Introduction
Business credit cards are a popular way of managing expenses in larger companies.
They make it easy for employees to pay for work-related expenses and give Financial Controllers a better view of spending.
In this article, we will:
- Explore the benefits of using business credit cards to manage employee expenses.
- Explore effective modern solutions offering business value.
- And discuss ways to enhance visibility and control over spending while minimising risks like card fraud.
What are business credit cards?
Business credit cards are, in essence, the same as personal credit cards. But the account linked to that card belongs to a company rather than a person.
Employees using business cards must provide proof of purchase. The Accounting department needs these for reconciliation and tax purposes.
The most common use case includes using credit cards for tooling payments for example Canva subscriptions or Google Ads.
Business cards can often given to employees who have frequent expenses. Think travelling employees and salespeople. With business credit cards, they can now pay for these expenses without dipping into their own pockets.
How do business credit cards operate?
While there are some similarities, business credit cards and traditional credit cards have distinct features. The introduction of modern business credit card solutions brings a host of benefits, including:
- 0% Forex markup: With Mobilexpense business credit cards, enjoy a 0% markup on foreign exchange when travelling internationally.
- Online card management: Easily order, freeze, block and manage all business credit cards online without setting foot in the bank.
- Virtual and plastic cards: Choose the type of business credit cards that best suit your organisation's needs and employee's use cases.
How to optimise expense management using modern business credit card solutions:
Virtual cards and mobile apps, present a unique and effective solution to the traditional challenges of business credit cards. This is beneficial for companies dealing with numerous 'one-time' expenses, offering enhanced flexibility, access, spending control, and fraud prevention.
Virtual Cards and Mobile Apps
These modern solutions offer:
- Enhanced flexibility: Virtual cards can be issued quickly and managed easily, providing the necessary flexibility without the logistical challenges of physical cards and offering numerous benefits. Using an expense solution with a mobile app simplifies receipt management. Users take a picture of their receipts to store them on the spot.
- Enhanced access: By issuing virtual cards, companies can extend access to business credit without the overhead associated with traditional cards, reducing delays and costs.
- Simple receipt management: Using an expense solution with a mobile app can greatly simplify receipt management. Employees can photograph receipts immediately after purchases, and OCR technology will extract transaction data, reducing the manual effort required for expense submission. This ensures automatic matching of transactions and receipts when the card is in the purchaser's name. By integrating virtual cards and mobile apps, companies can streamline the expense process, making it more efficient and user-friendly.
- Real-time spending control: This integration also enhances real-time oversight and control over spending. Finance teams gain better visibility into spending patterns, enabling them to set spending limits and cost categories more effectively.
- Expense analysis: User-friendly dashboards and reports provide the tools needed for thorough analysis and management. Using an expense solution with business credit cards gives Finance teams control over spending limits, cost categories and more. As do easy-to-use dashboards and reports that can be analysed and shared with management. The integration feeds your card transactions into your expense solution daily or weekly. All you have to do is watch as your grasp on spending control increases with that additional visibility.
- Eliminate the risk of card fraud: Modern fraudsters do not even need the physical card anymore. They can gain access to your details and use them for online purchases without ever holding the card. The Mobilexpense app automatically controls the data extracted by the OCR, along with the data the user entered. If the two do not match, SpendController, the app issues a red flag for manual control of the expense.
Smarter spend management
Business cards empower management with a comprehensive view of company spending, surpassing the control offered by cash or personal cards.
Expense management solutions such as Mobilexpense help companies streamline employee expense reimbursement while eliminating paperwork and associated frustrations.
Besides, digital expense solutions automate adherence to business policies and regulatory compliance, especially when used with business credit cards.
This combination allows you to:
- Standardise your expense process.
- Monitor business spending in real-time, deep-diving into the spending per business unit.
- Reimburse employees' business expenses faster, with less back and forth.
- Streamline your expense process, reducing the number of time-consuming manual tasks each person needs to fulfil.
- Increase visibility into spend in real-time while tracking positive or concerning trends.
Savings for international travel
The 0% Business Credit Card by Mobilexpense enables maximised savings while travelling with no Forex markup.
More flexible employee business spending
Company cards give employees the freedom to spend as they best see fit. They also give people higher accountability which can lead to more frugal spending. When employees know their spending is scrutinised every month, they tend to be more careful.
Giving employees business credit cards for expenses further increases employee satisfaction by expediting the expense process and preventing them from being out of pocket for hundreds or thousands of euros each month.
By combining the use of business credit cards with an automated expense management system, your employees:
- Spend less time manually processing expenses and more time doing work that matters to them and the company.
- Feel more responsible and accountable for their spending.
- Free themselves of the worry related to reimbursements.
The value add of expense management with business credit cards is even more evident when analysing it in practice.
Conclusion
Modern Business credit card solutions facilitate more efficient spending management, allow for more flexible employee spending, and improve visibility. Moreover, business cards integrate with expense management solutions, which spreadsheets fail to do.
By signing up to receive our corporate credit cards email, you gain insights on how to give your employees more spending autonomy.
At the same time, you can maintain a sense of control with the use of business credit cards. This integration provides a level of security and information that is unmatched by other methods.