Organizations lose approximately 5% of annual revenue to fraud each year. For many finance leaders, that statistic feels abstract — until they examine where fraud actually hides: in manual processes, fragmented data, and gaps between what's requested, approved, and reimbursed.
By Stephanie Vallet-Sandre, Drisya Vijay
Organizations lose approximately 5% of annual revenue to fraud each year. For many finance leaders, that statistic feels abstract — until they examine where fraud actually hides: in manual processes, fragmented data, and gaps between what's requested, approved, and reimbursed.
Whether managing travel expenses, corporate spend, or invoice processing, the challenge is the same. When data lives in disconnected systems or approval workflows rely on manual cross-checks, patterns of fraudulent behavior become harder to detect.
Most companies require receipts for high-value purchases, which helps flag obvious mismatches. Yet fraud and compliance risks rarely occur in the obvious places. They appear in subtler ways:
A traveler expensing the same meal receipt in two different reports
A ride-hailing receipt submitted with the date cropped, making it harder to spot duplicates
A steady pattern of meal expenses coming in just under the $50 policy limit
Seat upgrades or baggage fees added after the initial airfare booking
Each example involves real receipts. The challenge is that approvers must recognize patterns across dozens of reports and hundreds of transactions. No single expense looks suspicious in isolation. But across a population, these small gaps compound into significant risk.
When finance teams rely on separate systems for booking and expense management, even the most diligent approvers face challenges. Cross-checking receipts against itineraries or past reports for every line item is time-consuming and difficult to scale. Relying on manual detective work alone leaves gaps in oversight, making it harder to detect fraud and maintain consistent compliance.
This is where complete data changes the equation. When Concur Travel and Expense modules are integrated, booking information flows directly into expense reports. If an employee booked a standard seat, the system can automatically flag a subsequent upgrade claim. AI tools can scan across transactions to identify duplicate receipts or consistent “just under the limit” patterns. Instead of requiring approvers to recall and cross-reference details, the system surfaces anomalies before reimbursement.
The benefits extend beyond fraud detection. Employees are reimbursed faster when compliant expenses process automatically. Approvers can focus on true exceptions instead of validating every taxi receipt. Finance teams shift from conducting audits after the fact to monitoring spend in real time. What emerges is not just stronger compliance, but a smoother experience for everyone involved.
Organizations that embrace comprehensive spend visibility move beyond catching fraud after it occurs. They transform how finance operates. With every transaction feeding a real-time audit trail, compliance ceases to be a quarterly scramble and becomes part of daily operations. Instead of tracking down errors months later, teams correct issues in the moment, when the context is fresh and the fix is straightforward.
And with the burden of manual reconciliation lifted, finance leaders can focus on higher-value work: analyzing spend patterns, negotiating stronger vendor agreements, and using insights to drive policy improvements that benefit the entire organization.
Not every SAP Concur implementation delivers this level of protection. The difference lies in how the system is configured. Strategic implementation asks hard questions up front: Where do manual processes still create opportunities for errors? Which policy violations are slipping through today? How can we configure modules so that compliance happens by design, not enforcement?
Acquis helps organizations answer those questions. By mapping policies across business units, identifying visibility gaps, and configuring automated controls, we design implementations that close risks before reimbursements are approved. Whether adding Concur Expense to existing Travel, optimizing current modules, or building a new deployment from the ground up, our focus is the same: stronger controls, smoother processes, and a system that helps employees do the right thing without extra effort.
Fraud prevention isn’t just about catching bad actors. It’s about designing processes that make compliance natural, visibility automatic, and oversight continuous. With the right implementation, organizations don’t just reduce losses; they build finance operations that are more strategic, resilient, and trusted.
Reach out to the Acquis team
Tags:
Procurement used to be the department of “no.” A checkpoint before spend approval charged with enforcing compliance, checking contracts, and cutting costs. Necessary, yes. Strategic? Hardly. That model no longer holds.
Read More
For decades, procurement and finance have been uneasy allies. One holds the purse strings. The other spends the money. In theory, they share the same goals. In reality, they often operate at cross-purposes — slowing each other down, duplicating efforts, and moving out of sync.
Read More
Over the next decade, biopharma success will be determined not by the most ambitious science or the largest balance sheets, but by leadership — specifically, by companies that can navigate the industry's bifurcation and develop fluency in the Alliance Economy. Others will likely face acquisition or marginalization.
Read More
Procurement used to be the department of “no.” A checkpoint before spend approval charged with enforcing compliance, checking contracts, and cutting costs. Necessary, yes. Strategic? Hardly. That model no longer holds.
Read More
For decades, procurement and finance have been uneasy allies. One holds the purse strings. The other spends the money. In theory, they share the same goals. In reality, they often operate at cross-purposes — slowing each other down, duplicating efforts, and moving out of sync.
Read More
Over the next decade, biopharma success will be determined not by the most ambitious science or the largest balance sheets, but by leadership — specifically, by companies that can navigate the industry's bifurcation and develop fluency in the Alliance Economy. Others will likely face acquisition or marginalization.
Read More
