Chrome River, U-M’s new expense reporting system, goes live on Aug. 1.
The move to the new system, which replaces Concur, was announced earlier this year and is a joint effort led by the university’s Procurement Services Department and Shared Services Center.
MORE INFORMATION
The new system offers a variety of benefits to the university community, including:
- An intuitive, user-friendly homepage and dashboard.
- Enhanced expense report creation tools, including mobile apps.
- Integration with Collegiate Travel Planners, U-M’s designated travel partner.
- A well-developed optical character recognition tool to read receipts and auto-populate fields.
- Improved process for approvals.
“When we started evaluating options for U-M’s new expense reporting system over a year ago, we made a concerted effort to engage with members of the university community to get their perspective on what they wanted in the new system,” said Tally Thrasher, assistant vice president of procurement services and chief procurement officer.
“And it quickly became clear that users wanted, among other things, a tool that offered improved functionality for travelers, delegates and approvers, could easily be integrated with CTP, and had more robust reporting capabilities.”
Thrasher noted that, in addition to meeting these requirements, Chrome River is highly regarded by a number of other Big Ten universities such as Indiana University, the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota, which have been using the tool for several years.
Chrome River also is committed to providing exemplary service to its customers and partnering with them to improve efficiency and the overall user experience.
During the request-for-proposals process, Chrome River was the top choice of a cross-functional group of units that included UM-Flint, LSA, Student Life, Information and Technology Services, Procurement Services and the SSC. After Chrome River was selected to replace Concur, nearly 150 employees from the Ann Arbor, Flint, Dearborn and Michigan Medicine campuses participated in user testing of the system.
Many resources are available to help employees transition to Chrome River, including training for approvers, demonstration sessions, office hours and Q&A sessions, SSC expense-submission-process training, user guides and job aides, and a project webpage.
“We expect a high volume of reports as we approach our transition deadlines, which may lead to some processing delays. It’s very important to note, however, that these delays are not reflective of any issues with the functionality or capability of Chrome River,” said Pam Gabel, assistant vice president for the SSC.
“They are simply a consequence of the temporary increase in workload as we move closer to our transition date. Our teams are more than ready to handle this increase and we’re putting additional measures in place to manage it, including hiring temporary employees and completing a number of internal training sessions.”
Gabel added that, while Chrome River will go live Aug. 1, some functions in Concur will remain available until Sept. 30 to allow for final administrative processing.
“Beyond actively reaching out to the U-M community well in advance of the move to Chrome River and creating a very robust suite of resources to support the transition, we’re maintaining access to Concur until the end of September,” Gabel said. “This two-month overlap will further help with the transition to Chrome River by allowing units to access their old expense reports in Concur and give them adequate time to submit their existing card transactions.
“And we also recognize that meeting the usual policy deadlines is likely to be more challenging during this time and are committed to proceeding with flexibility, taking into full account the challenges of simultaneously sunsetting Concur and onboarding Chrome River.”
Thrasher added, “As the go-live date for Chrome River gets closer, we’d like to thank the U-M community for its ongoing support. We recognize the impact such a significant shift can have on our day-to-day operations and want to assure everyone that we’re taking steps to make this transition as smooth as possible.”
