Best Practices for Preventing Business Credit Card Abuse

Understand the importance of having a credit card policy and the actions your company could take if employees violate the policy.

Many companies have implemented using credit card programs for their employees as they can see benefits such as: tighter controls in monitoring expenses, less paperwork and processing of expense checks, savings on travel, hotels, and supplies. However, if the proper credit card policy is not in place it could cause issues such as: overspending which will impact a company's cash flow, the more credit cards that are issued the greater chance of them getting lost or stolen, employees could abuse their spending levels or depending on which type of credit card program they enroll in, it could cost additional expense for the company. In this topic, you will learn about the evolvement of credit cards, why companies choose to use them, why they could be more beneficial to smaller companies than large corporations. You will understand why having a credit card policy in place is essential to prevent any credit card abuse as well as why this policy must be integrated with the companies travel and entertainment policy to send a clear message to all employees as to how they must handle their company credit cards. We will also discuss the actions your company could take if employees violate the credit card policy. Plus, we will also discuss other controls that companies I have worked at have implemented to eliminate the challenges they faced with employee's misuse of their expense reports and credit cards.

Learning Objectives

• You will be able to identify the pro's and con's of issuing corporate credit cards.
• You will be able to recognize the differences in corporate credit cards.
• You will be able to identify items to include in a credit card policy.
• You will be able to recognize different credit card companies and their rules regarding corporate credit cards.