Purchasing cards are specifically geared to streamline small-ticket purchases by placing tighter controls on spending and allowing for more detailed reporting than do other types of commercial cards. A type of commercial card that is marketed mainly to larger companies. Fleet cards offer unique tools to help manage fleet-related expenses such as gas, maintenance, and repair. In addition, cards can be assigned either to the driver or to the vehicle. The basic reason for switching to a commercial card is to minimize the effort required to track corporate expenditures.
Commercial cards track spending through billing and management reports.
Central billing consolidates all employee charges into a single bill, while individual billing issues monthly statements to each cardholder. Management reports are issued on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis. They allow firms to easily analyze spending and catch aberrations or problematic overspending. Depending on the report, the data can be analyzed by such variables as cardholder, city, type of spending or vendor. Minimizing Your Exposure To protect businesses from cardholder misuse, both MasterCard and Visa have liability waiver programs.