To: Campus Unit Finance Leads, University Business Managers, T&E Card Accountholders
From: Rebecca Spanos, Travel and Payment Card Services Manager
Please share this information with all Concur users in your Department/Unit.
Expense Assistant is a helpful tool in Concur Expense which allows employees to aggregate T&E Card charges onto an auto-created Expense Report. Currently, there are two options to enable Expense Assistant: by Month or by Trip. When Expense Assistant creates a Report by Trip, it does not automatically link to the employee’s approved Travel Request. This means the information in the Expense Report Header is left blank, causing the employee additional work to fill in details they have already provided.
To alleviate this burden, effective Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, the University will discontinue the use of Expense Assistant by Trip. Employees who utilize their T&E Card for non-travel expenses (such as business meals) may continue to use Expense Assistant by Month.
As a reminder, whenever employees are embarking on overnight travel, they are required to submit a Travel Request in Concur to obtain pre-trip approval. Once a Travel Request is fully approved, an orange “Create Expense Report” button will be available in the upper right-hand corner of the Request. Employees creating Expense Reports for trips should utilize this button instead of creating a blank report. Doing so will dramatically reduce the data entry on the report and will link all the information about the trip together.
Step by step instructions for this process are available on the left-hand side of the Linking an Approved Travel Request to an Expense Report QRC.