Contents
Key takeawaysWhat Concur includesHow Concur is pricedHidden costsWhat we have seenNavan, Coupa and othersAnswering the account teamControlling Concur spendWhat to do nextFAQSAP Concur is SAP's travel, expense and invoice cloud, priced on transaction volume against a banded minimum you pay whether or not you use it. Size that minimum and the overage rate before you negotiate the headline price.
- Volume drives the bill. Concur is licensed on expense reports, bookings and invoices counted against a banded commitment, not on named users.
- The minimum is paid regardless. Any volume below the contracted floor is billed anyway, so the effective rate rises as usage falls.
- Overage costs more. Volume above the band is trued up at a higher rate than the committed unit unless you negotiate it at signing.
- Modules are priced separately. Expense, Travel, Invoice, Request and each add on service carry their own fees, so license only what is in use.
- Alternatives move the price. Navan, Coupa, Emburse and Expensify are the credible competitors to put in a real evaluation.
- Negotiate the rate last. An accurate volume baseline and a competitive evaluation do more for the total cost than a lower per transaction rate.
What does SAP Concur licensing include?
SAP Concur licensing covers four core modules, each priced on its own, plus a list of add on services with separate fees. SAP bought Concur in 2014 and usually sells it as a standalone cloud subscription, with its own order form and renewal date apart from your ERP contract.
The SAP Concur product page groups the core capability like this:
- Concur Expense. Expense capture, approval and reimbursement. For most companies this is the largest line on the order form.
- Concur Travel. Booking integrated with a travel management company (TMC), which charges its own fees on top.
- Concur Invoice. Accounts payable capture and approval for supplier invoices.
- Concur Request. Pre trip and pre spend approval before money is committed.
Which add on services carry their own fees?
Beyond the core modules, SAP sells services such as Audit (now listed as Intelligent Audit), Detect, ExpenseIt and Drive. They sit across the wider SAP spend management portfolio. Each carries its own fee, so put them in the cost model from the first quote.
Support is a separate line as well. SAP Concur sells Essential Care, Advanced Care and Select Care tiers, plus configuration services and a user support desk. Check which tier your order form names, and confirm the renewal quote carries the same tier at the same price.
Standard or Professional edition?
Concur Expense and Invoice come in a Standard edition, built for smaller companies with simpler approval flows, and a Professional edition for complex, configurable deployments. Larger buyers almost always sit on Professional. The edition decides how much configuration you can do yourself and how much you buy back as services.
How is SAP Concur priced?
SAP Concur is priced on transaction volume, and the number of users does not drive the bill. Submitted expense reports, travel bookings and processed invoices each count against a contracted band, and the contract sets a minimum commitment that you pay whether or not the volume arrives.
The SAP customer agreements and your order form define how transactions are counted and how overage is trued up. Read the metric definition before you accept a band, because the definition decides how many billable events your real activity produces.
SAP Concur lists starting prices only for smaller Expense buyers, all with unlimited users. Enterprise contracts are quoted individually.
- Base. Concur Expense from $7 per report.
- Plus. From $11 per report, adding ExpenseIt, reporting and the user support desk.
- Premium. Custom priced, and the only one of the three that includes Travel.
SAP notes that the price varies with the monthly commitment, the same kind of minimum commitment covered below.
| Driver | How it is measured | Risk to the buyer |
|---|---|---|
| Transaction band | Expense reports, bookings, invoices | Band set above real volume |
| Minimum commitment | Floor on billable volume | Paid even when unused |
| True up rate | Overage above the band | Higher than the committed unit rate |
| Travel fees | Per booking, plus TMC charges | Sits outside the headline price |
| Add on services and support | Separate line items | Added after the rate is agreed |
What counts as a billable transaction?
Get written answers to the edge cases before you sign. Ask whether a report sent back by an approver and resubmitted counts once or twice. Ask whether cancelled or changed bookings count, and whether supplier credit notes count as invoices. Each answer changes your effective volume, and the order form rarely spells them out.
SAP RISE Negotiation Guide
Pricing benchmarks and contract terms for the SAP renewals where Concur is often offered as part of a bundle.
Get the white paper →What are the hidden costs in an SAP Concur contract?
The hidden costs are the minimum commitment, the true up rate on overage, TMC and travel fees, and add on services. The headline per transaction rate is rarely where the money goes, and each of these costs is set in terms that get less attention than the rate.
The minimum commitment trap
The minimum is a floor on billable transactions. If actual volume runs below it, the unused commitment is pure cost. Minimums are often sized from headcount or an optimistic forecast, and travel volume in particular swings with budgets and policy. Baseline real volume before you agree the band.
The true up trap
When volume exceeds the band, the overage is trued up at a rate usually higher than the committed unit. Negotiate the overage rate at the same time as the band, or growth turns into a premium charge. Acquisitions are the common trigger, because new employees start filing reports immediately.
A worked example of band sizing
Say a company will file 50,000 expense reports in the first contract year and expects 10 percent growth in the second, to 55,000. SAP proposes a 60,000 report minimum, 20 percent above actual volume. The prices below are round hypothetical figures used to show the arithmetic. They are not SAP quotes.
| Option | Minimum and rate | Overage rate | Year 1 | Year 2 | Two year total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Accept the proposal | 60,000 reports at $6.00 | $7.80 (30 percent above) | $360,000 | $360,000 | $720,000 |
| B. Right size, overage untouched | 50,000 reports at $6.30 | $7.80 | $315,000 | $354,000 | $669,000 |
| C. Right size, overage at the committed rate | 50,000 reports at $6.30 | $6.30 | $315,000 | $346,500 | $661,500 |
In option A the company never reaches its minimum, so it pays for 10,000 unused reports in year 1. Its effective rate is $7.20 per report, well above the $6.00 on the quote. Option B accepts a 5 percent higher unit rate for the smaller commitment and still saves $51,000 over two years.
Option C adds overage priced at the committed rate. The 5,000 reports above the band cost $31,500 in year 2 instead of $39,000, and the two year saving against option A rises to $58,500. Options B and C carry the higher unit rate on the quote, yet both cost less in total.
What have we seen in recent SAP Concur reviews?
We supported roughly 20 to 30 SAP Concur reviews in 2024 and 2025. The cost surprise was rarely the per transaction rate. It came from the minimum commitment and from true up rates applied to volume that had never been baselined. Three patterns came up again and again:
- Minimums above real use. Minimum commitments ran 10 to 25 percent above actual transaction volume.
- Expensive overage. True up rates sat 15 to 40 percent above the committed unit rate.
- Costs outside the quote. Add on services and travel fees added 5 to 12 percent outside the headline price.
Across the 25 Concur contracts in our 2024 to 2025 review file, the median minimum commitment sat 18 percent above real volume. Right sizing the band delivered a median saving of 11 percent, before any movement on the per transaction rate.
Why pushing hardest on the per transaction rate is the wrong priority
The usual advice is to fight for a lower per transaction rate and accept the minimum commitment SAP proposes. We disagree. In roughly two thirds of the Concur reviews we supported, the rate was already reasonable, while the minimum sat well above real volume and the true up rate had never been negotiated.
SAP concedes the per transaction rate readily because the minimum and the true up are where its margin is protected. Baseline actual transactions first, right size the minimum, and settle the overage rate. Then negotiate the headline price.
A Concur contract is a bet on volume. Set the minimum too high and you pay for transactions that never happen.
How do Navan and Coupa change an SAP Concur deal?
A credible alternative in the evaluation is what makes SAP discount hardest. CIOs usually test Concur against travel and expense specialists and against broader spend platforms.
| Vendor | Where it competes | Commercial note |
|---|---|---|
| Navan | Travel and expense | Strong on integrated booking |
| Coupa | Spend management | Broad source to pay alternative |
| Emburse | Expense and AP | Mid market expense strength |
| Expensify | Expense | Point pressure on Expense |
What makes an evaluation credible to SAP?
SAP account teams can tell a real evaluation from a bluff. A real one has a named business owner, a request for proposal sent to at least one rival, a demo on your own expense policy and your ERP integration, and a timeline that finishes before the Concur renewal notice date.
Match the rival to the module that costs you most. Navan pressures Travel and Expense together, Coupa pressures Invoice and the wider spend platform, Emburse pressures Expense and AP, and Expensify pressures Expense on its own. Our SAP Concur negotiation guide covers the tactics for each.
What will the SAP Concur account team say, and how should you answer?
Expect the same few lines at most Concur renewals. Each has a reply that keeps the discussion on volume and terms.
- "The minimum reflects a company of your size." Reply that your minimum should follow billable transactions over the last 12 months, and send the monthly counts.
- "Commit to a higher band and we can lower your rate." Ask SAP to show the effective rate at your actual volume. Unused commitment often cancels the rate cut.
- "Overage rates are standard." Ask for overage at the committed unit rate, or for the right to move up a band at that band's rate for the whole year.
- "Intelligent Audit is included at no charge in year one." Ask for its price in years two and three and at renewal, in writing, or leave it off the order form.
- "Bring Concur into your wider SAP renewal for a better discount." Ask for Concur priced as its own line with its own renewal cap, then compare it with a standalone quote at the same volume.
The bundling offer deserves the most care. Carving Concur into a larger SAP agreement can improve the rate, but it ties the Concur renewal to your biggest SAP negotiation. For how SAP structures its cloud subscriptions across SuccessFactors, Ariba and Concur, see SAP cloud licensing models.
How do you control SAP Concur spend?
You control Concur spend by working through the contract in a set order, with the per transaction rate last. The sequence we use:
- Baseline actual transaction volume across expense, travel and invoice.
- Right size the minimum commitment to real volume instead of the forecast.
- Negotiate the true up rate down toward the committed unit rate.
- License only the modules and services in active use.
- Run a real evaluation against Navan, Coupa or Emburse.
- Negotiate the per transaction rate last, after the band and minimum are set.
How to check your own volume
- Expense reports. Pull submitted report counts by month for the last 12 months from Concur Analytics or Intelligence.
- Bookings. Take completed bookings from the monthly data your TMC sends, and reconcile them with Concur Travel.
- Invoices. Count invoices processed in Concur Invoice, and check them against supplier invoices posted in your ERP.
- The contract. Read the minimum, the band, the overage rate and every fee line on the current order form and the last two SAP Concur bills.
Contract wording to ask for
- A minimum set on trailing volume. This ties the floor to what you did, instead of a headcount estimate.
- Overage at the committed rate. Growth then costs what the base volume costs.
- Annual reconciliation. With a yearly true up, quiet months offset busy ones, so seasonal peaks do not trigger overage.
- A reduction right. After a divestiture or a hiring freeze you should be able to lower the minimum at renewal without a penalty.
- A cap on renewal uplift. Fix the maximum increase for the next term now, while SAP still wants the signature.
- Module removal at renewal. Dropping an unused module or service should reduce the price by its full line value.
What to do next
- 12 months before renewal. Pull 12 months of expense, travel and invoice transaction volume.
- 11 months out. Compare the contracted minimum commitment with that real volume, and note the renewal notice date on the order form.
- 9 months out. Find the true up rate and the travel and service fees in the contract.
- 8 months out. List the modules and services in active use and flag the rest.
- 6 months out. Start a credible Navan, Coupa or Emburse evaluation.
- 3 months out. Sequence the negotiation so the per transaction rate comes last.
- Before the next renewal. Bring in independent SAP advisory support, and use the SAP knowledge hub and the SAP RISE Negotiation Guide if Concur is being folded into a wider SAP deal.
Frequently asked questions
How is SAP Concur licensed?
By transaction volume. The billable events are usually submitted expense reports, plus travel bookings and processed invoices if you use those modules. Two numbers on the order form set most of your cost: the size of the contracted band and the minimum you commit to pay against it.
What modules does SAP Concur include?
The core modules are Concur Expense, Concur Travel and Concur Invoice, with Concur Request for pre trip approval. Services such as Audit and Detect are sold on top. Each appears as its own line on the order form, which makes it possible to drop one at renewal if it is not in use.
What is the minimum commitment in a Concur contract?
It is the number of transactions you agree to pay for each contract year, whatever you actually process. Falling short does not reduce the bill. That makes an accurate volume forecast the most valuable piece of preparation before a new order form or renewal.
How does the Concur transaction true up work?
SAP compares your actual transactions with the contracted band. Volume above the band is billed as overage at the true up rate, which is usually higher than your committed unit rate. Ask how often the reconciliation runs, because a yearly true up absorbs seasonal peaks better than a quarterly one.
How much does SAP Concur cost?
SAP Concur lists Expense starting prices for smaller businesses at $7 per report on the Base plan and $11 per report on Plus. Enterprise and Travel deals are custom priced, so your cost is committed volume times the negotiated rate per module, plus overage, add ons, support tier and TMC fees.
Which vendors compete with SAP Concur?
Navan, Coupa, Emburse and Expensify are the main alternatives across travel and expense. Running a live evaluation with one of them gives you the most pricing pressure at a Concur renewal, even if you fully expect to stay on Concur.
What are the hidden costs in SAP Concur?
Unused minimum commitment, overage billed at the true up rate, travel management company integration fees, and add on services such as ExpenseIt and Drive. None of these show up in the headline per transaction price, and together they are where most cost surprises land.
Should SAP Concur be bundled with a wider SAP agreement?
Only after you compare it with a standalone Concur quote at the same volume. Folding Concur into a larger SAP deal can lower the rate, but it concentrates your renewal risk in one negotiation. If you bundle, keep Concur as a separate priced line with its own renewal cap.
What is the most effective way to cut SAP Concur costs?
Combine an accurate volume baseline with a credible competitive evaluation. Resizing the minimum commitment to real volume and putting Navan or Coupa in front of SAP typically reduces total cost more than any concession on the per transaction rate.