Top 6 Concur Competitors and Alternatives for 2024

Over the last decade, the marketplace for spend management software has become incredibly diverse. Once dominated by a single name, SAP Concur, organizations now have a diverse array of competitors and alternatives from which to choose.

With so many options, it can be hard to narrow things down to a manageable list of providers. If you find yourself or your organization in this position, then this guide will serve as an ideal guide to help you get a clear picture of the SAP Concur alternatives available.

A quick primer on expense management software

Historically a domain strewn with spreadsheets, paper receipts, or invoices and defined by tedious, manual processes, spend management has emerged as one of the best ways for organizations to reduce accounting office workloads and advance digital transformation projects.

By implementing automated processes for receipt collection, transaction coding, policy compliance checks, and expense tracking, alongside expense report and transaction approval routing, your finance team can gain greater visibility and control over organizational spending while increasing the time they have for higher-order strategic work.

Across providers, you’ll find several common features including:

• Employee expense reporting with integrated compliance checks and policy enforcement
• Receipt scanning with optical character recognition (OCR)
• Approval workflows or processes
• Support for employee expense reimbursement
• Integration with ERP or accounting software systems

This list is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to spend management software. Numerous expense management providers also offer features for AP automation or corporate travel management, allowing organizations to manage all of their spending in a single, unified platform.

6 top Concur alternatives

To help you in your evaluation process, we’ve compiled a list of six Concur expense alternatives along with highlighting their features and benefits in the expense management sector.

Emburse

Emburse offers a complete organizational spend management platform with end-to-end travel, expense, and accounts payable functionality. With solutions designed to address the biggest challenges in business travel and spend management, Emburse Certify, Chrome River, and Spend help CFOs, controllers, and accountants implement automated processes while increasing visibility and organizational policy compliance.

Features for Travel and Expense Management

• Easy expense creation and management from any device
• Deeply configurable policy and approval routing rules
• Granular expense coding for cost objects, expense types, projects, and more
• Issue a physical and virtual card with custom rules and limits
• Corporate travel booking and management to automatically capture flight, hotel, and transportation
• Powerful analytics and reporting to drive strategic decision-making and insights

Features for Invoice Management

• Requisition and purchase order (PO) creation and management
• Centralized employee purchasing with procurement catalog punchout
• 2- and 3-way match of POs, invoices, and good receipts
• Threshold and limit-based exception handling and routing
• Integrated analytics platform with complete organizational spend visibility

Concur vs. Emburse

It’s not uncommon to find finance and accounting professionals with experience in both SAP Concur and Emburse Certify or Chrome River. For many, the Emburse platform provides ease of use, global capabilities, and configuration that exceed what they can find elsewhere in the market. Many companies enjoy Emburse’s portfolio that provides solutions tailored to businesses of every size, SMB to enterprise, allowing for growth and flexiblity. In the same vein, Concur is used by many organizations and its prevalence and comfortability makes it a popular choice.

Takeaway

• Concur is a known commodity in expense management, for better or for worse
• Emburse provides innovative, market leading solutions and options for companies of all sizes

Expensify

Expensify is another common name in organizational expense management. They are most often used by small businesses and growing organizations. With a simple interface and low barrier to entry, it can be an easy starting point for organizations that have not used software to manage employee spending in the past.

Features for Travel and Expense Management

• SmartScan receipt capture with OCR
• Customizable workflows and approval routing
• Chatbot travel booking experience
• Self-setup accounting integrations

Features for Invoice Management

• Invoice capture with OCR
• Bill payment from connected bank account
• Invoice review coding and approval

Concur vs. Expensify

The solutions provided Expensify and Concur address different segments of the market. Expensify is built for small and very small businesses. Concur, while sometimes used by smaller organizations, is really designed for the mid-market companies and larger.

Takeaway

• Expensify is focused on serving small and very small businesses
• Many organizations that use Expensify do not need the complexity of Concur, while companies that use something like Concur may find Expensify insufficient for their needs

Zoho

Zoho offers a wide ranging portfolio of business systems software with components for accounting, human resources, customer relationship management, and more. Within their accounting offering, they provide Zoho Expense, which supports most of the baseline functionality.Similar to Expensify, Zoho Expense is a platform used most often by small businesses starting out with spend management.

Features for Travel and Expense Management

• Low-cost plans for very small businesses
• Configurable approval and routing workflows
• Integrated booking tool for managing employee travel expenses
• Small business accounting software integrations

Features for Invoice Management

• Zoho does not offer Accounts Payable solution

Concur vs. Zoho

Concur and Zoho are both part of larger companies that offer other software. In the case of Concur, it is SAP, who offers ERP along with other solutions to enterprise organizations. Zoho, as mentioned, has a vast portfolio of businesss software. In both cases, the expense platform may not receive the resources requred for consistent innovation and development.

Takeaway

• Companies on the Zoho platform may find value in using Zoho’s expense tool
• Both Zoho Expense and Concur are smaller tools within organizations that have primary innovation focus in other areas

Navan

Originally named TripActions, Navan changed their name in early 2023 as they expanded from solely offering travel management to include some employee expense management support within their portfolio. When they expanded their offering, they became a direct competitor of SAP Concur travel and expense products.Navan's core product resonates with its roots as a corporate travel management company and online booking tool. The platform is centered around business travel use cases, with the expense reporting tool working in tandem. For organizations with more simple process, this can be useful, but as complexity or accounting needs expand, the system can be limited in its ability to accommodate different policy, compliance, and workflow configurations.

Features for Travel and Expense Management

• Integrated travel booking with company rules
• Native card offering and issuing of Navan card
• Transaction based expense reporting
• Native and third party card feed integrati

Features for Invoice Management

• Navan does not offer Accounts Payable solution

Concur vs. Navan

Navan has sought to move from their origins as a travel management company to offer both travel and expense management in a single platform. Concur has for a long time provided travel and expense. For companies that are less concerned with flexibility and options, Navan is an option to consider.

Takeaway

• Concur and Navan are similar in that they both offer travel booking and expense tools
• Navan’s travel management support limits you to their inventory as opposed to working with a travel management company of your choice

Ramp

Ramp is a newer expense management service. Their product is centered around offering corporate cards with spend management software to support it. The key consideration for companies that evaluate Ramp is whether they are prepared to exclusively adopt Ramp's corporate card. Most expense management software on the market can be integrated with corporate cards issued by banks, importing transaction data feds and then matching that with receipts. With Ramp, it's a bit different. They offer their own corporate card - technically a charge card - and will only allow customers to import transactions made on the Ramp card program. A benefit of the Ramp platform is that it includes customer support for AP automation alongside expense management.

Features for Travel and Expense Management

• Native corporate card with credit
• Customizable rules and workflows
• Employee reimbursements for out-of-pocket spend
• Direct integrations with key accounting platforms

Features for Invoice Management

• Invoice processing with optical character recognition (OCR)
• Bill payments with check, ACH, or virtual credit cards
• Purchase order creation

Concur vs. Ramp

Ramp seeks to corner a subset of the expense management market with their closed corporate card and software ecosystem. For smaller companies that are comfortable using a single corporate card, it can be a convenient, if at times limiting, options. Concur lacks card issuance and management with limits and rules, but does provide flexibility for integrating data feeds from traditional corporate cards.

Takeaway

• Ramp offers a walled-garden system with cards and software
• Many organizations need to maintain multiple card programs, which can make Ramp not ideal

Rydoo

Our last Concur expense alternative is Rydoo. Rydoo is a simple and approachable expense report and management software company based in Europe. Covering most of the alternatives above, Rydoo recently moved away from an expense report based model to a transactional process. Some organizations enjoy this workflow, but it can create excess workload on submitters and approvers as they have to attend to each transaction separately, adding required info, submitting, reviewing, and approving. This can also create challenges with project cost reporting.

Features for Travel and Expense Management

• Transactional expense reporting and approval routing
• Corporate travel partner integrations
• Automated per diem policy with official rates
• 3rd party and native corporate card integrations

Features for Invoice Management

• Rydoo does not offer Accounts Payable solution

Concur vs. Rydoo

Rydoo runs a middle ground of some of the Concur alternatives above. They use a transaction based workflow, instead of collecting transactions into a report. Their software also supports their own card and integration with 3rd parties. They’re designed for smaller organizations whereas Concur, as mentioned earlier, trends toward mid-market and enterprise.

Takeaway

• Rydoo is a mix of a number of providers with a transactional workflow and native and 3rd party card support
• Concur and Rydoo are best suited for companies of different sizes

Evaluating the SAP Concur alternatives

The expense management software space presents an incredible set of options for organizations seeking to automate employee travel and expense management. While it has become one of the default names in the space, it is good to take the time to evaluate the alternatives to Concur expense.Many of the Concur competitors in the expense management space provide solutions designed for narrow use cases or customer segments. Emburse has differentiated by developing a portfolio of spending solutions that meet organizations where they are in their journey, and can grow with them as their business and processes evolve.Beyond Emburse, companies seeking to get started quick with a simple system should explore providers like Expensify, Zoho, or Rydoo. If you're looking for combined corporate credit card and expense management solution, then Ramp could be a good option. And if you're seeking travel management, Navan may be a good provider to explore.

Moving forward in selecting expense management software

As you conduct your evaluation, you'll find you have many great companies and partners to choose from. Emburse presents an ideal choice for expense management, offering a complete portfolio of travel, expense, and accounts payable automation software. With over fifteen years of experience, and deep expertise in solving the challenges of organizational spend management, we can help you through every phase of your expense management journey.