Expense Management Best Practices: Integrated Corporate Cards

Two weeks ago, Chrome River announced a new strategic partnership with BMO Spend & Payment Solutions that allows us to offer their Corporate MasterCard, Travel Account Card, P-Card and One Card solutions to our clients. This reminded me of the facts that employing a corporate card program and then integrating it into your expense management software are both excellent expense-management practices.

Here are some of the major reasons why you should consider employing a corporate card program within your organization, and then integrate it into your expense reporting software:

1. Less Work for Your Employees: Each employee's card transactions will flow into the expense reporting software and be available for them to "drag and drop" onto their expense reports. This means more accurate data with less data entry for the employee. And we know how much you LOVE to do expense reports!
2. Hard Dollar Savings: Almost every credit card available today offers some sort of incentive in the form of rewards, rebates or both. It's a competitive market, and there are exciting opportunities for you to receive a return on money that your company would be spending anyway.  An average mid-size company can earn north of $100,000 per year in rebates and provide some great perks for employees at the same time, like access to airline clubs and travel insurance.
3. Reduced Fraud: Let's face it: When an employee pays cash or uses a personal credit card for company business, you are largely relying on his or her moral character and honesty to avoid fraud. Receipts can be falsified or fabricated altogether, and how would you really know?  With a corporate card, your company has tremendous visibility into all transactions that appear on the card. Because of this, companies are starting to mandate that all business purchases be made with a corporate card and either prohibiting cash or personal credit card charges or heavily scrutinizing them prior to reimbursement.

Some companies are concerned that employees will be late in filing for reimbursement; they don't want to pay the card provider (in the case of company-liability cards) and then have to "chase" the employee. This can easily be avoided through the use of employee-liability corporate cards and transaction-aging rules established within your expense management software. Employees can be gently reminded to submit their aged charges, or their privileges for incurring new expenses can be reduced until they do so.

Don't let these minor concerns or others like them stand between your organization and significant savings, visibility and control.