Effective August 9th, UMBC activated the Travel Card transaction feed within SAP Concur. This system enhancement is designed to streamline the travel reconciliation process, improve budget accuracy, and significantly reduce manual paperwork for you and your department!
Key Benefits of the New Feed
- Automated Expense Capture: Your UMBC Travel Card charges and booking fees will now automatically flow directly into your Available Expenses queue, expediting the reporting and reimbursement process.
- Improved Budget Timing: Prepaid expenses (such as airline and train tickets) will now reconcile exactly when your final Expense Report is submitted and approved. This ensures transactions align perfectly with your actual travel dates, eliminating premature charges to your department’s budget.
Important: Manual Assignment of Travel Agent Fees
While the new feed automates the capture of your expenses, travel agent fees must still be manually assigned. This is a critical step to ensure your expense reports are processed smoothly.
Previously, Financial Services handled travel agent fees behind the scenes. Moving forward, these fees (e.g., the $3.50 online booking fee or phone booking fees) will flow directly into your Available Expenses queue and MUST be manually linked to the correct Expense Report by the traveler or arranger.
Note on Expense Assistant: While we highly recommend using the Concur Expense Assistant to automatically match expenses to travel dates, the system cannot automatically assign Travel Agent Fees.
Action Required: Even with automated tools enabled, you must manually select and link any Agent Fees from your queue to your open Expense Report before submitting. Failure to clear these fees from your queue will trigger automated warning alerts and delay your report.
Checklist for Returning Travelers
When returning from a trip, please complete the following steps to prevent alerts and processing delays:
- Link Travel Requests: Ensure you link your approved Travel Request to the appropriate Expense Report.
- Reconcile All Expenses: Double-check that all items in your Available Expenses queue have been assigned to a report before clicking submit.
See It In Action (It’s Easy!)
We know new processes can be daunting, but this one is truly easy and designed to save you time. To see exactly how to manage this new feed, check out our short video tutorial: Watch the Available Expenses – Assigning to an Expense Report mini demo.
Support and Resources
If you need help navigating your Available Expenses, we are here to support you!
- Technical Support: Contact the SAP Support Desk within Concur (click the “?” icon) for step-by-step guidance, including live co-browsing support.
- Policy Inquiries: Email travel@umbc.edu for questions regarding UMBC travel policies and internal procedures.
If a flight was purchased through Concur/Altour before 8/8/26, the automated transaction feed was not yet in effect. As UMBC Travel Card is no longer an option to select for the payment type, please process your Expense Report as you normally would, with the following changes:
- Select UMBC P-Card as the payment type.
- Add a comment to the expense noting that you were unable to select UMBC Travel Card as the payment type.
This is a temporary transition process and applies only to flights purchased prior to 8/8/26.