SAP SE is expanding the reach of Concur, the market-leading expense management service that it acquired for $8 billion in 2014.

Concur Labs, an engineering group that SAP SE entrusts with developing new ways for workers to use the platform, today introduced two new chatbots that will extend its features to Slack. The first, Concur Expense, is rolling out into into public beta today following months of private customer trials.

As its name indicates, the virtual assistant is designed to make it more convenient for workers to log purchases covered under their companies’ reimbursement policies. When it comes to small items such as a business lunch, users can communicate the details to Concur Expense with a simple natural-language message. For bigger transactions, the chat interface lets them attach receipts that the bot automatically puts on file.

Concur Expense also includes controls for enterprise finance teams to let them view and authorize expense reports. It’s set to be joined by Concur Travel, a virtual assistant for booking business flights that’s expected to become available in coming months.

The latter bot makes it possible to search for flight tickets directly in the Slack interface based on criteria such as fare class and departure date. At checkout, Concur Travel automatically populates the user’s on-file credit card details into the appropriate fields along with loyalty program information.

The bots should be particularly appealing to enterprise workers who only need to log expenses occasionally. Instead of having to find their way around Concur’s native application interface, the virtual assistants will let users handle the process in the familiar Slack dashboard they use as part of everyday work.

Chatbots are one of several trends that SAP is prioritizing as part of an ongoing effort to move away from selling traditional on-premises software. The company increased cloud bookings by 31 percent in the fourth quarter, helping lift total revenue 6 percent, to $8.48 billion. In conjunction with the release of the earnings report, SAP announced plans to acquire cloud-based sales management provider Callidus Software Inc. for $2.4 billion.

Image: SAP