A virtual corporate card is an online business credit card with no physical card. Instead, an employee uses the same 16-digit number as a standard business card when paying for company expenses.
You can manage it virtually through a mobile app or website, helping your company control spending better from any location. These cards are also used in many B2B (Business-to-Business) online payments solutions, making them ideal for businesses that need to pay other businesses directly.
Any excellent virtual corporate card allows you to efficiently manage any business-related costs through the following features and benefits:
Eliminate The Need For Employees To Carry Cash Or A Company Credit Card
To ensure your employees only use the company resources for business expenses, a virtual card program will assign each of your staff a card to use. If you add an employee to your virtual card program, they will receive a unique username and password. They can log in from any device (e.g., smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access their card number and other details to book travel or purchase online.
The best part about virtual corporate cards is that they’re easy to use, secure, and convenient. As soon as the transaction is complete, the system will automatically store all the information so you can easily view and review it at any time. You won’t have to worry about lost receipts ever again because they’ll be stored electronically and systematically!
Simplify The Process Of Keeping Receipts
Keeping track of receipts can be time-consuming and tedious. And more so, having to spend hours reconciling each expense and transaction. And as such, a virtual corporate card can be just your solution.
When using a virtual corporate card, reconciling your expenses is simplified since your transactions are automatically sent to the accounting system of your choice. This means there’s no need to enter financial data into spreadsheets or software programs manually. In return, this can make reconciliation much quicker and less complicated for you and your employees. You can even assign specific controls to ensure that each expense is adequately categorized and paid on time each month.
Speed up Expense Reporting
In some cases, if your employees use their personal funds for a business transaction or expense, they’ll need to wait until the company reimburses them. This means that finance teams could be inundated with expense reports when everyone submits at once. A virtual corporate card can help streamline this process.
With virtual corporate cards, expense reports are automatically created in real-time, meaning employees can submit them as soon as the transactions have cleared and don’t have to wait for a statement date or be reimbursed. Finance teams can also approve these expenses in real-time, helping them stay on top of the workload and reducing overall administrative costs.
Identify Trends With Detailed Reporting
Businesses can lose their competitive edge when they aren’t able to keep up with their spending trends or aren’t willing to change how they operate. For one, you can use detailed reporting to identify your company’s current spending patterns to make informed changes based on your business needs.
Detailed reporting is also helpful for keeping an eye on employees’ expenses. If you notice an employee’s expense trend has changed significantly, it could be a warning sign that something may not be right. For instance, it could be that your employees might be abusing their virtual card privileges. Knowing how much money each employee typically spends and how frequently, it’s easier to spot outliers in those habits and get to the bottom.]
Automate Spending Controls
With a virtual corporate card, you can create rules for how and when your employees use their cards. This allows you to manage how much money they’re allowed to spend while also eliminating the chance that they’ll overspend.
If you’re like most business owners, then you probably have concerns about who’s watching your bank accounts to make sure there are no pending issues. But with this system, however, your employees can only spend what you tell them they can spend. Thus, all of your concerns about unusual charges go out the window because everything is already taken care of by the rules you set up in the beginning.
Set Spending Limits By Category
This is a great way to ensure the card is only used for business expenses and prevent employees from overspending. You can set spending limits by category, merchant, or location.
If you have an employee who needs to travel frequently for work, setting spending limits by category can be very useful. For example, if you don’t want your employee to buy more than $500 worth of food during a work trip, you could create a limit of $500 on dining purchases. Then your employee could purchase up to $500 in food without needing any additional approvals.
Limits on categories are also helpful if you want certain types of purchases to require approval from managers or department heads. For example, you may want all hotel purchases to be approved by the head of marketing before they’re processed.
Get Real-Time Notifications
With a virtual corporate card, transactions are made almost instantly, so you receive real-time notifications when they occur. This helps you stay on top of your spending without waiting for billing cycles or statements.
Helps Prevent Fraudulent Incidents
If employees lose their physical credit card, they’re liable for any fraudulent charges until they report it lost or stolen. With a virtual corporate card, however, the ability for someone else to use it is limited because there’s no physical card number to steal or clone. Thus, you’ll be able to save more on administrative costs owing to business fraud.
Wrapping Up
A virtual corporate card is an ideal tool to help you manage your team’s expenses. This can be especially useful when many of your employees work remotely or if you want to save time and make payment processing faster. While the old-school method of manually collecting receipts and inputting them into an accounting system is still possible, it pales compared to the efficiency of a virtual corporate card.
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