- With a commercial card solution that includes a robust business spend management platform, you can quickly issue cards with custom limits and spend policies.
- Save time and boost productivity with a card that has a full range of business spend management capabilities.
- Centralizing spending on a single commercial card can help you increase efficiency while reducing costs and risk.
As a fast-growing company, it’s critical to focus on how you can tighten financial controls, while still enabling your teams to efficiently take care of business.
Many innovation economy companies find that choosing a business credit card with an integrated travel and expense management platform can make a huge difference. It empowers you to develop financial discipline and make the best use of your company card.
Here are five strategies to help tame your spending.
1. Gain precise control over employee spending
Give your teams company expense cards without giving up control. With a commercial card solution that includes a robust business spend management platform, you can quickly issue cards with custom limits and spend policies for any user or use case.
Issuing virtual credit cards gives you even more control (and less cost and risk). In just minutes, you can issue a virtual card with a secure, randomly generated number and your precise criteria for how and when it can be used.
2. Increase efficiency with automated expense reporting
Manual processes can be a major drain for your employees and finance staff. Save time and boost productivity with a card that has a full range of business spend management capabilities, such as mobile expense reporting and automated approvals. Transactions post directly into the platform and can automatically flow into your accounting or ERP system. Reducing manual workloads is a powerful way to reduce costs and risk of errors and enables your finance team to close books faster.
3. Earn rewards as a revenue stream
Moving more spend to your commercial card increases your opportunity to capitalize on cash back rewards. Using a card that earns points on all of your spend may benefit you more than a card that offers a higher rewards rate, but only for a few business expense categories.
Redeeming rewards as cash back statement credit can be a valuable revenue stream to support your growth. Or you might offset some operating expense by redeeming points for office essentials like laptops, or gift cards for employees as workplace perks that reinforce your team culture.
4. Reduce business expenses with early pay discounts
Using your company card for vendor payables, you may be able to take advantage of early payment discounts. Talk with your suppliers about paying with a card instead of paper checks. Although in some cases card payments incur processing fees, leveraging discounts and reducing check handling helps offset that cost.
To optimize your payment strategy, analyze your master vendor file to identify who takes credit cards and review existing payment terms. It can help you choose your best opportunities to move check payments to a business credit card and capture cost-cutting efficiencies.
If you’re evaluating a new company card provider, take note of which issuers provide expert advisory to help optimize how you manage payables.
5. Consolidate spend for strategic advantages
Centralizing spending on a single commercial card can help you increase efficiency while reducing costs and risk. For example, you’ll have better visibility and unified reporting to manage cashflow more easily and can help stay on budget by issuing employee cards with custom limits. You can also reduce fraud risk by restricting card transactions to your approved vendors and suppliers.
And with all spend on one company card, it’s easier to leverage payments data to identify your most used vendors and engage them to negotiate discounts or better payment terms that cut expenses.
Learn more about SVB Business Cards or talk with your SVB Payments Advisor to get started.