SAP Concur is hired to collect travel and expense reports and route them through approval. The job is narrow in a small company, but the records it holds are financial records, so the work is mostly in the retention, the approvals and the integrations. Below: how to scope the job, what a small replacement would cover, and what to settle before ending the contract.
It sits between employees, approvers, cards and the books. Years of reports and receipts live in it, and removing it feels like removing an audit trail.
That concern is fair. The records matter and the approvals are controls. But the daily job of most companies is smaller than the product, and the cost keeps getting paid because nobody has written down what is used.
The way out begins with a written list of the rules and the records, not with software. Our audit can find the charge, and your accountant should be in the room before any archive moves.
Only alternatives we have checked. An open-source project is listed with the license its repository reports, on the date shown; one whose license could not be read as a single standard id is not offered as open source. Read the license guide before running any of them.
| Alternative | Kind | License | Read from |
|---|---|---|---|
| An expense-report form with the approval rules written down once | Custom build | — | Written for the one job |
Each feature below is what the product's own page or README says, linked to where we read it on the date shown. Pros and cons are limited to what those pages state and to what the path itself changes. We do not rank products on quality.
This is a harder move than most. The system sits on money going out and on records an auditor may ask for, and it may be tied into card feeds and travel booking. We rate it hard for that reason.
The realistic path for a small company is to write down the approval rules and what the books need, then decide whether a form with those rules covers it. Many companies find they use a small slice of what they pay for, but only an inventory of actual use can tell you.
Samples are made up and are not SAP Concur's prices. Type in the figures from your own invoice or order form.
Build a small tool or keep paying for one: the cost of each over your horizon and the month the build breaks even.
Paid seats against seats in use: what the idle ones cost a year, and what you save by right-sizing at renewal.
Arithmetic only, not tax, accounting or legal advice. Check the figures against your own order form.
Scope first, then rebuild the form and the rules, then run in parallel. In outline:
Count the people who submitted reports in the past year, the reports per month and the typical lines per report. List the expense categories used.
Write down the approval rules as people follow them: who approves, up to what amount, and what happens above it. Get the approvers to confirm.
List every connection: the card feed, travel booking, the accounting export, the payment file. Each is rebuilt, replaced or ended on purpose.
Ask your accountant which receipts and reports must be kept, for how long and in what form. Export everything and verify the counts before anything else.
Build or choose a simple expense form with the rules and a policy check. Test it with real, past reports and compare the outcomes.
Run one full month in both. Compare the totals posted to your books and the reimbursements made.
Move users on an announced date, keep the export, and end the contract inside its notice window.
A replacement is written from scratch for the narrow job a company actually has, with no copied code, screens, wording or branding from SAP Concur or from anyone else. It starts from the approval rules the company wrote down, not from the vendor's feature list.
It records requests and approvals. It never pays or moves money: reimbursement stays in the company's existing payment process under its existing controls. The receipt archive moves only after your retention rules have been checked and your accountant has agreed to the plan.
Run the vendor report for QuickBooks Online or Xero, then open the free audit.
General information, not legal advice. See cancelling without penalties. Last reviewed Oct 25, 2026. Product names belong to their owners and are used only to identify them.
Send us the export and see which lines are worth a second look. A connected version is planned. SAP Concur is one of the lines worth a look.
Worked example. Type over it.
Result
| Year | Buy, cumulative | Build, cumulative |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 9,000.00 | 8,040.00 |
| 2 | 18,000.00 | 10,080.00 |
| 3 | 27,000.00 | 12,120.00 |
Undiscounted, and it leaves out the vendor's price rises and your own overruns. A tool built for one job is not the whole product: list what you would lose before you count the saving.
Worked example. Type over it.
Result
“In use” is your call: last sign-in in the past 30 or 90 days from the vendor's admin report. A seat for someone on leave is not idle.