Approvers ‘concur:’ New travel system is an improvement

Patti Shaw and Dan Boyle do not often venture far from their Rutgers—New Brunswick offices for work. But that doesn’t mean they’re not heavy users of the new Concur Travel and Expense Management system.

Patti and Dan manage and approve trips for others, including staff and faculty members, respectively.   

“Like anything new, it’s a mixed bag,” Dan, business manager at the School of Social Work, noted about the Concur system. “It’s an entire culture change, and there are little kinks, but I think it’s a good system—far better than what we had.”   

“Personally, I love it,” says Patti, assistant director of administration in the Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs. “I manage three Rutgers cards in my area—a corporate card, travel card, and pcard. Concur is part of my everyday work. It’s always open on my desktop.”  

Patti also reviews—for any mistakes and compliance with Rutgers policies—travel requests that come to her unit’s finance approver, and she informs the approver when submissions are ready or sent back to the submitter to update or correct.  

“My early experience is that a lot of things about the new system are very good,” Patti says, pointing to specifics such as “all the red flags” built into the system to keep submitters and approvers on track.  

“I compare it to a driving test,” she explains. “You see a clear ‘stop’ sign, or a ‘yield’ sign, and you know what you need to do. Once you get past the initial scariness, it’s helpful.”  

Patti also mentioned that the new system is “wonderful” because it doesn’t require journal entries.  

“Before, I had to journal an entry and move it to the correct account,” she recalls, “but now I can allocate it on the report, and the system recognizes it. That’s a big timesaver.”  

Complaints? Patti has a few. First, she finds the new system to be more work than Oracle’s expense management system. She also dislikes the “incessant” emails and warnings that arise. That’s especially in cases when, for example, a trip is booked months in advance and the system automatically assumes the expense reports should have been submitted by a certain time, without accounting for the actual dates of travel.  

In addition, Patti notes, “People are dreading the pre-trip approval requests; nobody likes them. And I don’t know if it’s just that I’m their security blanket, but they’re looking to me for help.”  

It’s not just travel where issues arrive, Patti explains.  

“If I use my pcard for water delivery,” she says, “now I can’t submit a report with just one receipt. University Procurement Services (UPS) has asked us to accumulate as many expenses as possible on one report, and sometimes we don’t have more than one to report.”

‘Culture change’ 

For his part, as Dan assesses his experiences with the system to this point, he points to positives such as the built-in mileage and per-diem calculations.  

“They’re very helpful and timesaving for faculty,” he explains. “It’s also good that the items we prepay, such as tickets for flights or train travel, are always there in the traveler’s profile.”  

Dan agrees with Patti that the pre-trip approval requirement is “probably the biggest culture change” from the old system. He also notes that itemizing expenses such as room stay, tax, gratuities, parking, etc., in advance requires some adjustment. But he adds, “If you take the time to do the best you can, the pre-trip request will make things much easier in the long run.”

Because requiring pre-trip requests is a significant change, over the summer Dan supplemented university resources by conducting weekly Zoom meetings for School of Social Work staff, to ensure they know how to complete the requests.

Although Dan says he’s “really looking forward” to any potential enhancements to the system, for the time being he’s content to just learn something more about the system every day.

“Right now,” he notes, “I’m focusing on getting familiar with what’s there.”

Navigating through the procurement process and need assistance? UPS has a Resources page to help guide you.