Sachin Sharma of Procure Desk shows small businesses how to keep credit card cash-back while controlling spending. Use single-use virtual cards tied to approved amounts, set up vendor-specific P-card programs for suppliers like Amazon, and link every card request to individual budgets so the system blocks overspending.
Small business owners love their cash back from credit card and their financial teams or controllers worry about spend control. Now what if I tell you that you don't have to choose between the two, you can have both. Because in this video I'm going to show you how you can use a stronger spend control process and still get cash back on those credit card programs. And stick till the end where I'll share one mistake that you must avoid to make it successful. If you're joining me for the first time, welcome. My name is Sachin Sharma. I am the founder of Procure Desk where we help growing companies with spend control. So let's jump right in. Number one is implement a requisition process along with a virtual card program. So what do I mean by that? A very typical process when you think about credit cards is handling or having a physical card that you're issuing to different employees so that they can go buy whatever they want to buy. The problem with that is you don't have a way to control the spend. People can just go spend on the credit card and then you have to reconcile the expenses, ask for receipts, then question and say, oh, why did you buy this? Instead of that, have a requisition process where people can put in a request for what they need to purchase and for what and the system can generate a virtual card automatically for that amount. So if I would need to buy $100 supplies, no problem. Go ahead and put in a request and once the request is approved, system generates exactly that same amount. So now you can choose whether to approve that request or not and system will generate a virtual card. Many companies who offer physical cards do virtual cards too. We do the same. So it's a very common process that you can ask for a virtual card along with a physical card. Right. So that's our strategy number one. Number two is have preferred vendors and have those vendors use credit cards for payments. So let's say you buy supplies from Amazon. So you can have a process where people go to Amazon to pick what they want to buy through a requisition process, have that approved and once Amazon ships a product, they can charge against a card on the file. So it's known by different names. You can call P card or procurement card, goes card, but end of the day it's a card issued per vendor. So you can still keep on charging expenses to that credit card, still get the cash back, but you have an upfront process to control cost. Right. So that's strategy number two. Number three is once you have done all that, you still want to make sure that somehow it's tied to the budget. So if you have budget controls in place, they're not going over budget. So having a process where every requisition or every virtual card request is tied to a individual's budget so that the system can check or do you have the money left in the budget or not before you spend gives you the control you need to make sure spending remains under the budget. So those are three simple strategies you can implement today. Still get your cash back and don't lose control over spending. Now about the bonus tip. Many companies think that you know, the only way to do things when it comes to cards is physical cards. So. So we are going to give physical cards, set up a limit to control cost. Now the limit is arbitrary, right? You might say 5,000, 10,000, but if you're a manager and you need to purchase supplies on a credit card, very often that limit doesn't work. So the limit is arbitrary to begin with. So instead of having that physical card, I think you should implement a virtual card program where now up front you can define what do you need, is it a valid business need? And the system issues a card for the exact same amount. So it doesn't matter whether it is 10 or 15 or 20,000, you buy what you need to buy for the business and move on, right? So just to recap, if you are worried about losing your cash back and or not having spend control, this is a strategy you can implement today, right? Number one is requisition process with a virtual card. Number two, set up cards with your preferred vendors. Three, match it to your budget. If you like this video, go and hit the subscribe button so you get notified when we release videos like this. This. Thank you for joining me today and I'll see you in the next video.
