SAP Concur vs Esker

Requirement evaluated: Mobile approval with full invoice image view; approvers must be able to act from their phone in under 30 seconds

For a finance team that needs approvers to act on invoices from a phone, Concur Invoice approvers use the SAP Concur mobile app. Concur's feature list for the app shows that approvers can view payment requests, view the payment request summary, view payment request images, and approve or send back a payment request, including under Authorized Approval and Cost Object Approval, on all listed device types. Concur's own description says approvers get a summary, image, and line-item details of each invoice in the app. This sits in the approval stage of the pre-processing journey, after capture and PO matching. Concur Invoice matches invoices to POs and goods receipts and uses dynamic approval workflows to route to approvers, and the fact sheet confirms invoice management, including PO matching and approval routing. The app is also listed on Google Play as a way to review and approve expense reports, invoices, and travel requests.

Limitations: Concur publishes no measured or guaranteed time-to-approve, so the 30-second target can't be confirmed from public documentation and needs a timed demo with your own invoices (multi-page PDFs, many coding lines). The mobile feature list also shows some approval actions, such as Approve & Forward, as not available on mobile, so approvers who need to add a colleague mid-flow may have to switch to the web.

Requirement evaluated: Mobile approval with full invoice image view; approvers must be able to act from their phone in under 30 seconds

For a 3-person AP team at a $120M services company routing 1,800 invoices per month for approval across 6 office locations, Esker's dedicated mobile app, Esker Anywhere, directly addresses this requirement. Approvers receive instant push notifications of pending invoices, open the app on their Apple or Android device, view the full invoice image as received by the accounting department, review key invoice data and prior approvers' comments, then approve, hold, or return the invoice; all in a single, purpose-built mobile interface available 24/7. …

Limitations: No published data confirms a specific 'under 30 seconds' benchmark; the speed claim depends on network connectivity and how quickly each approver can load and review the invoice image on their device. …

Requirement evaluated: Support for Sage Intacct dimensions: Location, Department, Class, Project, Customer, and custom dimensions

For a $120M multi-location services company running two Sage Intacct entities, SAP Concur's native Sage Intacct integration pulls GL accounts, vendor lists, and Intacct dimension lists directly into Concur via a bidirectional, near-real-time sync. The Sage Intacct Marketplace listing published by SAP Concur confirms that 'SAP Concur automatically collects all Account Codes, dimension lists, and vendors directly from Sage Intacct,' and a third-party implementation review (RSM Technology) confirms that 'Intacct dimensions can be selected and mapped into SAP Concur.' During invoice coding in Concur Invoice, coders select dimension values (Location, Department, Class, Project, Customer) …

Limitations: The five named standard dimensions (Location, Department, Class, Project, Customer) are evidenced as synced through the native integration, but Sage Intacct user-defined (custom) …

Requirement evaluated: Support for Sage Intacct dimensions: Location, Department, Class, Project, Customer, and custom dimensions

This $120M multi-location services company runs two ERP entities in Sage Intacct and requires that the AP automation layer carry all six dimension types (Location, Department, Class, Project, Customer, and any custom dimensions) through to Intacct on every posted bill. Esker's documented Sage ERP integrations cover Sage X3, Sage FRP 1000, and Sage 100 only. Esker's own integration page states that its pre-built connectors are 'tailored' to Sage X3, Sage FRP 1000, and Sage 100, with no mention of Sage Intacct as a connected ERP. …

Limitations: Esker has no documented integration with Sage Intacct; its Sage connectors target Sage X3, Sage FRP 1000, and Sage 100. A buyer on Sage Intacct would have no path to dimension-level coding or multi-entity bill posting through Esker at any price point.

Requirement evaluated: SOC 2 Type II certification (current, not in-progress)

For a $120M multi-entity services company requiring a current SOC 2 Type II certificate, SAP Concur meets the standard through a dedicated, annually renewed audit program hosted on the SAP Trust Center. The most recently issued report covers the audit period April 1, 2024 through March 31, 2025, and was prepared by an independent third-party CPA firm. The scope explicitly includes Concur Invoice (the module relevant to your AP process), and the report covers the Security, Availability, and Confidentiality trust service criteria under AICPA standards. …

Limitations: The full SOC 2 Type 2 report is NDA-gated rather than publicly downloadable, which is standard practice but does require your team to formally request it through the SAP Trust Center. …

Requirement evaluated: SOC 2 Type II certification (current, not in-progress)

For a $120M services company requiring a current SOC 2 Type II report before deploying AP automation, the publicly documented picture for Esker is materially incomplete. Esker's primary platform-wide certifications are ISO 27001 (for its Information Security Management System, renewed via A-lign) and SOC 1 Type 2 under SSAE 18 and ISAE 3402, which validate internal control processes for on-demand services. Esker's own security datasheet confirms that SOC 2 Type II examination was completed in 2020, but scoped only to the Collections Management solution, not to the AP automation module. Esker's customer-confidence page (updated March 2026) …

Limitations: The buyer's requirement is a current SOC 2 Type II report, and the most recent public evidence shows Esker's SOC 2 Type II scope is limited to the Collections Management module as of 2020; the AP platform's documented certifications are ISO 27001 and SOC 1 Type 2 (SSAE 18), which do not satisfy a SOC 2 Type II requirem …

Requirement evaluated: Automatic extraction of: vendor name, invoice number, date, PO number, line items, amounts, tax, and payment terms

For a services company currently keying 1,800 invoices per month from email and mail, SAP Concur's Invoice Capture feature handles pre-processing stage 1 (legitimacy/data extraction) using OCR combined with machine learning. Invoices created with Invoice Capture leverage Concur's automated service to process vendor-submitted invoices via email, upload, fax, or hard copy; the system uses OCR and machine learning to extract data, capturing details like vendor name, invoice number, date, line items, PO numbers, and GL codes automatically. At the line level specifically, Concur Invoice captures the description, quantity, unit prices, and categorizes the item by expense type. …

Limitations: Payment terms extraction is the documented gap: official SAP Concur Invoice Capture field lists (SAP Learning Portal and concur.com product documentation) enumerate vendor name, invoice number, date, line items, PO number, tax, and amounts, but do not explicitly include payment terms as a captured field, which matters …

Requirement evaluated: Automatic extraction of: vendor name, invoice number, date, PO number, line items, amounts, tax, and payment terms

For your team of three processing 1,800 invoices per month across email and mail channels, Esker's Accounts Payable module addresses invoice capture at Stage 1 (legitimacy and data intake) of the pre-processing journey. The platform captures invoices automatically across channels such as email, EDI, mail, fax, and supplier portals, then brings them into one standardized workflow. The extraction engine is Esker Synergy AI: Esker Synergy AI optimizes invoice data extraction by using machine learning and deep learning to accurately extract and populate into a validation form, or auto-approved when no exception is detected. …

Limitations: Explicit documentation confirms vendor name, invoice number, date, PO number, line items, amounts, and tax code as extracted fields; direct confirmation that payment terms are extracted as a discrete OCR field from the invoice document itself (rather than sourced downstream from contract data in Esker's S2P module) …

Requirement evaluated: KPI tracking: average days to approve, touchless rate, cost per invoice, exception rate, discount capture rate

For your 3-person AP team handling 1,800 invoices a month across 2 Intacct entities, Concur's KPI tracking runs through Intelligence, its embedded reporting tool. Intelligence is described as a fully customizable reporting tool embedded within the Concur platform, with editable or custom reports plus scheduled report and dashboard distribution. Approval timing is covered by prebuilt content: an Invoice Cycle Time Segments report showing the average time an invoice spends at each stage of the payment lifecycle, and Workflow Cycle Time reports (Invoice > Workflow Cycle Time Details) that identify bottlenecks. …

Limitations: I found no documented touchless-rate or cost-per-invoice metric, and no documented exception-rate KPI beyond matching exceptions displayed per invoice. Those would have to be built as custom Intelligence reports, which is extra reporting work for a 3-person team. …

Requirement evaluated: Approval bottleneck analysis: which approvers are slowest, which invoice types take longest

For a 3-person AP team at a $120M multi-location services company currently blind to approval timing, Esker provides role-specific KPI dashboards that surface process efficiency metrics across the full invoice lifecycle. AP managers get a dedicated dashboard tier covering spend visibility, process efficiency, and payment KPIs, while cost center owners see requests pending approval in real time. The platform tracks average processing time by month and breaks out invoices by type (PO vs. non-PO), giving the AP manager visibility into which invoice categories move slowly. …

Limitations: The documented metrics include average processing time by month and invoice type breakdowns, but Esker's product documentation does not explicitly surface a pre-built 'approver league table' report showing ranked cycle times per named approver; that view would likely require the buyer to configure a custom dashboard us …

Requirement evaluated: Duplicate invoice detection across vendor, amount, date, and invoice number; must catch cross-entity duplicates

For a multi-entity services company running two Sage Intacct entities through Concur Invoice, the platform's native duplicate detection operates through an audit rule identified by exception code DUPINV. When an invoice is saved or submitted, the system checks four fields against existing invoices in the system: vendor, invoice number, invoice date, and invoice amount. As confirmed by SAP Concur community forum responses from the vendor's own support staff, these four fields are the standard validation criteria and are not modifiable by administrators. The rule raises a warning ('This is a duplicate invoice number, please research before processing') …

Limitations: The buyer's explicit requirement is cross-entity duplicate detection spanning both Sage Intacct entities; Concur Invoice's standard DUPINV audit rule is scoped per company code by default, creating a gap precisely where the buyer needs coverage. …

Requirement evaluated: Non-PO invoice routing: automatic GL coding suggestions based on vendor history and invoice description

For your approximately 810 non-PO invoices per month covering utilities, professional services, subscriptions, and insurance, Esker Synergy AI applies AI-based predictive line-item coding at the point of invoice capture. The mechanism is explicitly documented for non-PO invoices: Esker's machine learning and deep learning engine analyzes historical transaction data and recommends GL account, cost center, cost type, and tax code values for each invoice line, surfacing those suggestions in a validation form for AP review or bypassing review entirely when no exception is detected. …

Limitations: Esker's documentation confirms coverage of GL account, cost center, cost type, and tax code dimensions for non-PO coding, but the specific depth of its Sage Intacct connector relative to Intacct's full custom-dimension schema (including any user-defined dimensions your two entities may use) …

Requirement evaluated: International wire payments to 8 overseas vendors with multi-currency support

For a $120M services company needing to pay 8 overseas vendors in multiple currencies, Concur Invoice's native payment network does not cover international wire transactions. As documented by SAP Concur's own Director of Global FSI Partnerships, the platform historically handled payments 'only within the US and Canada,' with any international payment falling outside the system and requiring separate, manual bank processing. To close this gap, SAP Concur partnered with TransferMate, an independent third-party payments company, whose 'PaymentsHub' product can execute cross-border payments in 130+ currencies across 160+ countries and embed within Concur Invoice's approval flow. …

Limitations: International wire and multi-currency AP vendor payments require contracting with TransferMate, a separate third-party company, as Concur has no native international payment rails of its own. …

Requirement evaluated: Automatic remittance advice sent to vendors upon payment

For a 3-person AP team at a $120M multi-location services company currently sending remittance advice manually (or not at all), Esker addresses supplier payment visibility primarily through its supplier portal rather than through event-triggered outbound remittance delivery. Esker's AP automation module gives suppliers direct, self-service access to invoice and payment status via an online portal, reducing inbound status inquiry calls to the AP team. Separately, Esker's Synergy AI layer can automatically sort and generate responses to inbound supplier inquiries about payment status, including overdue payment reminders and payment confirmation questions. …

Limitations: The primary documented supplier communication mechanism is portal-based self-service access, which places the discovery burden on each vendor and requires portal adoption; for the 1,800 invoices per month this buyer processes across facilities, subcontractor, subscription, and utility vendors, those vendors must active …

Requirement evaluated: Multi-factor verification for banking change requests; we need systematic fraud prevention, not email-based trust

For a $120M services company with an AP team of three, the specific risk is that a bad actor — whether an external attacker impersonating a vendor or an insider — can request a vendor banking detail change and have it processed without any systematic, event-triggered verification step standing in the way. SAP Concur Invoice does have platform-level two-factor authentication: as of October 2023, 2FA via an authenticator app is mandatory for all users signing in with a Concur username and password. However, this 2FA challenge fires at login, not at the moment a banking field is edited. …

Limitations: No documented native mechanism in Concur Invoice specifically intercepts a banking detail change with a preventive control: no event-scoped MFA re-challenge, no mandatory second-authorizer (dual-control) …

Requirement evaluated: Vendor communication log: track every inquiry and response to eliminate the 6 hours/week our team spends on status calls

For a 3-person AP team currently spending 6 hours per week fielding status calls, Esker addresses this through two interlocking mechanisms. First, the Esker Supplier Portal gives vendors self-service, 24/7 access to real-time invoice and payment status at each workflow stage (received, approved, paid) so they can check themselves without contacting AP. Second, a built-in chat tool on the portal lets suppliers and the AP team exchange messages directly on the invoice record; all conversations are retained in a persistent log accessible to both parties at any time. …

Limitations: The communication log and status visibility only capture interactions that flow through the portal; vendors who do not adopt the portal and instead continue to call or email will still generate untracked inquiries, so the volume reduction depends on supplier enrollment rates. …