SAP Concur - Retrieving Receipt Images via file

[stefano_mantello]

I have been a Technical Consultant at SAP Concur for quite some time and have worked with many clients to help them build interfaces between their systems and SAP Concur. One requirement I regularly see is how to retrieve receipt images from SAP Concur.

The Image Delivery Extract is a way for clients to obtain their Invoice and/or Receipt image on a regular basis. There could be different and several reasons to have this feature such as: auditing requirements that may dictate the need for these image files, or clients desire to integrate their image files with in-house applications, etc.

There are several options for getting receipt image files from SAP Concur. These include:

• Image Delivery Extract
  A zip-file delivered via SFTP in a predefined format. The extract will include images sent from any source (fax, email, uploaded or using mobile device) and from any Concur module (Expense, Invoice, Travel). It does not allow for any filtering.
• SAP Integration with Concur Solutions (ICS) for SAP ERP Systems
  Allows you to define an archive location within the SAP ERP system. Once setup the receipt images are retrieved as part of the FI posting and added to the financial document. Source: Setup Guide in the SAP Help Portal (On-Premise, S/4HANA, S/4HANA Cloud).
• Web Service APIs
  Allows you to retrieve images based on filter criteria through a series of calls from a program to extract the data for immediate consumption. If you are interested in this option, please see this post for more details and examples.

In this blog I will describe the details of Image Delivery Extract feature.

Prerequisites

Image Delivery is available if your company:

• Uses Concur Expense, Concur Travel & Expense, or Concur Invoice
• Has a pre-existing SFTP site with SAP Concur solutions
• Is using the Professional edition

Historical images are available upon request. They arrive in the same format as described in the Introduction section, and have the following exceptions:

• Historical image extract requests are not recurring.
• Historical image extracts are billable.

Fees and Costs

This is a free service. There are no setup fees, monthly fees, or use fees.

Note: Historical Image Extract services are billable based on the size of the images within a specific date range and the time required the processing of the extract, due to specific custom filtering of the data requested by your company.

Introduction

The Image Delivery Extract is an out-of-the-box solution and cannot be modified or customized.

The feature will produce individual report images grouped in a ZIP file for each report/invoice, along with an index file containing the necessary information to reconcile the image with the corresponding report in Concur.

The index file contains information in the following order: Report ID, Employee ID, Report Key.

An additional option is to include the Report Entry ID in the index file. In this case, the index file will contains information in the following order: Report ID, Employee ID, Report Key, Report Entry ID along with the corresponding Image ID.

What is extracted?

• Image Delivery will provide extracts of image files (.png, .jpg, .jpeg, .pdf, .html, .tif, or .tiff) associated with reports/invoices that have newly reached the 'Sent For Payment' status since the last run of the Image Delivery job.
• The types of images included are: Receipt Images, Invoice Images, eReceipt Images, W9 Images.
• Image Delivery will include images from all modules (expense, invoice, etc.) in the same extract file.
• The extracts will consist of all image files, whether they were submitted by fax, file upload, or attached using mobile devices.
• Orphaned images files that correspond to deleted expense reports will not be extracted.
• The images attached by Test Users are extracted for Production entities. However, the Image Delivery feature does not work on Test entities.
• The Imaging Delivery Extract Job runs daily in the Overnight Process (ONP) only and contains receipts for items extracted in the Accounting (Expense) or Invoice Extract. Older images from invoice and reports extracts prior to enabling the job will not be included.
• Once opted into Image Delivery, the extract job runs every night, and the extracts are delivered as PGP-encrypted .ZIP files to the client's FTP site.
• Images are delivered digitally and cannot be extracted onto physical drives such as CDs, DVDs, or hard drives.
• It is not possible to push the Image extract to a secondary SFTP server or use a secondary PGP key specifically for delivering these images.
• If no images are found, an empty file is delivered, and its naming convention is: “extract_images_entityid_timestamp_noimages.zip”.
• The individual image file limit is 5 MB.
• The maximum size of the zip file is 500MB. If it is larger, a new zip file will be created with the next sequential number appended to the file name:
  • extract_images_entitycode _20201203175445_1of2.zip
  • extract_images_entitycode _20201203175445_2of2.zip

NOTE: The images provided are copies. The original images are still available through SAP Concur support.

Considerations

For customers with auditing requirements (eg. “Archiviazione sostitutiva” in Italy), the most common solution using this feature is to implement Image Delivery Extract including Report Entry ID in the index CSV file. This allows for reconciliation of the image with its corresponding expense entry.

Detailed description

The image extract zip file delivered will contain one index file and one ZIP file for each report/invoice, named <report_ID>.zip, with "report_ID" representing the expense report ID or invoice ID.

These nested zip files (<report_ID>.zip) will contain the image file for each attached image.

In the screenshot example above:

• "04X041IESAD3QA1H465W" and "156O6MY0F21R3B2719RX" are the report IDs.
• "p0000123abcd_20201203175445.csv" is the index file.

Report Entry ID not included

If the Report Entry ID is not included, then the image files will be named as <reportID_imageID>.<original_extension>

In the screenshot example above:

• “156O6MY0F21R3B2719RX” is the Report ID.
• “2YT7I7WCTHTLEKPKK4Z2PQL1IP7NUKHG" is the Image ID.

In the example below, we can see the information contained in the Index file: Report_ID,Employee_ID,Report_Key

Report Entry ID included

If the Report Entry ID is included, then image files will be named as <reportID_imageID_entryID>.<original_extension>

In the screenshot examples above:

• "QWDC8IUIZ5DLHDJ2S45X" and "Y2J9FKVUQMLDY3VZNK9N" are the Report IDs.
• "1C6DABFE01BF31B297B953B9375B346C" and "55B39539BB183A5AA4F523CAF0671BCC" are the image IDs.
• "240", "241", "242", etc. are the Report Entry IDs.

In the index file, for each report/invoice, its entry and the image associated with that entry will be included.

Example: Report_ID,Employee_ID,Report_Key,Report_Entry_ID::Image_ID||Report_Entry_ID::Image_ID||Report_Entry_ID::Image_ID||Report_Entry_ID::Image_ID

Conclusion

The Image Delivery Extract feature offered by SAP Concur provides a convenient and efficient way to obtain receipt and invoice images for auditing and integration purposes. With multiple options for extracting image files, you can choose the method that best suits your specific requirements. The feature is user-friendly, free of charge, and runs daily to ensure that you have access to the most up-to-date images. By opting for Image Delivery, you can streamline your processes and improve the efficiency of your financial document management.

Documentation:

Imaging