Designing a Complex Invoice Process in SAP Concur
A leading consumer brands consultancy turned to Acquis to design a complex supplier invoicing process in Concur Invoice. Acquis designed the solution and partnered with SAP Concur through implementation.
Bringing purchasing, accounting, and approvals into one workflow
In professional services, supplier invoices can get complicated quickly. Costs must be tied to the right project and accounting structure, and approvals can span project owners and finance. When the process breaks down, budgets drift, client rebilling gets harder, and month-end close requires significant reconciliation.
This was the reality for a leading consumer brands consultancy. While the firm managed employee expenses through Concur Expense, supplier invoices moved through a manual process. The firm wanted the same visibility and control over supplier spend that it had for expenses, and decided to implement Concur Invoice.
But the firm’s process demanded more than a standard invoice workflow. The module needed to:
Capture the full purchasing cycle, from purchase request to purchase order (PO) to invoice, so spend could be approved and committed before it was incurred
Automatically code invoices to the appropriate general ledger (GL) account based on the classification of each purchase
Route approvals across multiple approvers based on defined spending limits and send invoice data to the firm’s ERP
SAP Concur would manage system configuration and implementation. The firm chose Acquis to lead the solution design.
Designing Concur Invoice to fit the process
Acquis worked closely with the firm’s finance and IT teams to understand how purchasing, invoicing, and approvals worked day to day. In onsite working sessions, Acquis walked the team through the module and what a full PO-backed process would require, then developed a working prototype that gave the firm a practical way to evaluate the design.
Together, the teams designed PO and non-PO policies and created dynamic GL assignments using connected lists. Acquis built a limit-based approval workflow and defined the data mappings between Concur Invoice and the firm’s ERP. To support the complexities of its process, Acquis guided the firm through an upgrade from Concur Invoice Standard to Concur Invoice Professional.
Acquis owned requirements and solution design, working alongside the firm’s IT leadership and SAP Concur’s configuration team. To translate the design into configuration, Acquis documented requirements at the field level for SAP Concur to build against.
Once the initial build was complete, Acquis continued working onsite with the client to test the configuration and capture refinements for SAP Concur to incorporate. During functional and system integration testing, Acquis led working sessions to support user teams and demonstrate how the system would behave in practice. These sessions surfaced opportunities for further configuration before go-live.
A structured system for managing supplier spend
The client rolled out Concur Invoice in phases. Acquis assessed the initial rollout with the first group of users and worked with the client to refine the process before broader adoption. Once 300 invoices processed through the new system, Acquis conducted a final round of working sessions to resolve remaining questions and confirm the process worked as designed.
The client now manages its full invoicing process in SAP Concur, replacing a fully manual process with a structured workflow from purchase request through invoice. The new process gives the firm greater control over purchasing, invoice coding, and approvals while connecting invoice data to its ERP.
Do more with SAP Concur
As the first Certified SAP Concur Implementation Partner, Acquis has helped companies get SAP Concur right the first time since 1998. And we're here to help yours, too.