The annual holiday during the Christmas and New Year season is a time of the year when most of us are knee deep in packing our luggage, making plans, reservations and the whole jam. We work hard the whole year to save up for a treat at the end of the year, but for students like me, forking our way to a holiday while studying, ’tis the season to be proud. We’ve studied, worked hard and now deserve a break. We aren’t Fortune 500 companies, not super moms or savvy dads or a financial whiz, but when it comes to planning our finances on a holiday like this, we’re bad, really bad.

That’s where the Concur® mobile smart phone travel and expense app makes me smarter than I am with my money. It really does and I swear by it.

Concur® Expense started as a web based solution to help financially helpless people like me handle expenses on the web wherever we travelled. Initially, it allowed one to book and manage itineraries and submit expense reports. Adapting to the trend of the smart phones taking over our lives, Concur® Expense came up with an app for Android, Blackberry, Windows, and iOS that makes handling expenses easier.

Since I am not an accounting student and can barely handle my expenses without an extra hand and eye watching over me, I will not take away the mystique behind how the app works. If you’re interested though, you can watch this 12-minute playlist and explain it for us later.

The basics are covered within the playlist below. If you’ve got, questions like how to’s on setting up the app up on a smart phone of your choice or aren’t smart with Excel, but want to create a simple expense report? See how easy the app does all that for you. Want to capture receipts to add to your expense report? Watch it here.

The best feature since the application made the move to the mobile OS platform is how it did away with receipts. No more squabbles over who pays the bill and how much the bill is, especially when it is highly likely that one may lose or just forget a receipt. Just take a picture of your receipt and then chuck it in your phone’s digital memory to have a copy of it on you at all times.

The app allows to upload IRS compliant images to the expense reports, add car mileage and simply edit reports via manager access. The app makes it easy for the clueless holiday planner to book their travel on the go, with a host of apps in their roster.

For itinerary virgins or seasoned pros, TripIt from Concur is perhaps my favourite. Concur’s® Tripit says, “How does we work? We “automagically” capture your itinerary data from any source and make all of your travel booking details available online or on your smart phone and even import them directly into your expense report.” Isn’t that easy as 1-2-3? With Concur’s integrated service, Tripit prepares you for the worst. If you have to make travel plans off the bat or unexpectedly, with Concur you can add these expenses to the report later and have the ability to pre-approve travel requests so spending, booking and compliance stay in check.

Concur® latest addition is the Messaging app. This is a feature for businesses apparently, so if you’re a manager reading this head on over here to read how you can monitor an all-inclusive employee risk management and communication platform.

If you’re worried about security, then fear not. The Concur® Trust Platform with PCI Compliance, ISO and SSAE 16 certifications are combined with data encryption and remote wipe capabilities to ensure a secure solution. Credit card details and personal data are never exposed or stored on the mobile device and remain securely in Concur’s® world-class data center.

So all you need are your travel docs, luggage, family, a smart phone, cellular data or Wi-Fi, and the app to have a good time on a vacation or a well deserved holiday. Leave it up to your smart phone to handle your expenses for you.