Out-of-the-box Travel Expense Posting Interface between S/4 HANA and Concur system using SAP Cloud Platform Integration

[VijayCR]

The integration scenario used in the blog Out-of-the-Box Integration flow and enables you to connect your SAP on-premise system with SAP Concur and perform the Travel Expenses postings from the Concur to SAP S/4 HANA Finance system.

Objective: -

There are two ways to post the travel expenses postings into SAP

• Direct Connection between the SAP S/4 and Concur systems


• Using a Middleware systems like CPI or PI systems  ( Our blog will focus on the Cloud Platform Integration )

This integration scenario that enables you to connect your SAP on-premise system with SAP Concur and perform the Travel Expenses postings from the Concur to SAP S/4 HANA Finance system.

Basic Architecture

Requirement: -

• This integration scenario used Out-of-the-Box Integration flow and S/4 HANA Configurations to perform Travel expense FI postings is created in Concur on the S/4 HANA system


• As a part of this we are now able to fetch the Travel Expense documents from the Concur to the SAP S/4 HANA system and it tries to create FI posting

Business Process Flow

Business Process Flow Diagram: -

Concur Travel Expenses à SAP CPI Standard IFlow à SAP S/4 HANA

We will utilize the flexibility of existing Iflow for Concur Integration for Finance

 

https://api.sap.com/package/ConcurIntegrationDataExportandFIPosting?section=Artifacts

We will use following IFlows:

After analyzing the standard iFlow for SAP Concur Travel Expenses, I found the following points.

• Go to discover tab of the CPI portal and search for concur finance we will find the below Standard iFlow


• Select the standard Concur IFlow and use the same ,In case of any custom logic required we can also copy the same


• 

Concur

• As iFlow is configured with HTTP sender adapter, we need to configure the below CPI end point address at source system i.e, S4 HANA.

https://XXX.hana.ondemand.com/http/concur/passthrough/allobjects

• 

CPI Pass through

• In the below groovy, it collect the target URL and access token from input payload which comes from S4 HANA(source).


• 

Groovy Script

• There is no input data structure which needs be pushed to target system as it is pass through scenario.


• The variables are set for address and query from the above script. Hence it needs to be passed from source system itself.


• 

HTTP Connection

S/4 HANA Implementation for Travel Expenses

Setting Up the System Connection

Steps in SAP S/4HANA

• Use transaction CTE_SETUP to call up the Setting Up the Integration with SAP Concur screen, where you'll find all activities that you previously selected for your integration.


• 

Setting up Connection

If we opt for a Direct Connection with out using the CPI

• Give a communication arrangement, this will create a communication system under communication system, for example “Concur”
  
  
  
  • Provide Concur Host URL, for example “eu1.concursolutions.com”
  
  
  • Provide your port, by default it is 443
  
  
  
  


• 

System Connection

The below is the important step where we provide the CPI end point of the Iflow configured so that the S/4 HANA system knows which middleware system it should point to

If we opt to use SAP Cloud Platform integration middleware the endpoint of the generated Iflow  as shown in the below has to be maintained in the Specify Target System

• 

Middleware connection

Once the End points are provided , Provide the Client credentials by fetching the Concur URL details from Concur system as shown in the below screenshot

• 

Once the setup is completed the system connection shows the green lights as shown in the below screenshot :

• 

Select the required Integration activates in our case it is FI postings( Prerequisite is to enable the Cost Center scenario 😞

• 

After the setup we can also schedule a background job using the below option and create a batch recurring job

• 

Recurring Batch Job

If the Concur integration URL is active then the documents are posted as shown in the below screenshots at 23:00 PM everyday as shown in the above job

• 

Additionally, we can implement BADI’s

• Note that not all Concur use cases are supported, but you can use the following BAdIs to implement posting-relevant deviations: -


• BADI_CTE_FIN_POST_DOC_CHANGES - for minor field changes


• BADI_CTE_FIN_POST_USES_CASES - for customer-specific report entries


• BADI_CTE_FIN_POST_ADJUST_DOC - to change the posting data

Receiver Monitoring & Error Handling

Errors are collected in log after processing records through SAP CPI using the monitor message processing

After Deployment of iflow, we need to go to monitoring steps.

• 

Click on Manage Integration Content to check whether iflow is successfully deployed or not.

After data is pushed from S4 HANA source system, we need to check at “Monitor Message Processing” step.

By Following the above steps we can integration Concur and S/4 HANA Finance system by using CPI.