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What Concur Is and the Request → Travel → Expense Lifecycle

A cloud spend-management platform, not a classic SAP module

SAP Concur is a cloud-based travel and expense (T&E) platform. Unlike the on-premise modules you may know — where everything is driven by GUI transaction codes (T-codes) — Concur is a web and mobile application accessed through a browser at your company's Concur sign-in page or through the SAP Concur mobile app. There are no VA01-style T-codes here. Instead you navigate a menu of products — Request, Travel, Expense, and optionally Invoice — and work through guided screens. Because it is SaaS, SAP delivers updates continuously and each customer configures policies, approval flows, and integrations to fit their organisation.

Concur's job is to answer three questions for every business trip or purchase: Can I spend this money? (Request), How do I book it? (Travel), and How do I get paid back and post it to the books? (Expense).

The three core products and how they chain together

Concur Request captures pre-trip or pre-spend approval. Before an employee travels or commits money, they raise a request estimating the cost. When approved, the request can create a commitment (an encumbrance) in the finance system so the budget is reserved before any money is actually spent. This is the control gate.

Concur Travel is the booking engine — an online booking tool (OBT) where employees self-book flights, hotels, rail, and rental cars within company policy. Bookings can be linked to an approved Request so travel only happens once spend is authorised. Itinerary data flows automatically into Expense, so much of the expense report is pre-populated.

Concur Expense is where actual spend is reconciled. Receipts and credit-card charges become expense entries, are grouped into an expense report, routed for approval, and — once approved — posted back to SAP S/4HANA Finance as an accounting document that reimburses the employee and charges the correct cost objects.

Why the lifecycle matters

The power of Concur is that these products form one continuous chain: Request (commit) → Travel (book) → Expense (actuals) → FI posting (reconcile). A trip authorised in Request becomes a booking in Travel, becomes pre-filled lines in Expense, becomes a posted document in Finance — with policy and budget checks at every step. SAP supports several integration patterns: a commitment from the Request followed by actuals from the Expense Report; a commitment created directly from the Expense Report as an obligation; or a Request commitment that is later updated by the Expense Report obligation before actuals post.