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How to Take Control of your Employee’s Fuel Reimbursements

Leen Shami

October 13, 2022

5

Many companies require in-person meetings, site visits, or attending events. Whatever the business-related travel may be, fuel reimbursement comes into the picture.

What is Fuel Reimbursement?

In a nutshell, fuel reimbursement is when an employer reimburses you for the cost of fuel used for business purposes.

While other countries may consider this a travel expense or a mileage reimbursement, the UAE considers this a 'fuel reimbursement.'

Why Did Reimbursing Travel Expenses Grow?

In a post-pandemic world, where many companies are going back to the norm of office work, it is common for travel reimbursement costs to increase.

The mileage reimbursement rate has risen with regular office hours, more in-person meetings, and less remote work. But that's not the only reason.

Due to the surge in fuel costs globally, it's no surprise that consumers are becoming more aware of their travel expenses.

The UAE alone has seen a significant spike of 74% in fuel prices and petrol prices over the last 7 months, indicating that reimbursing travel expenses grew.

Subsequently, UAE companies have seen a 38% increase in fuel reimbursements and travel reimbursement requests from their employees. Inflation alongside a post-pandemic world, fuel reimbursement expenses have become the most requested reimbursement category in the UAE.

A study by Bayzat has shown that fuel is among the most requested reimbursements category for UAE employees, with an increase of 18% in the average amount per reimbursement since January.

This indicates that companies and employees have spent more time managing and filing fuel reimbursement expenses. 

Unsurprisingly, the cost of average travel reimbursements has increased with the significant spike in fuel prices and petrol prices these past few months.

With Pluto's corporate cards, companies can wave goodbye to everyday fuel reimbursement expenses' pain points by issuing their employees fuel cards to keep track of their fuel expenses and travel reimbursement costs.

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Why Use Pluto Fuel Cards For Fuel Reimbursement?

There are many advantages to using Pluto fuel cards for business travel expenses:

Create unlimited fuel cards

Create and distribute as many virtual or physical fuel cards as needed for your employees, so you won't have to worry about travel expenses, mileage reimbursement requests, or having to reimburse employees.

Create fuel cards
Create Fuel Cards on Pluto's Platform

Set limits on fuel cards

Create fuel cards for employees with daily, weekly, or monthly spending limits to keep track of employees' fuel expenses.

Set Custom Limits on Fuel Cards

Track fuel expenses in real-time

Expense tracking in real-time
Real-time Transactional Data

It's essential to keep track of what is being spent and where. With Pluto, you can:

  • Get notified as soon as a fuel expense is made so you know who spends what, where, and when.
  • Keep track of average travel reimbursements' costs, travel expenses, and employee expenditure data to avoid going over budget on fuel expenses.

No more end-of-month expense reports on fuel!

Digitized receipt reconciliation

Whether your employees are using personal vehicles or company vehicles, they can simply make a transaction with their personal card, snap a picture of the receipt and upload it to the Pluto dashboard for fuel reimbursement.

Alternatively, UAE companies can issue their employees virtual or physical cards, and the receipt can be attached to the business expense by dragging and dropping it onto the Pluto dashboard.

No more searching through piles of paper receipts! 

Fill up your tank anywhere

Once you issue your UAE employees a virtual or physical fuel card, they can use it at any gas station in the UAE for business travel expenses.

While requested reimbursements for fuel expenses grew over five-fold over the past couple of years, there is a solution to make CFOs' and finance teams' lives easier; Pluto Card.

With Pluto, finance teams have an all-in-one integrated platform for fuel reimbursements, budget & spend control for business travel expenses, and fuel receipt reconciliation.

Fuel Reimbursement vs. Mileage Reimbursement

When looking for information about fuel reimbursement, another term that you may stumble on frequently is mileage reimbursement. While they are similar and sometimes interchangeable, they are not the same.

What is Mileage Reimbursement?

Mileage reimbursement refers to the practice of reimbursing employees for business-related travel expenses.

While it accounts for fuel, it also considers lease, vehicle depreciation, and other car-related expenses. This type of reimbursement is usually given per mile driven.

In some countries, mileage reimbursement refers to accounting rules and categories that help standardize expenses.

What is Fuel Reimbursement?

Fuel reimbursement, on the other hand, only covers the cost of fuel used for business travel. It doesn't take into consideration any other car-related expenses. This type of reimbursement is usually given based on receipts.

The difference between fuel reimbursement and mileage reimbursement is that mileage reimbursement takes into account all car-related expenses, while fuel reimbursement only covers the fuel cost.

How Does Fuel Reimbursement Work?

If you use your car for business purposes, you can be reimbursed for the fuel costs incurred. The reimbursement is usually calculated based on the number of kilometers traveled or miles driven.

However, to qualify for fuel reimbursement, you will need to keep accurate records of your travel expenses. This includes maintaining a logbook of your travels and keeping receipts for all fuel purchases.

To ensure that employees are reimbursed correctly, they need a receipt and an accurate logbook. Fuel and travel expenses can be included as costs, but you must show all travel logs if necessary.

What Counts as Business-Related Fuel Reimbursements?

Here are some examples of obvious and less obvious fuel expenses that you can get reimbursed for when you are an employee:

  • Traveling for a client meeting;
  • Driving to pick up anything on behalf of the company;
  • Driving to the airport to pick up a client or a colleague;
  • Going to another city for a business-related event;

Anything done to advance the business, big or small, is business related.

Is Commuting to Work a Business-Related Expense?

While some big corporations may reimburse you for commuting to and from work, typically, commuting is not considered a business expense.

What to Track For Fuel Reimbursement?

Keeping a gas log is one of the best ways to ensure employees are correctly reimbursed while companies have a clear overview of their travel expenses.

Last but not least, when you put fuel reimbursements into your profit and loss statement to apply them as costs (which you should), you must have a detailed log of travels - in case the tax authority wants a record.

Here is the main employee expenditure data that you should store in your fuel reimbursement logbook:

  • Date of each journey
  • Start time and end time of driving.
  • Purpose of the trip.
  • Kilometers driven.

If a company provides employees with company cars, this is all. But, if you're filing for fuel reimbursement while traveling with your personal vehicle, you will have to provide the following:

  • Brand of the car and the year it was made.
  • Average fuel consumption as per the car documentation.
  • Engine size or engine capacity.
  • Copy of car technical documentation.

Does an Employer Have to Pay For Fuel?

Most companies reimburse fuel expenses for employees who need to travel for business, but there might be some limitations. For example, a company may ask you to use its corporate Careem account for business travel.

Typically, if you incur the cost of fuel, your company will reimburse you as it is a cost tightly associated with the business.

Is Fuel Reimbursement Tax Deductible?

A massive shift for UAE companies will be the introduction of corporate taxes in 2023. With a corporate tax rate of 9%, UAE companies must keep track of all their spending. Fuel reimbursements fall under that category, as they can help reduce the amount of taxable income that a company has.

If you have a fuel reimbursement policy in place, it will help ensure that all of your employees are mindful of their spending on fuel and that they only claim back what they have spent.

Pluto allows UAE companies to issue unlimited fuel cards while centralizing the expense in one dashboard, so you can see in real-time how much is being spent and the number of tax-deductible costs your employees are making.

Find out how much your business can save with Pluto

Discover your savings with Pluto's Cost Saving Calculator and take control of your expenses. Unlock cost-efficiency now!

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Learn how Pluto is helping Keyper        to eliminate petty cash spending and optimize spend management

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At Pluto Card, our mission is to assist businesses of all scales make well-informed choices. To uphold our standards, we follow editorial guidelines to guarantee that our content consistently aligns with our high-quality benchmarks.

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5
All
Spend Management
November 14, 2022

Vlad Falin

Spend Management: Guide & Tips For 2023

Spend Management: Guide & Tips

Businesses that have trouble managing spending run the risk of impacting their financial bottom line. 

For example, poor invoicing practices that cause a delay in payment can lead to contract management issues or, even worse, a lost client for your business. It also might cause issues with some of your preferred suppliers if they feel they’re not being paid on time. 

Making a slip-up that disrupts a subscription can mean your company lacks access to critical software or tools until the issue is fixed.

A poor expense report system means charges incurred on your business trip might result in many follow-up questions, so your accounts payable team is on the same page with purchase orders. A system without real-time visibility for spending data is not ideal for any organization and does not make it easy to reduce spend.

Intelligent spend management helps prevent these issues. A business uses spend management to comprehensively track and review organizational-wide spending and purchase orders down to the last dirham. 

In this post we will deep dive into spend management and discuss the best ways to properly manage it. 

The Importance Of Spend Management

What happens if your company is not careful with spending or has too much indirect spend? 

You risk revenue loss and other issues that can quickly destroy a well-thought-out business plan. It’s hard to cut costs and improve efficiency if your financial processes are very time-consuming.

A McKinsey report reveals that external spending with suppliers often accounts for 40-80% of a company’s total expenditures - underscoring the importance of effective spending control. 

For many companies, reviewing and optimizing spend can profoundly impact employee workloads!

Good spending management practices will help the company be more financially stable and prevent any financial crises. It is always a good idea to have a system to track where the company's money is going. This can help to make sure that all expenses are accounted for, and no money is wasted. 

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Advantages Of Digital Spend Management

In this day and age, using an online tool to keep track of your expenses should be a no-brainer. Let’s have a look at some of the main advantages.

Insight Into Everyday Expenditures 

Where is every dirham your company makes going? If you don’t know, digital spend management will dramatically strengthen financial accountability, budgeting, and expenses. In addition, reporting on where company funds are flowing makes it much simpler to see how different department heads oversee budgets. Read more on how to improve internal control over financial reporting.

Stronger Financial Controls 

Spend management tools like Pluto, allow you to not only monitor your spending in real-time but also set the limits on the go. In addition to that you can issue cards for departments or individuals, and even focus them on a particular type of usage, such as specific vendors only. 

Budget Optimization 

Effective spend management is a great solution to ensure a better-looking budget. Analyzing and managing spending makes it simple to find and cancel unneeded services, negotiate lower prices with new supplier contracts, and never have to pay a late fee again. It will also significantly help your board of directors as they’ll have a simplified, streamlined budget to review and discuss at the start of the year. 

Common Spend Management Challenges 

It’s easy to pursue spend management practices that hurt your business’s bottom line if you’re not careful. Many ‘traditional’ best practices might not fit companies with remote-first work policies, engage in cutting-edge industries, or have an unorthodox structure.

If your company has a dynamic structure, spend management becomes all the more important to help you keep up with the competition and get the most value out of every dirham spent. 

Keep these potential challenges in mind as you pursue spend management practices. 

Relying On Old Spending Data

Be wary of relying on old budgets or financial data when managing more spend. It’s challenging for leadership to identify problem areas with cash inflows or outflows, when they only have outdated information.

Overreliance On Manual Mapping 

Having to go back at the end of the month to match spending to budgets manually can take an inordinate amount of hours and opens the door to errors and mistakes that can throw off a spend management policy. 

Pluto helps to automatically match spend to budgets in real-time, ensuring accounting and finance teams have accurate updates. 

Harnessing Too Much Technology

Modern financial software can dramatically help your company’s day-to-day operational flow. However, if these solutions do not work together, chaos can ensue which leads to data migration and processing errors. Pluto integrates with your accounting tools, cutting the data flow time significantly. 

Outdated Processes

The post-COVID world of remote and digital work means your employees might be scattered across the globe and in different time zones. Having to arrange shared corporate cards manually or coordinate team spending with employees in different locations can be tricky. Pluto offers unlimited virtual cards, which allow you to provide a payment channel for any employee anywhere in the world. 

How To Improve Your Spend Management Process

Optimizing your spend management process might seem tricky at first glance. Fortunately, small and large businesses often rely on the same core strategies to optimize spending. 

Rely On Spend Management Software: Pluto can help automatically track expenses, keep abreast of budgeting, and help manage strategic sourcing. CEOs and CFOs then have relevant, real-time data at their fingertips to see where their company is financially. 

Focus On A Few Payment Methods: Do you have too many company cards in your pocket? It might be time to streamline purchasing methods to help simplify your spend management strategy. For example, your business can dramatically improve expense tracking by asking employees to only use company cards for business expenses instead of asking for their personal cards to be reimbursed. 

Have An Organized Approval Process: You can clarify your spending process (you might want to check our post on how to create a corporate card policy)  by ensuring employees have a clear hierarchy of how and by whom purchases need to be approved. If your team is unclear, they might complicate the payment process by not filing the right reports, which means your financial team could be left in the dark about purchases. 

6 Efficient Spend Management Strategy Tips

Your company needs to optimize its spend management strategy to ensure the final results lead to reduced procurement costs, improved efficiency, and streamlined workflows. 

Spend management best practices also help improve vendor relationships and communication, procure the optimal goods and services your business needs, and even help you earn volume and early payment discounts due to more effective and simplified financial practices. 

Keep the following steps in mind for the best results regardless of your organization’s industry or size. 

Calculate Expenses

Do you know exactly where employees spend company funds? If not, you’ll need to build a comprehensive list of company expenses, suppliers, and entities where funds are going. 

This might quickly become a challenge if you’re in charge of a large business. If so, look to designate specific team members to review employee salaries, utilities, marketing, training, and all other day-to-day expenses to have the most detailed list. 

You can’t improve what you do not measure. You can use Pluto to get a firm grip on your expenses. Pluto allows you to monitor and control your expenses so you clearly see how much was spent in which category. 

Confirm Data

You’ll want to ensure all accrued expense data is accurate and can be cross-checked with receipts and inventory records. Ensuring transaction data is precise, and expense lists are free of duplicates, spelling mistakes, and other mistakes makes the entire spend management process more efficient. 

Take this step extremely seriously if your company spend practices have relied on more manual processing methods. Standardization ensures that multiple currencies, formatting differences, and other nuances are accounted for when looking at spend analysis data. 

(Goes without saying that when using Pluto this is all pre-done for you!)

Categorize Information

While optimal spend management brings all expenditures under a single umbrella to review, your team will still want to categorize expenses into various groups to make reviewing and making adjustments across different departments simpler. 

It’s usually best to categorize expenses in multiple ways to understand where money is going. Pluto allows you to categorize expenses both through specialized cards or just by tagging, so everything is nicely grouped together when it is review time. 

Review Expenses

A well-thought-out process of calculating, verifying, and categorizing spending information will simplify your entire review process when you’re looking at spend data. 

You should immediately be able to spot expenses that are anomalies or recurring spending that might be able to be cut out from the start. 

Pluto’s dashboard can give you a high level but also a detailed view, so you can clearly identify trends and separate expenses.

Devise A Strategy

You’ll want to move decisively once you’ve identified potential changes to spending habits and department budgeting approaches. 

It might seem difficult at first glance to start reducing budgets, cutting out vendors, or make other dramatic changes to your company’s budget and expense habits. Rely on good change management practices and your leadership team to cultivate employee and stakeholder buy-in to any adjustments.

Practice Good Data Forecasting

Keep updating your expense data as you make a budget and spending adjustments. Doing so keeps your team on top of where funds are going and can help forecast different spending scenarios and how they might impact your business’s bottom line. 

Keeping data and information updated becomes particularly important if your expenses grow to ensure financial operations run smoothly. Don’t forget to cultivate supplier relationships if you work with different vendors for optimal inventory management.

Should You Rely On Spend Management Software? 

Manually processing expense claims, keeping up with petty cash, and tracking company credit cards can quickly turn inefficient, hinder your company’s financial management, and inhibit the overall procurement process.

In contrast, the right spend analysis solution can aid real-time expense tracking, provide easy-to-read charts and graphs of high-level expenses, and capture and store financial-related documents, so your finance team members are not scrambling to find a receipt or report. 

Pluto has a multitude of features including procurement software and account payable that will help you with spend management and make spend control much easier.

Flexibility

Pluto allows you to create cards for various purposes, edit spending limits on the go and monitor your expenses in real time. This allows you to scale up or down depending on what your business needs at any given moment.

Powerful Analytics

With Pluto, you will be able to track spending patterns and areas of high expenditure and get real-time insights into your business finances. The powerful analytics will help you make better decisions about where to allocate your resources.

Ease Of Use

The main bottleneck of many spend management platforms is that the employees do not use them - as it is just too time-consuming. Not with Pluto!  The sleek and user-friendly interface makes expense management a breeze.

Simplified Reimbursements

Receipt upload and reimbursements can be quite a burden for the team. Pluto allows you to take pictures of receipts with your phone and just add them to your reimbursements list. With the use of categories and tags, you will be able to both submit and review them in record time!

Key Takeaways For Company Spending

Spend management remains an essential component of all organizations regardless of size. Accountability for every dirham flowing in and out ensures your company maximizes revenue and remains growth-focused, no matter the budget.

You can take the first step today by relying on Pluto and processes to establish control over budgets, track spending, manage payments, cut costs, and boost your financial team’s day-to-day operations and processes.

5
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Corporate Cards
October 1, 2022

Leen Shami

What is Pluto Card?

What is Pluto Card?

At Pluto, we believe better expense management should be within everyone's reach. We solve MENA finance teams' pain points by replacing their business credit cards with Pluto corporate cards to help manage their expenses, saving them time and money.

How do we do that?

Create Unlimited Corporate Cards

When multiple employees have access to one company credit card, it can be difficult for finance teams and business owners to track how much is being spent and where.

The result: everyone texting the CEO or CFO for OTPs during important meetings.

Pluto makes it easy to create and distribute virtual and physical corporate cards to each employee. Not only does this minimize fraud risk, but it also makes expense tracking simpler for finance teams, CFOs, and CEOs.

With Pluto’s unlimited corporate cards, you’ll be able to:

  • Create virtual cards in seconds.
  • Receive physical cards in 1-2 days.
  • Use cards for vendor-specific cases.
  • Assign every employee a budgeted corporate card.

Spend Control

Are you running ads at a cost that exceeds your marketing budget? Are you providing new hires with an allowance to cover the costs of their office equipment and software, or do you offer employees additional perks such as a monthly gym stipend?

Pluto gives you the ability to set limits and take control of your company’s business expenses, hassle-free.

With Pluto’s all-in-one expense management platform, you’ll be able to:

  • Assign virtual or physical cards with spend limits.
  • Allocate a specific budget towards daily, weekly, or monthly expenditures.
  • Create a single-use purchase card that automatically deactivates once it is used.
  • Control spending for different departments by allotting a budgeted amount to be spent.

Goodbye overspending 👋🏼

Reimburse In Record Time 

Reimbursements can be a painful process when the end of the month rolls in. Whether you’re scrambling to find lost receipts, trying to match receipts to their expenses, or organizing them in a document, there’s no easy way.

Drag & drop receipts

Pluto makes it easy for employees to list receipts.

Once a business expense is made by an employee, they’ll be able to drag & drop an image or screenshot of the receipt onto the Pluto dashboard.

Yes, as simple as that.

Easily reconcile receipts

Pluto allows you to seamlessly submit your receipts onto the platform. With Pluto, reconciliation is a breeze.

Once a business expense is made:

  • Attach receipts to card transactions with just a few clicks.
  • Transactions will automatically be categorized.

Add a memo to every transaction.

Get reimbursed in minutes

Waiting till the end of the month to get reimbursed for out-of-pocket business expenses is no longer necessary! 

Pluto gives you the opportunity to get reimbursed in minutes.

Once a reimbursable out-of-pocket expense is made, head to the Pluto dashboard to log the expense and get reimbursed as soon as it is approved.

Get Real-Time Data

Your month-end expense report comes in—and you find that you've spent more money than budgeted. Again.

With Pluto, you can stay on top of your expenses at any given moment.  

By getting real-time data, you can view reports of your company’s spending and ensure that your company’s finances are in check.  

It's simple, Pluto helps you avoid overspending and keep track of your company's finances in real-time.

So what does this mean for you?

  • See transactions happening on your cards in real time.
  • Receive notifications about every single card transaction, if needed.
  • Collect information on which vendors your company is spending the most money with.
  • Identify which employees or departments are spending the most.
  • Get an overview of the expenses you have incurred daily or month-to-month.

Pluto allows you to adjust if spending has gone off course—and plop some celebratory balloons if it hasn't 🎊!

Integrate With Other Platforms

Every business has multiple platforms, and we know how important it is for them to talk to each other. Pluto's integrations make it easy to get started and ensure you have all the data you need in one place. 

Accounting Integration

Pluto syncs your company's transactional data to the most popular accounting platforms through direct integrations so you can automate your accounting and close books faster.

No more end-of-month mayhem! 😅 

Mobile Wallet Integration

Pluto Virtual Corporate Card

With Pluto, you can add your virtual or physical cards to your digital wallet to make transactions seamless and easy.

We support Apple Pay, Google Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay.

What Else Does Pluto Offer?

Pluto gives you the opportunity to scale your business, without having to worry about the smaller details.

No FX Fees

Pluto doesn't charge you any foreign transaction fees for using your Pluto corporate card outside of the UAE.

If your business is expanding rapidly and your team is traveling more frequently, you won't have to worry about those pesky charges eating into your profits.

Or if your company needs to pay for subscriptions, contractors, or freelancers in a different country, you can do so without racking up a bill in FX fees.

Remote teams, frequent flyers, or big spenders, we've got you covered!

Accepted Worldwide

Whether your team is distributed, travels a lot, or makes international payments, Pluto’s corporate cards are accepted worldwide.

Advanced Security & Privacy

Pluto is PCI DSS Compliant. We take the safety of your information very seriously; all your data is stored and processed following the highest data protection standards in the industry. 

Get Started in Minutes

Pluto's sign-up process takes minutes, not hours. By adopting a KYB and KYC process that can be done within a few clicks, you’ll be making transactions in no time.

  • Simple application process.
  • No credit history is required.
  • Fast approvals.
  • Instant card access once approved.

Let us take the hassle out of managing your expenses. Start Using Pluto Today - For Free.

5
All
Corporate Cards
November 29, 2022

Vlad Falin

Best Virtual Corporate Card For Business [2023]

In modern business, cash and checks have gone the way of the horse and buggy: they’re simply too inefficient. But even their replacements – traditional payment methods like debit and credit cards – are overdue for an upgrade.

Welcome virtual corporate cards.

These digital payment methods offer numerous perks, from faster payments and reconciliation to greater control and security. They’re quicker, safer, and easier to integrate and use for accounting and operational teams alike.

Plus, the industry is on the cusp of an explosion, which could send innovation through the stratosphere. Between 2021 and 2026 alone, virtual card spending is predicted to skyrocket from $1.9 trillion to $6.8 trillion.

Here’s what to know.

First, A Brief Refresher on Corporate Cards

Corporate credit cards are credit cards issued to a business entity – not a person – as the responsible party.

In most other respects, corporate cards are like regular credit cards. They require a credit check to apply, charge a regular interest rate, and even come with reward systems. Corporate purchase cards are also unique in that the business can issue dozens of employee cards on the same account.

Pluto corporate cards come with specific controls to help your business manage spend. Real time tracking, setting limits on the go and quick reconciliations are just a few of the things that Pluto can provide.

But there is more. For companies who need to act quickly and require flexibility in their card issuing, there are virtual cards.

What is a Virtual Corporate Card?

Virtual corporate cards, like regular corporate cards, are linked to the business’ budget. Employees can use these cards to pay for business expenses without using their own personal cards or cash.

But unlike physical cards, virtual credit cards reside solely in the digital realm. These cards are essentially unique, digitally-generated 16-digit card numbers that tie to a specific spending account. (In this case, the business’ account.) Each virtual card contains other essential card details, too, like the following:

  • Cardholder’s name
  • Company’s billing address
  • Card number
  • Expiration date
  • CVV

Virtual cards are also unusual in that they can be generated and destroyed in moments. They can be designed to permit one-off charges, expire same-day, or hold only a specific dollar amount. Some virtual cards can even be linked to a particular vendor for one-time or recurring payments, perhaps with weekly or monthly spend limits.

Virtual cards can be accepted anywhere that online payments, and even some in-store payments, are accepted. Due to their ability to generate new numbers on demand, they offer additional security and control for business accounts. Plus, they can’t be lost or stolen like a regular credit card.

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Virtual Credit Card vs. Virtual Corporate Card

A virtual corporate card is simply a digital credit card issued to a corporation. For the most part, you can use virtual cards the same way you could use regular cards. However, like corporate cards, these virtual equivalents allow the issuing firm and receiving businesses to set particular spend and monitoring controls.  

Because virtual credit cards are 100% digital and able to generate new 16-digit numbers on demand, they’re optimized for safety and flexibility. They also make it easier to reconcile books and otherwise manage spending.

Why Use Pluto Virtual Corporate Cards?

Pluto virtual cards offer tons of perks and use cases. With more control and yet unparalleled flexibility, your business can remain nimble as you grow.

At the same time, department heads can keep an eye on expenses, spending, and accounting practices.

Flexible Setup and Spending

Modern companies need to be nimble, able to make purchases on the fly and reconcile their books in minutes, not days. Virtual cards let your business do so –without breaking their budgets.

Virtual cards provide unprecedented levels of flexibility to businesses of all sizes. After signing up, cards can be generated and issued to individuals with just a few clicks.

They also permit companies to limit available vendors, set a specific spending limit, expiration dates, and even the specific department budget the card should link to.

Unlimited cards

One of the biggest perks of Pluto's cards is that you can create as many as you need in a matter of seconds.

The times when an employee had to wait several days for the approvals and the card details to arrive are over.

For example - at 9:00, we had a team discussion about additional performance marketing activities.hile we were on the call, the department head created 3 virtual corporate card numbers for us to use.

It took him roughly 2 minutes to create them. All that without missing a beat on the call itself.

Right after we finished the call, we could start setting up ads.

Spend Control

Once you’ve generated a card – either for your team or by employee request – you can quickly personalize them for added constraint.

These controls are admittedly extensive, allowing your business to:

  • Lock cards to a particular merchant or vendor
  • Ensure cards can only pay to specific accounts
  • Generate cards with set one-time, monthly, or recurring expenditure limits
  • Institute purchase approval practices for individual cards, persons, or teams

Companies can use these various limits to prevent overspending, surprise fees, and unnecessary surcharges. Plus, with specific cards linked to individual employees or vendors, compartmentalized spend management becomes even easier. For many businesses, this is a welcome alternative to issuing high-limit cards to every employee that requires one.

In the example above, you can see one of the popular uses of Pluto virtual cards - employee benefits.

When a new employee joins, how much time does it usually take your HR department to get wellness or children's educational benefits to that employee?

With Pluto, it’ll take you leess than 2 minutes.

Higher Accountability

Another perk of virtual cards is that they can be generated for and linked to a single individual or team.

That makes purchase tracking easier, which increases personal and departmental accountability.

By using built-in accountability and analysis tools, your business can better track how and when money is spent at every level.  

Streamlined Accounts Payable

Virtual corporate cards simplify the role of the finance team. Pluto can integrate with your accounting software, making it easy to sync your chart of accounts, automate mapping your GL accounts, and bulk verify & export your expenses so you can close your books 10x faster.

From there, settlements can happen immediately rather than taking days or weeks. This eliminates the slow, potentially error-riddled manual accounting process with a faster, cheaper, and more efficient digital alternative.

Better Security

Pluto's virtual cards can help greatly reduce your overall card risk profile. Their increased security is due to their unique design, including their:

  • Digital nature, which precludes them from being physically stolen.
  • Set spending limits to prevent overcharging.
  • Ability to block vendors and retailers from storing personal or card information long-term, helping to prevent fraud
  • Ability to include one-time or vendor-specific expenditures and other spending controls, limiting financial hemorrhaging
  • Auto-lock features to freeze cards instantly
  • Ability to delete and regenerate virtual cards in seconds rather than days

Real-Time Reporting

Pluto's virtual cards feed their data directly into a centralized interface, allowing all data to show up in real-time reports, simplifying the analytical process. The spend management systems also offer real-time notifications.

Together, these features offer companies greater real-time visibility over their expenditures. This level of transparency can inculcate a healthier spending culture within a company beyond merely increasing accountability.

Plus, real-time reporting means that accounting teams and department heads can immediately respond to budget requests, verify receipts, and manage card limits.

Pluto expense management dashboard allows you to see everything and makes spend control a breeze.

Simple Reconciliation

Virtual credit cards provide an easy approval system to allow finance teams to take advantage of automatic reconciliations whenever possible.

Accounting teams can set codes for recurring transactions and tag controls to identify transactions before posting them to the general ledger. Each card can be linked to a specific employee to link specific transactions to each employee.   

With the right card and accounting integrations, it’s possible to automate the bulk of manual data entry and reconciliation out of the gate. Plus, you’ll increase the accuracy of your data and insights.

Efficient Vendor Payment and Management

You can also use virtual cards to simplify vendor management.

You can link specific cards to particular vendors, allowing you to track which teams use them regularly and how their prices change over time.

By setting limits and expiration dates to your specifications, you can prevent teams from “forgetting” about upcoming auto-renewals.

Reward Options

Pluto virtual corporate card offers a wide range of perks and benefits!

Instead of giving you Starbucks gift cards, we formed partnerships with some of the most critical services for the day-to-day operations of your business.

Reduce the Risk of Fraud

When multiple employees and vendors share a high-limit physical card, you run the risk of operational problems and fraud.

The more people who can access a single 16-digit number, the more likely unauthorized expenses can slip through the cracks.

Virtual credit cards don’t come with the same fraud and data loss risks that physical cards do.

  • They’re impervious to hacks that come with swiping physical cards at in-person terminals.
  • You can create cards for a particular purchase, vendor or project.
  • You can easily link cards to specific employees and/or vendors, offering full control while minimizing risk.

Virtual Corporate Card Use Cases

Due to their innate flexibility and unprecedented control, virtual credit card programs offer multiple potential use cases. There are too many to go over here – but we’ll address a few of the most common or impactful.

Agencies

Digital agencies need to be able to make payments on behalf of their clients. This can be done using virtual cards, which allows the agency to keep track of spending and ensures that funds are used for the intended purpose.

With Pluto, you can create virtual cards for every PPC campaign or bigger project and keep track of your agency's spending in one place.

Not only does this allow you to scale the clients' performance marketing efforts, but the spend control dashboard shows you exactly how much was spent. You can go as far as naming and tagging your virtual cards, so you can see how much was spent per PPC channel on individual clients.

Event Organizers

Catering, lights, music, production, venues, drivers so many things that even organizers have to keep in the air! If you are an event organizer, chances are you understand how important it is to keep your spending in one place. That way when the time comes to file taxes or show ROI, everything is itemized and accounted for.

With a virtual card, all your charges will be automatically filed under the right categories. You can also set limits on how much can be spent per vendor, so you don't have to worry about overspending.

And if you have a team working on the event with you, you can give them each their own virtual Pluto card (or physical) with their own spending limits. That way, you can see at a glance who is spending what and where.

Startups

When you are a startup, your want to fully focus on your product and leave the rest to someone else. With a virtual card, you don't have to worry about setting up a corporate credit line or dealing with complex expense reports.

Just set up your team with Pluto virtual cards and let them manage their own expenses. You can see what they are spending in real-time and track progress against your budget.

Also, when you are at your early phase, there is no time for lengthy approvals. SaaS, ads, tools, plugins - virtual card can service them all.

E-Commerce

You business is digital and so should be your payment tools. With a virtual card, you can make payments online without ever having to worry about the security of your information.

Worried about that Alibaba supplier? Create a virtual card with a limit just for that vendor and you're good to go. Put a spending limit on it, and you limited any potential risks as well.

  • Need your team to buy TikTok ads? -> Done. TikTok Ads Virtual Card
  • Need to pay an Upwork freelancer? -> Done. Upwork Specific Virtual Card

You see where we are going with this. Create as many virtual cards as you need for as many occasions as you need.

Consulting

Consultants are on the road most of the time, and when they are not - they are seated in the client premises, helping to grow the business.

Employee travel is one of the most commonly-cited reasons for individuals requiring their own corporate cards. Travel expenses may include hotel rooms, a food allowance, or additional budgeting to purchase essential materials while they’re away from home, so to speak.

However, even in your own teams, it’s possible for employees to get carried away. An expensive dinner, unexpected expenses, and hotel room upgrades may all be well within your budget. But if you want to prevent excessive spending on your dime, virtual card controls hand you that power.

Fleet Management

Any company that have a vehicle fleet knows that a lot of time can go into fuel cards management.

Pluto can provide both virtual and physical corporate cards which makes it a perfect solution for efficient fleet management. 

You can issue fuel cards to the drivers as needed, and scale up and down depending on the current business situation.

In addition to that you see the fuel expenses real-time and can set limits and approvals where required. 

Key Takeaways

  • Virtual corporate credit cards pave the way for the future while addressing a multitude of modern business pain points.
  • They hand companies greater control over their spending, simplify accounting across the board, and even help protect employees.
  • Plus, with so many nuances and use cases, it’s incredibly easy to personalize virtual cards to meet your unique needs.