All businesses have to deal with a certain degree of expenses, from the smallest family or individually run stores to the largest multinational companies.
From software and travel, any additional cost incurred by an employee needs to be reimbursed. So, what is the best way to go about doing this?
One way is to get employees to fill in paperwork detailing their spending and then to provide the receipts to prove it – which can often be quite difficult as human nature can often dictate that we throw receipts away.
Alternatively, they could be given a company credit card, although it would be very difficult to track exactly what each transaction was for – making the system open to exploitation.
Petty cash can help to cover small expenses, while shifting all claims to the end of the month can also be riddled with mistakes.
One way of getting past these issues is to consider a prepaid business card – topped up by the company for an individual’s use.
This prevents overpayment while the cards themselves are not linked to any other bank accounts, reducing the risk of fraud or misuse.
Control
Company leaders should be able to manage the business expenses, so it’s very important that they have some degree of control over spending.
With the correct management, prepaid business cards can cover all necessary expenses and the companies concerned can go on safe in the knowledge that their expenses are under control.
This should take a very limited period of time, vastly reducing the number of hours required to sort business expenses every month.
Reduced administration
At the same time, there will also be no need to sift through lots of little receipts to find the ones that match up to individual claims.
As a result, the business manager can see all expenditure and can then draw up a list of potential issues if he feels it to be necessary.
Expenses on the cards are trackable and any questionable expenses could be blocked on an online system to ensure the system is not exploited.
With access to online management services, statements for all cards should be readily available and that would provide a clear trail of expenses for each card.
This is vital to tracking expenses every month and to the development of ways to reduce expenditure in the long run.
Reducing costs
By picking the right card it should make managing expenses a far cheaper option than traditional methods of receipt-collecting.
Some cards carry fees to open accounts, but even in these cases the money saved in administration costs should present a significant saving.
The key points to note from managing expenses with a prepaid card are the potential to save both time and money – vital aspects of running a successful business.
Expert Comment: Business prepaid cards are an excellent mechanism of managing and monitoring business expenses and are used by a number of organisations as a mechanism of tackling abuse of company funds. Corporate travel cards help track business expenses whilst providing excellent exchange rates and the Caxton FX Corporate Travel card is worth looking at whilst the PFS business prepaid cards are well rewarded within business for payouts, disbursements, payroll management and more. The Cashplus Business prepaid card is another option worth considering! – Amit Sharma
Amit Sharma is the CEO and Founder of www.prepaid365.com and a senior prepaid industry consultant. You can follow him on LinkedIn.
