Empowering employees and controlling spend aren’t mutually exclusive. Issuing corporate credit cards has long been the gold standard for managing business-related spending.
Often, corporate card programs add more risk than reward. If an employee goes rogue, the company is liable for repaying the bank. That can even mean docking pay—or worse—taking the employee to court to recoup damages.
There’s also the issue of willingness and ability. Not every employee or contractor has the means or desire to use their personal card for business expenses. They certainly don’t want to incur expenses and wait to be reimbursed while their bill accrues interest. After all, shouldn’t the company be covering costs up front instead of employees offering interest-free loans?
The alternative is having employees incur charges on behalf of the company, which comes with a different set of challenges. Even with an air-tight travel and expense policy, spending can get off track. Your finance team then has to play the role of “Expense Police” and deal with the fallout and blame games that follow.
Fortunately, there is a better way.
Introducing Emburse Cards for Certify
Traditional corporate card programs are clunky at best. Especially when it came to issuing cards for new employees. With Emburse Cards, administrators can quickly create secure virtual cards within minutes. Users can then add this virtual card to a digital wallet for easy use online and at most retailers.
Each card is tailored to the user with granular expense controls. Have a company perk that allows for buying lunch or dinner? You can easily set up specific rules for everything from when a transaction takes place to the vendor you’re paying. Emburse Cards are also incredibly secure. Administrators have the power to set self-expiring dates to shut down cards automatically. They can also free, cancel, or reissue a new virtual card with a few clicks.
Bye, bye reimbursements
One of the most significant pain points for finance and employees is waiting for reimbursement. Best-in-class expense solutions cut reimbursement times from a few weeks to a little over three days. Yet sometimes, even that’s too long.
Virtual cards make it easy for employees to make approved purchases without a single transaction hitting a personal card. Each transaction is properly coded with a seamless sync to Certify Expense. That way, they can manage all of their expenses using the same user-friendly tool they’ve come to know and love.
Better control, visibility, and account(ability)
The intuitive card issuing platform has hidden benefits for finance teams: greater control, oversight, and employee accountability.
Emburse Cards offer complete expense control from the point of sale through reimbursement. As expense policies are baked-in, purchases that don’t adhere to policy are stopped at the point of sale. This has always been the highest goal for finance as it limits exposure and the risk involved with T&E spending.
Employees can even request more funds on the off chance a purchase has gone up in price and is now over budget. Administrators receive a notification in-app, with a message to explain the situation and inform the right decision.
The seamless integration to Certify Expenses makes it equally easy to keep your accounting platform as a single source of truth. Any expense reported processed through Certify is perfectly matched to your accounting platform without the need for double entry.
In the end, your finance team will have the exact level of control and visibility they need to contribute to the organization’s strategic goals, with the expense data to back up their decisions.
Don’t make employees wait for reimbursement.
Want to see how simple it is to issue policy-backed physical and virtual cards? Sign up for a personalized demonstration of Emburse Cards to learn more.