments, including global reimbursements.
• User-friendly interface: Easy-to-navigate platform that enhances user experience.

Expensify cons.

• SmartScan limitations: Expensify’s SmartScan feature often receives negative feedback for being slow and inaccurate.
• Poor support: Expensify users often report long wait times for customer support.
• Lacks advanced capabilities: Expensify does not offer advanced features, such as native PO support, multi-subsidiary support, and advanced request and approval workflows.
• High cost: Most advanced features are available only in the higher priced plan, making it unsuitable for small businesses.

Which is better: Concur or Expensify?

Choosing between Concur and Expensify depends on your specific business needs, company size, budget, and the depth of features. Small businesses or teams with no more than ten users can opt for Expensify’s Collect plan, which offers basic expense management, invoicing, bill payments, and prepaid cards.

Concur is more suitable for companies that are using other SAP products — such as SAP Ariba — due to its seamless integration and enhanced interoperability within the SAP ecosystem. Concur is also better suited for large businesses that want add-ons, such as Purchase Request, Concur Request, and the services of expert auditors.

Choose the best spend management software.

While both Concur and Expensify offer similar features, they may not fulfill the needs of growing businesses that need complex solutions. Nor are they a good fit for companies ready for a more comprehensive solution that can continue to scale as they do. For instance, both of these platforms lack end-to-end procure, pay, close features, dedicated vendor management tools, advanced workflows, and comprehensive spend analytics. These are things found in a more modern, comprehensive platform like Airbase.

Airbase stands out as a superior choice to Concur and Expensify for more than its AI-powered expense management, which employees love to use. It also integrates with booking powerhouse TravelPerk for travel bookings and offers much-loved touchless expense reporting for faster, more accurate reporting. Airbase offers advanced AP Automation, Guided Procurement, and multi-subsidiary support, features that neither Concur nor Expensify provides. You’ll want to compare for yourself but most find that Airbase is a more cost-effective solution. Expense management software is used by most everyone in your organization — making the right decision will have an important impact on your organization’s spend culture.

See how Airbase represents the next generation of P2P solutions — book a demo with us!