Coupa vs SAP Concur: An Elementary Comparison 2023 – 2024

Introduction

Coupa vs. Concur, which one do you think is better for your organization? This is not a question that can be answered in a single word or a sentence. We do all the hard work as we compare features and other aspects of Coupa and SAP Concur. All you need to do is go through the article below to make the right choice for your organization.

Coupa vs SAP Concur: Comparative table

Features	Coupa	Happay	SAP Concur
Market size	Small, mid-size, and enterprise	Mid-size and large Enterprises	Small, mid-size, and enterprise
Budget/Forecasting	No	Yes	No
Receipt Management	No	Yes	Yes
Expense capture- Web OCR Facility	N/A	Yes	No
Multi-currency	No	Yes	Yes
GST filing- tax calculation	N/A	Automatic	Manual
Prepaid Cards	No	Yes	No

Overview of Coupa

Coupa offers a cloud-based platform with business spend management capabilities that allow you to scale quickly and efficiently. They have a unified suite of capabilities that employ a standard data model and UI/UX interface across the platform. Using a straightforward approach to integrations and a cloud-based architecture, Coupa ensures quick deployment. 

Coupa’s headquarters is based in California, USA, and they have offices in North and Latin America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), APAC (Asia Pacific), and many others.

What Coupa offers?

Coupa’s vision is to transform the way businesses manage their expenses. In an attempt to co-create unique capabilities, they have teamed up with the Business Spend Community. The focus is business value, but the broader values they are focused on are

• Ensuring business success
• Focus on results, and
• Strive for excellence

Read More: TOP 7 Coupa Alternatives and Competitors: A Closer Look

Overview of SAP Concur

SAP Concur offers small, mid-size, and large enterprises an opportunity to reinvent their travel and expense management. The features provide to simplify your everyday workflows while promising better employee experiences.

Concur promises to simplify the travel process with an app that guides users to plan and book their business travel arrangements. The software allows users to populate the information and file expense reports automatically. Using AI and real-time data, Concur promises to tackle your blind spots in travel and expense management.

Sap Concur’s head office is in Bellevue, Washington, USA. They have offices in India, Australia, China, Japan, Mexico, and other European countries.

What Concur offers? 

SAP Concur offers cloud-based services that integrate well with each other and the existing systems (ERP, HRMS, or other accounting systems) in organizations. Hoping to optimize travel and expense management, the technology connects you to all aspects of expenses to give you complete visibility into the organization’s expenses. 

Concur’s solutions ensure you are connected to your vendors, travel agencies, credit card companies, and other suppliers efficiently, so expenses are captured and recorded quickly. Concur’s Business Intelligence offers analytics through a dashboard with standard reports that promises to help organizations manage their expenses and cash flow better.

Read More: 5 Best SAP Concur Alternatives and Competitors

Coupa vs SAP Concur: Detailed Comparative analysis with Happay

Features	Happay	Coupa	SAP Concur
Expense Capture	Xpendite-automatic and error-free capture of information from invoices (physical and digital).	Designed for modern users, Coupa’s Mobile app (android and IOS enabled for iPhones) allows you to create and submit expense reports easily.	ExpenseIt automatically populates expense reports using e-receipts.
Expense Approval	ApprovNow-transforms your approval cycles with real-time updates. Soft and Hard blocks to eliminate out-of-policy claims.	Coupa’s software allows users to set up approval hierarchies for requisitions, expense reports, and invoices.	Concur’s mobile-friendly tools help you to approve everything on the go.
Policy Compliance	SmartAudit-highlights policy violations and flags off potential fraud and errors.	Audit algorithms prevent fraud and manage and control spend.	Concur promises to improve compliance by using ML to match receipts and credit card charges.
Expense Analytics	DeepAnalyze- offers 360o visibility into your travel and expense data through relevant and customizable reports and charts.	Community.ai provides relevant business information through customizable reports in your dashboard.	Sap’s analytics allows you to review numbers and other trends with customizable reports and charts.
Travel Planning	Self Booking Tool- allows travelers to book flights, hotels, and cabs and even raise VISA requests without emailing their travel desk or admin.	Coupa promises to deliver a user-centric experience for travelers through its platform.	SAP’s travel software and mobile-friendly tools allow users to formalize/change travel plans, share itineraries, and get travel updates.
Travel Booking	Fare Freeze- allows you to lock the fare, so you don’t have to pay a different fare from when you began planning your business trip.	Coupa offers Travel Saver that identifies a price drop in fares and rebooks at a lower rate.	SAP offers user-friendly travel tools to keep travelers productive and compliant.
GST	GST Automation-automates the process and eliminates manual extraction of GST information, GSTINs, and reconciliation.	Information Unavailable	The tax calculation for GST filing may be manual, but Concur offers state-wise and entity-wise GSTIN master.
Mobile App	Happay Expense App allows users to report and submit expense reports, request advances, and track mileage digitally from anywhere.	Coupa’s mobile app allows you to spend smarter, as its solution is designed and optimized for mobile devices.	Offers a mobile app for expenses. ExpenseIt automatically creates, itemizes, and categorizes expense entries.

Must Read: 10 Best Expense Management Software and Tools

All about Coupa

Reasons to choose Coupa:

1. Functionality

Coupa offers advanced configurations for you and your finance teams. With an intuitive user experience, you can look forward to better control and more visibility over spend.

Coupa’s corporate travel management is designed to be an all-in-one solution. So, whether smart travel booking, price assurances, traveler services, or others, Coupa promises a better experience and functionality.

2. Pricing

Currently, there is no pricing information available for Coupa. You can contact them for any details regarding free trials or other suitable plans.

3. Customer support

Based on your plan and individual arrangements, Coupa provides help through multiple sources. For instance, Coupa Premium Support gives you access to 

• Designated support contacts
• 24*7 availability monitoring
• 24*7 Success Portal access
• 24*7 Coupa Community Forum access
• 24*7 Support Portal access
• 24*7 Technical support
• Web case submission and phone support

You can access the success portal on their website. You can find answers to your questions by navigating the page.  

On the other hand, a customer value manager assigned to your organization can address your concerns.

Coupa has partnered with Travel Leaders Corporate (TMC) for travel-related support to provide great customer service during travel.

4. Integration

Coupa uses a light-touch approach to integration. So, only the most critical business processes must be integrated. Also, the straightforward and open approach makes integration with SAP, Oracle, Netsuite, and other ERPs simple. The cost is lower than other complex systems while reducing the load on your IT teams.

5. Customer base

Coupa’s customers include Lear Corporation, Avalon Health Care Group, Engie, Sanofi, Lululemon Athletica, and several others. Coupa has over 2000 customers worldwide (all products and solutions offered by Coupa).

6. Coupa Pros

• Paper-based to Digital- A user credits Coupa for the digital transition of their organization. Not only were they able to customize approval workflows, but the better visibility and transparency have increased the efficiency of their Accounts Processing team. 
• User suggests that the product is easy to configure and use.
• The mobile app makes it easy for users to log expenses on the go.
• Another user likes the time savings, ease of use, and reduction in unauthorized purchases/expenses.
• A user on Trust Radius appreciates the ease of creating recurring expenses. The recurring expense pops up periodically, with all information ready to go/be filed.

7. Coupa Cons

• User feels the UI/UX experience can be improved, and they feel that for a first-time user, the set-up takes a while as they are not introduced to the various functionalities in an orderly fashion.
• Another Coupa user does not appreciate the disruption that updates cause. Every time there are updates, it messes up the functionality.
• A Trust Radius user would like to see images of uploaded documents for verification purposes.
• Another user does not appreciate the time it takes when multiple levels of approvals are required. They believe that tailored access would help to reduce costs too. 
• A user does not like that many buttons do not work correctly. Also, the description of the catalogs must be improved.

Coupa Ratings

• Overall rating
• Value for money
• Ease of use
• Features
• Customer support

*Ratings are based on GetApp rankings

Suggested Read: 10 Best Expense Management Software

All about SAP Concur

Reasons to choose SAP Concur:

1. Functionality

SAP Concur ensures that your employees can submit expenses from anywhere in the world and capture travel information, no matter where it originates. So Concur’s solutions allow you to automate, connect, and simplify travel and expense management. 

Better functionality all around improves your organization’s efficiencies while increasing the productivity of the finance teams. Consistent and better user experiences contribute to compliance automatically, while real-time connectivity ensures better visibility over your expenses.

2. Pricing

Automate	Insights	Optimize
$9 /per report, average price	Pricing is variable	Pricing is variable
This plan is for when you need more visibility and better control. What you will get with this plan: 1. Automated expense reporting and receipt capture. 2. Customizable spending policies. 3. Dashboard reporting for visibility. 4. Corporate and personal card integration. 5. Faster employee reimbursement.	This plan works when you need additional insights into spend.   1. All features mentioned in the Automate plan. 2. Enhanced dashboards and reporting. 3. Personalized data views. 4. Report scheduling. 5. Spend alerts to help manage spend.	This plan is ideal when you need to optimize spend management.   1. Support for your employees 24/7/365. 2. Help with configurations and best practices. 3. Periodic reports on cases, resolutions, and response times.

3. Customer support

SAP Concur support and services offer support for 

3.1 Administrators

Administrators can access training material, dashboards, and other support forums through resources provided on the website. Admins can access the SAP Concur community, in-product assistance, or the Concur Open Dashboard for clarifications or assistance.

3.2 Users

Existing users can access valuable training material, FAQs, and other community connections to better understand the product or solve any challenge.

3.3 Prospective product users 

Prospective customers can contact the sales departments to schedule a demo.

4. Integration

Integration is essential as you employ travel and expense management solutions across your organization. SAP Concur’s financial connectors ensure that the accumulated travel and expense data integrates well with your ERP, CRM, Human Resources, and Accounting Systems.

5. Customer base

SAP Concur’s customers include Blueprint Technologies, IBM, VMWare, Healthium, and others. 

6. Concur Pros

• A user on G2 says that one of the pros of Concur is that it does not overcomplicate things. The app is convenient to use, and the expense assist feature organizes expenses.
• G2 user likes that Concur is an all-in-one travel and expense tool. Also, the mobile app makes it easy to store receipts before you are ready to create an expense report.
• One of the pros of using SAP Concur is the visibility of the status of your expense claims. Whether it is pending or settled, you are privy to all information. 
• One of the users appreciates the easy process of travel booking and claiming reimbursements.

7. Concur Cons

• A G2 user mentions that sometimes, uploaded receipts disappear or become unavailable. Also, if you attempt to modify certain expense entries, random errors pop up.
• A user on G2 says that the flight booking interface lacks the ease and convenience of third-party sites such as Expedia. Also, the advanced search options feel clunky and imprecise.
• One of the G2 users thinks that the appearance of the tool and its interface could be improved. They feel that the inability to preview the invoices and the absence of status update notifications are a disadvantage.
• What the G2 user dislikes in SAP is that the interface is messy and confusing. Bad thumbnails and image previews make attaching files a bit cumbersome. Another hitch is that the system does not allow the same image to be used for various expenses. This creates a challenge when you must split expenses under different heads.

SAP Concur Rating

• Over all rating –
• Value for money –
• Ease of use –
• Features –
• Customer support –

*Ratings are based on GetApp rankings

Also, Read: 10 Best Travel Management Software

Why do enterprises choose Happay over Coupa or Concur?

While the above focuses on Coupa vs. SAP Concur, let us examine why enterprises choose Happay over Coupa and Concur. 

What are the features or additional advantages you get when you choose Happay?

1. Self-booking tool

A self-booking tool can change how your business travelers plan and finalize their trips. Not only do they get access to numerous options on a single interface, but they also need not worry about compliance and approvals. 

Happay’s state-of-the-art self-booking tool eliminates the time taken to plan a trip as it allows you to navigate the options with ease and book your trip according to your choice and convenience.

2. Mileage and route tracker

For those organizations with a large field force, mileage expense is a source of cost leakage. Eliminate the manual expense claims and the effort that goes into validating the accuracy of mileage logs with Happay’s GPS-powered web-based mileage tracker (mobile and desktop).

When the user adds the start point and the destination, the tracker automatically calculates the expense using the mileage rate and distance.

Happay’s route tracker is integrated with Google Maps. You can eliminate the time and effort involved in checking the validity and accuracy of the mileage logs. Happay also offers an offline mileage tracker, which, when configured in the system, can be used in the absence of internet connectivity.

3. Xpendite

Ask any frequent traveler, and they will attest that one of the most frustrating aspects of corporate travel is saving the physical receipts so the expense reports can be filed later.

Happay’s Xpendite transforms the expense capture process to make it straightforward. It captures data at the source, ensuring that your data is accurate.

Further, the OCR technology assures

• Easy and automatic capture of invoices (physical and digital).
• Precise capture of relevant information on your invoices.
• Better employee experience
• Improved control and visibility over expenses

4. DeepAnalyze

360 degree visibility is a valuable advantage to have when it comes to expense tracking and management solutions. Ensuring you have what you need to make intelligent decisions backed by data, Happay’s DeepAnalyze offers insights into your expenses. For instance, based on travel and expense data, you can 

• List the top spenders
• Identify the top violators
• Understand the time it takes for approvals, reimbursements, and so on. 

You can remove the guesswork from your decisions by relying on Happay’s expense analysis.

5. GST automation

GST calculations and reconciliations are critical to any finance team’s responsibilities. If you or your team is spending hours/days/weeks gathering invoices and data, GST breakups, and GSTINs and reconciling such information, it is time to think about an easier way to accomplish this. 

Happay’s GST automation promises to transform this cumbersome process and help you save 5%-18% in T&E costs.

The SBT (self-booking tool) pushes GST details even as you are booking your flight tickets. Happay’s software automatically picks up GST details during expense filing and fetches the same from airlines too. Further, you can generate a consolidated error-free GST report giving you 100% accurate Input Tax Credit data.

Conclusion

Choosing the proper travel and expense software requires a sensible approach where you analyze the product’s suitability for your organization. Apart from studying SAP concur vs. Coupa, you must also review other brands and features that may better fit your needs. 

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