I’m thrilled to announce that today we launched Concur Breeze, our new online expense reporting service designed specifically for small businesses. A 30-day free-trial of the service is available now at www.concurbreeze.com, and can also be found on the Google Apps Marketplace, Google's recently launched online storefront for Google Apps products and services.

Concur has years of experience providing expense management solutions for mid-sized businesses as well as some of the world’s largest companies. But we also know that small businesses have a unique set of requirements when it comes to managing their expenses. This market in particular has been underserved, leaving most small businesses to track and report their expenses with laborious spreadsheets.

From the initial stages of development, we wanted to build a product that solved the pain points and frustrations small businesses consistently felt about expense reporting. And with advancements in technology and market outreach tactics, we think the time is finally right for Concur to offer enterprise capabilities to even the smallest businesses. So we not only leveraged our industry-leading expertise in helping companies manage their expense reports, we also talked with hundreds of small business owners and managers. We spoke to freelance consultants, true road warriors that today spend precious personal time that could otherwise be billable just accounting for their expenses and charging them back to clients. We talked to the owner of an eco-tourism company that had no way of easily reporting on the specific costs of various travel destinations at a granular enough level to make future destination decisions.

For these business owners, it wasn’t vendor negotiations and fraud prevention tactics that characterized their needs – it was ease, simplicity, and visibility. They are excited to throw away the shoeboxes full of receipts and cumbersome spreadsheets in exchange for speed, detailed metrics, and fewer headaches. I’m eager to serve such a unique and innovative business sector, but I’m also very excited about the significance of Concur Breeze for our company, as this announcement signifies our commitment to innovating traditional business processes for all businesses, regardless of size. Through Concur Breeze, now even the smallest companies can experience the benefits of automated expense reporting.

I urge you to log on and try it out today – I’m confident that for all the small businesses out there, expense reporting will now be a breeze.