Review: SAP Concur vs. Rho
An overview of the two solutions and how my experience with both compared.
Updated:
February 21, 2024
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February 21, 2024
SAP Concur is a travel and expense platform many organizations use today to manage expenses and travel bookings.
Read on to learn more about SAP Concur, how it compares with Rho, and my unique experience using both solutions.
Eliminate late receipt submissions and streamline transaction reconciliation with Rho.
SAP Concur is a cloud-based, integrated travel, expense, and invoice management offered by SAP, a Germany-based enterprise software company.
The platform offers three modules depending on your business needs:
SAP Concur is typically used by enterprise-level and middle-market companies with sophisticated expense policies, processes, and compliance requirements.
Note: SAP Concur does not offer corporate cards, so it is common for businesses to work with legacy corporate card providers like American Express or Capital One and use SAP Concur to process expense reports of spend made using these cards.
Rho is the finance automation platform middle-market companies use to control spend, manage cash, and automate operations like expense management and accounts payable.
Rho admins – typically finance team members or business owners – can issue unlimited physical or virtual Rho Cards to employees with strict spend controls and budget monitoring.
All Rho Card expenses are automatically processed using built-in platform approval workflows configured by you with the help of a Rho payment specialist.
For example, you can effectively digitize your company expense policy by assigning spend limits, merchant and category restrictions, and documentation requirements to individual cards – and creating automated approval sequences based on the spend amount.
See how Rho and SAP Concur compare on G2 here.
As of this blog’s posting date, Concur has an average rating of 4.0 stars compared to Rho’s 4.8 rating. As G2 notes:
“When assessing the two solutions, reviewers found Rho easier to use, set up, and administer. Reviewers also preferred doing business with Rho overall. Reviewers felt that Rho meets the needs of their business better than SAP Concur. When comparing the quality of ongoing product support, reviewers felt that Rho is the preferred option. For feature updates and roadmaps, our reviewers preferred the direction of Rho over SAP Concur.”
I’ve worked at two organizations that used SAP Concur for expenses and travel booking. Here is a summary of my past experiences using SAP Concur and how it compares to using Rho today.
Here is a summary of my typical experience using SAP Concur in previous roles.
I’d book my flights and hotels before the conference, an experience that wasn’t altogether difficult or painful. SAP Concur typically had convenient flight times, and charges would get expensed to the company's American Express card on file.
This is where I found using SAP Concur to be a pain. Throughout a work trip, I would typically use my credit card to purchase meals and additional materials. I’d have to immediately remember to take a picture of the receipt or risk issues while trying to file my expense report.
The soonest I could even think about filing a finished expense report was on my flight home. To do so, you’d create an expense report in SAP Concur, add individual expense items to your report, fill in the right details like the amount and if each was out of pocket, and upload your receipt.
Heaven forbid if you lost your receipt or didn’t take a picture in time. Assuming you had all of your documentation and had spent 45 minutes to an hour entering all your information in each expense’s required fields, you’d click submit and begin praying to the expense gods.
Call it pessimism, but I would always assume that my report would be rejected at least 1-2 times. Finally, after what felt like days of filling out the same expense report over and over, I would get the green light. My report was approved!
I would get reimbursed within 7-10 business days if I submitted an error-free expense report.
Here is how that experience compares to using Navan and Rho.
We use Navan for all our travel booking, which is convenient because I find Navan’s platform much more enjoyable. Also, Navan offers users travel funds if they stay within budgets and compliance designated by your company!
Even with last-minute bookings, I’ve found that Navan always offers a great selection of hotels and flight options.
For any expense – meals or materials for the conference – I simply use my virtual Rho Card, and I immediately get a text alert asking me to reply with a picture of the receipt.
Once I take a picture and send it back, this file gets attached to the expense in the Rho platform. If I need to add additional details like attendees, the budget the expense should ladder to, or other attendees, I can, in seconds, using the Rho Mobile App.
That’s how easy it is.
The few times I’ve had to use my personal credit card expenses, it took just a few seconds to file a reimbursement claim using the Rho Mobile App. Within a few business days (sometimes the next day!), I’d get reimbursed.
We’ve talked about the experience of an end-user (me) using SAP Concur and how that compares with Rho. So we thought we’d share a few anecdotes from finance teams using Rho.
The ease with which end-users upload receipts and process expenses with Rho translates to faster month-end close. The real-time card transaction data feed paired with Rho’s accounting integrations means customers can transform credit card reconciliation from a post-close process into a pre-close checklist item.
Here is the CFO of Native Strategies on his previous experience with SAP Concur:
“I’ve used Concur for years and hated it,” Majors said. “The back-end made it harder for my finance teams to do their job – and the integration into the ERP was a nightmare. While Expensify addressed some of these problems, they are also quite expensive.”
With Rho, expenses are easier for end-users to submit, making it more likely that expenses will be submitted promptly so the finance team can complete the month-end close faster. With notifications, finance teams don’t have to worry about chasing receipts.
As Echelon’s VP Controller said:
“Our sales team loves Rho,” said Carlson. “We can easily issue physical cards to them. When they get done with client dinners or check out of hotels, they simply take a picture of the receipt and either upload it through the Rho App or respond to text alerts. Plus, we can use virtual Rho Cards to segment our advertising spend across our different global regions.”
With Rho’s scalable spend controls, budget feature, and card limits, finance teams are better equipped to prevent out-of-policy spend before it happens.
As Innomark Controller Nathan Goodwin puts it:
“Rho’s budgeting tools give us the real-time ability to monitor our spend levels by department or project without having to pull lengthy reports,” Goodwin said. “The previous systems with AmEx and Concur were clunky and made it difficult just to understand our spend patterns.”
While Rho offers several integrated capabilities, many businesses start by first leveraging Rho as their expense management platform.
Rho has helped numerous businesses save thousands of hours and platform fees by migrating from Concur.
Interested in learning more about how Rho’s expense management solution platform can save you significant time and money every month?
See how Rho compares to SAP Concur, Brex, Ramp, Airbase, and more spend management platforms by getting in touch today!
Competitive data was collected as of November 14, 2023, and is subject to change or update.