What Do You Use Your American Express Corporate Card For. The American Express Corporate Card is a performance enhancer for business owners, in case you are one.
In case you received the card recently and wondering how to use it, know that you are not the only one. EveryFS meets carries out an industry survey where small and large international firms are asked how they manage their business as practically as possible and how they can earn some extra cash doing so. Their recommendation is to use American Express Corporate Card.
In this article, I will explain what the American Express Corporate Card entails who the target market is, and how to get the best from it.
From travel platforms to Excel sheets that manage business expenditures, I’ll try to help you navigate through the jungles of expenditures irrespective of the company. So grab your card, and let’s start on our journey to some insightful business dealings.
Key Takeaways
- The American Express Corporate Card is tailored specifically for business people having an elevated credit limit.
- With every dollar spent, there are reward points for expenditure on travel, office equipment, and others.
- With Automated Expenses, New Expense Reporting, New Tools for Accountants and Integrations spending monitoring becomes easier.
- Get your employees a card with fixed expenditure and have direct supervision over their spending.
- Utilize the perks, insurance and benefits associated with the card to cut down on expenses while also saving money.
What Is the American Express Corporate Card?
Let us first understand what exactly is an American Express Corporate Card before we move on to how you can get the most out of it. After all, it is imperative to know what you are working with in the first place.
American Express Corporate Card is a business only credit card, unlike the regular cards that we use in our day to day lives as they are targeted towards individual purposes, this card is only for managers, business owners and companies.
It is dueiwe on these credit cards personally as they are attached to the individual’s finances, but in comparison the corporate card is associated with the business as it is meant for managing purchases for the company, thus ensuring that business costs are kept in check.
How Is It Different from Personal Cards?
The first notable difference is that the card is associated with the business and not the person, as is the case with corporate cards. Thus the following is the case:
- In general, the corporate card has a much greater limit than the personal card.
- The self tracking features included in the card allows you to effectively track expenses and thus, making it easier for you.
- They are tied to the business and are able to be used on travel related expenses, office supplies and other types of purchases
Key Features of the American Express Corporate Card
1. High Credit Limits
American Express Corporate Cards have a unique offer that seems exclusive to them; they allow you to access greater credit limits than personal cards. If you are a type of business that has frequent expe, a higher credit limit will always be of value to you.
- Why It Matters: One of the reasons a corporate card can surpass a business card is because it allows you to cover larger expenses without having to max out your other cards. Moreover, it reduces the need to have several cards for several reasons for example, different departments. With a increased credit limit your business is able to manage anything and everything ranging from travel expenses to office equipment easily.
2. Rewards and Perks
Everytime you spend a dollar on your American Express Corporate Card for your business, you accumulate rewards and points; that is the benefit of using it! The benefits that these points can get you are as follows:
Travel rewards: For every appointment you miss for a business meeting while traveling, you will have the ability to redeem your points to buy flights and other necessary traveling supplies.
Gift cards and merchandise: Gift cards or other items that could be beneficial for your business can also be purchased through reward points.
Other business-related benefits: In certain situations, it is also possible to acquire items such as subscription boxes or other office supplies with the use of emulator points.
Why It Matters: By earning rewards for regular business purchases, a firm can lower its costs. For example, any points gained from traveling or buying office supplies can be instead reinvested in the company, thereby lowering the company’s outlay for these activities in the future.
3. Expense Tracking and Reporting
With the American Express Corporate Card, you’re given powerful tools that allow you to keep track of your expenses and manage them effectively. This includes:
Detailed reporting: There is detailed reporting that gives you a clear insight into how exactly the company is spending. It allows you to keep track of personal, travel, or any other type of dollar spent.
Expense categorization: The card contains features that allow the user to divide transactions into segments, therefore making it easy to follow limits and track expenditure by category.
Real-time tracking: Push and Transactions help in getting notification for any monetary infractions and enables you to follow the expense as it occurs and thereby helping in preventing overspending.
Why It Matters: Managing business expenditures is rather a tedious task, more so when it comes to filing taxes and the whole tax ordeal, however with the American Express Corporate Card you do not have that issue as all your expenses are saved on the cloud and can be accessed anytime. This greatly facilitates financial reporting, bookkeeping, and budgeting. It further enables the user to keep track of how money is utilized thereby safeguarding their financial status.
How These Features Benefit Your Business
American Express offers great value for all businesses whether you are running a small business or a large organization. Below are some of the ways these features help in optimizing your business finances:
Simplified Accounting
Each of your expenses can be tracked and accompanied with a report which makes accounting so much simpler. Be it in house accounting or through an external service provider, easy integration results in significantly lower errors and faster processing times.
Time and Cost Savings
Reward programs can aid in compensating costs in the future. Additionally, having high credit limits and focusing on single cards ensures that there is enough buying power for larger purchases without needlessly filling your wallet with multiple cards.
Increased Control Over Employee Spending
Employees can be issued corporate cards which allow you to control their purchasing power along with seeing where and when they are making purchases. This makes it unnecessary for employees to shop using their personal cards and then get reimbursements, subsequently simplifying the process of employee purchases.
How Do You Use Your American Express Corporate Card?
Now that we’ve gone over what the American Express Corporate Card is, let’s dig into the more pressing matter, how can it be utilized? As a business owner you most likely are interested in saving money, managing your cost, and receiving some rewards along the way. Here’s how you can do just that:
1. Booking Business Travel
In situations where a company often requires their employees to travel for business reasons, the American Express Corporate Card is a game changer. It is useful because it can help in organizing flights, hotel reservations, transportation and so on all at once.
Why is this great?
- Earn points on travel expenses: When you use the American Express Corporate charge card to buy flights, book hotels, or rent cars for business purposes, you accumulate reward points which can be used in the future to buy additional more travel trips or other benefits.
- Travel insurance: The built in insurance in some Amex cards means you do not have to stress on out trying to purchase extra insurance or get a new insurance every time an employee travels for work, all this will now be covered to you.
- Easier to manage: Using only one charge card to pay for all your travel expenses makes it much simpler to manage payments and expenses.
2. Purchasing Office Supplies and Equipment
If you are a business owner then you must be well aware of the fact that there are various software, equipment and office supplies that need to be bought regularly. Instead of dividing these expenses across several cards or combining personal spending with business expenditures, the American Express corporate card enables one to have all these expenses together.
What’s in it for you?
- Organized expense tracking: With American Express, there are extensive reports which makes it easy for one to categorize and stay in check with tracking of business expenses. In addition to this, they also provide tools for integration with business accounting software making it easier to keep track of these business transactions.
- Maximizing rewards: While not all purchases are made equal, the majority of business purchases such as office supplies and certain subscriptions can help you earn reward points. These points accumulate and work to reduce the cost of spending in the future.
3. Employee Expenses
Managing employee expenses sounds easy but is quite the opposite at times. However, with the American Express Corporate Card you can do them quite easily. You are able to provide employees their individual cards which allows tracking of expenses easily as one can view where and how the company money is spent.
Here’s why that’s important:
- Control spending: In real time restrict the spending limits of each employee and track what they are spending on. This will ensure not exceeding the budget and will allow quick spotting of any incorrect spending.
- Transparency: There is no need to search through receipts and spend time entering data as all transactions are located at a single detailed report that all employees can see.
4. Managing Business Expenses
Another advantage of the American express Corporate Card is how it aids one in managing or tracking business expenses. Detailed statements and reports assist in streamlining the accounting process by making it easier for an individual to see how their funds are utilized.
Why this is a game-changer for you:
- Real-time reporting: Spending reports are made available as transactions are executed, which eliminates the unpleasant shocks of frequently exceeding the budget that used to be experienced at the beginning of every month.
- Integrating with accounting tools: The card integrates with popular accounting software like Quick Books or Xero meaning that you could automate certain aspects of your accounting processes.
- Budgeting: This facilitates an individual in setting up personalized budgets in several categories (travel expenditures, supplies etc,) in a bid to help out in curbing the tendency of overspending.
Maximizing Rewards and Perks
One thing I have learnt during these years is that optimizing the rewards is essential. The American Express Corporate Card has a reward system whereby one can earn points on almost all purchases made for any business related transaction. But how do you ensure you receive the highest value out of it?
Earning Rewards Points
The first rule of earning points is that the products that have the highest earning rates should be bought. Here is how to enhance your earning potential even further:
- Book travel: Like I said, The use of the Corporate card for booking air travel, hotel accommodation, and renting a car incurs a lot of points.
- Office supplies and subscriptions: These usually also earn reward credits and even if these appear to be insignificant purchases they rapidly accumulate.
Redeeming Rewards
Points once earned can be redeemed for the following once you have a considerable number of the – awards:
- Travel: Points can be redeemed for flights, accommodation and other associated costs.
- Gift cards: Retail stores sell gift cards that can be bought using points.
- Business services: Points can also be used to pay for office supplies and even software.
Security Features and Fraud Protection
It’s possible to get into a situation where our corporate cards are at stake. But, there is good news – American Express has strict security measures in place that are designed to protect your business.
- Zero Liability: You’re safeguarded from unauthorised activities meaning there are no charges if someone misuses the card.
- Real-time alerts: You are sent an alert whenever there is an unusual action which can help you avoid loss to a large extent.
- Fraud monitoring tools: There are ai and other tools in place that actively scan and flag in real time any transactions that appear to be fraudulent, enabling American Express to investigate and take appropriate action.
My Opinion
With regard to services such as travel management, management of employee purchases and many others, the American Express Corporate Card is simply a A thoughtless tool that every business should have because it provides a lot of value. Properly used, this card can help save money, earn bonuses and improve all financial operations of the business. In other words, it brings convenience, simple finances, and makes people happy.
So now that you know about the various networking profits and how to leverage an American Express Corporate Card, how would you envision yourself using the card? So what would be the first step toward harnessing all the potential that the card has to offer? The key to getting the most out of it is knowing how to tailor its applications in conjunction with your business and I believe this information will help you cater to that.
