If you’re looking to transition away from a small business credit card to something with increased spending power and enhanced expense management, a corporate card may be the solution.
In this article, we discuss the features to look for and tips for managing corporate cards better.
Background On Corporate Cards
Corporate cards have been around for a long time and make it easier for executives, managers, and other employees to pay for authorized business expenses — like plane tickets, fuel, and hotel rooms — without having to use a personal credit card, check, or cash.
Recently, innovations in financial technology have unlocked many more features of corporate cards, and expense management by extension.
Can your business benefit from a corporate card? We’ll discuss that question in the next section and then share a few features to look for when choosing a corporate card with modern functionality.
Can Your Fleet Business Benefit From A Modern Corporate Card?
Modern corporate cards are no longer just for large businesses. Small and medium businesses can also benefit from adding a corporate card to their payment pipeline.
If that corporate card also includes advanced spending controls for fuel and other expenses (like the Coast smart card does), it will be even more useful to businesses of all sizes and types.
For example, a small plumbing business with five or six work trucks or vans can use the same corporate card as a business with fifty or sixty vehicles and gain access to advanced controls for managing expenses, like fuel, maintenance, and supplies.
With the right corporate card, owners and managers can gain real-time visibility into business-related transactions, control costs by setting spending rules that make sense for their team, and offer a flexible payment option for drivers while they’re on the road.
But not all corporate cards are created equal. Some only come with the physical card, and a few benefits. For example, rebates and points are important, but the fees and unfavorable payment terms may negate any money back and decrease the card’s value over time.
Businesses now need a layer of intelligence on top of the piece of plastic that their drivers carry with them.
Modern corporate cards offer everything your business needs to help you manage the growth of your fleet business through all stages of development.
These features may include tools that can help you get more control over your spending, simplify how you collect information, such as receipts and accounting categories, and streamline the way you reconcile accounts at the end of the month.
Below, we’ll discuss these and other features to consider when shopping for a corporate card.
Features To Look For In A Modern Corporate Card
Advanced Spending Controls
In contrast with many corporate cards today, advanced corporate cards offer comprehensive spending controls to help you manage business expenses.
These controls allow you to:
- Limit purchases by days of the week or time of day
- Establish pre-set spending limits per transaction
- Approve or deny transactions on a case-by-case basis
In addition, smart cards, like Coast, allow you to restrict the categories or merchants your employees can spend on so that they can purchase supplies but can’t get a meal at a restaurant or make purchases on Amazon.
Coast also allows you to set dedicated spend limits for each category and require your employees to submit a receipt or a reason for the transaction so that you always know why your money’s being spent.
Such features can help your business control expenses and reduce spending across the board.
Security
EMV Chip
A modern corporate credit card will often come with enhanced security to help prevent theft, abuse, and fraud.
One of the security measures these cards include is the EMV chip.
An EMV (or Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) chip is a tiny microchip embedded in the card itself that generates a unique code every time your driver swipes to pay for fuel.
EMV chip cards provide enhanced security compared to traditional magnetic stripe cards, significantly reducing the risk of card skimming fraud. Unlike magnetic stripes, which store static card data that can be easily copied by skimming devices, EMV chips generate a unique transaction code for each purchase.
This dynamic authentication makes it nearly impossible for fraudsters to clone a card, even if they manage to intercept payment data.
Tracking And Reporting Tools
Another benefit of using a modern corporate card for business is the tracking and reporting tools that often come with them, giving businesses greater visibility and control over their spending.
With real-time transaction monitoring, finance teams can instantly see purchases as they happen, reducing the risk of unauthorized expenses. Customizable filters make it easy to review spending by department, location, or individual user and ensure seamless oversight.
Additionally, modern corporate cards highlight transactions that require attention — such as those missing receipts or transaction reasons — helping streamline reconciliation and compliance.
By leveraging these advanced features, businesses can optimize their expense management and drive smarter financial decisions.
Receipt Management
Managing receipts efficiently is one of the biggest ways to reduce time spent reviewing transactions and improve financial compliance.
Instead of dealing with paper receipts or sifting through cumbersome expense reports, modern corporate cards allow businesses to collect receipts automatically as employees spend.
You can set rules to request receipts only for high-priority transactions — such as those in specific spending categories or above a set amount.
Employees can also easily upload receipts from their phone or computer. Automatic reminders help ensure receipts are submitted on time, and businesses can even enforce compliance by blocking future transactions until missing receipts are provided.
With all receipts securely stored, companies are better prepared for audits and tax filings, eliminating last-minute scrambles for missing documentation.
Virtual Cards
A virtual card is no different from a regular card – it comes with a name, number, billing address, CVV, and expiration date – but there is no physical copy to speak of.
Instead of issuing a physical card for face-to-face purchases, management can set up a virtual card for a variety of online and physical purchasing situations, including:
- One-off purchases
- Purchases from a specific company
- Purchases for a set dollar amount
- Recurring payments
A virtual card can give your business even more flexibility and provide more control over employee spending.
Rewards And Rebates
With the right fees and payment terms in place, rewards and rebates can benefit your bottom line in a variety of ways. That’s why we still recommend that you consider these perks when shopping for a corporate card.
Here’s how each one can help your business.
Rewards
Some corporate cards give rewards in the form of:
- Referral incentives
- Discounts with partner businesses
- Sign-up bonuses
These rewards (and others) can help you control and reduce spending on necessary and repeated purchases.
Rebates
Some top-tier corporate cards offer rebates on purchases you make every day. However, it’s important to keep in mind that many providers set limits on those rebates.
For example, one might offer a rebate for the first three months you use the card or for the first 100 gallons per statement period. Others may only offer rebates at certain gas brands.
It’s worth identifying the rebates your card offers and any limits attached so you’re not surprised down the road.
Tips For Managing A Corporate Card
1) Pay Attention To The Fees Involved
When shopping for a corporate card, make note of the fees that come with it and do your best to avoid the following:
- Transaction fees
- Credit-risk fees
- Out-of-network fees
- Per-gallon service charges (when the card is used to purchase fuel)
- Electronic payment processing fees
- Check processing fees
- Phone-payment fees
- Higher late fees for balances above a certain level
- High credit risk fees
Choose a card that makes your monthly statement easy to understand and never charges extra fees for purchases your employees need to make on a regular basis.
2) Find Payment Terms That Fit Your Business
Another important tip for managing a card is to find flexible payment terms that fit the way your business operates.
Look for terms that optimize company cash flow so that paying the statement doesn’t conflict with, or take away from, other essential company needs. And try to avoid a credit card that locks you into a less-than-ideal billing schedule.
For example, one card may lock you into a 14-day payment schedule so that your business has to make a payment every two weeks. Yet another credit card may lock you into a 7-day payment schedule so that your business has to make a payment every single week.
Operating without flexible payment terms puts your company in a difficult spot right from the get-go and makes it harder for your business to succeed.
3) Vet The Customer Service Before Signing Up
When shopping for a corporate card for your business, you’ll likely focus on the features mentioned earlier in this list — open-loop acceptance, advanced spending controls, security, and data tracking.
While all of those are extremely important, don’t overlook another feature that can provide more long-term value. That feature is customer service.
Just like a partner you bring into your business, the credit card company you choose can make your job easier or make your job more difficult.
If the credit card company offers customer service that doesn’t gel with the way your business works, they’re making your job more difficult.
Instead, make your job easier by choosing a customer service team that:
- Allows you to connect with them on your terms, not the other way around
- Understands your business and what it takes to succeed
- Delivers personalized service any and every time
- Responds quickly when you ask a question
- Gives you answers when you need them
- Provides easy ways to get in touch (e.g., text, email, and phone)
- Doesn’t transfer you through an endless phone tree to get to the right person
- Does everything they can to reduce or remove roadblocks that can hinder the way your business works
When you include the customer service team on the list of important features to research, you set your business up to partner with a company that has your best interests in mind and that can help you succeed.
4) Integrate Your Corporate Card With Your Accounting System
Integrating your corporate card with your accounting system streamlines expense management by eliminating the need for manual data entry, reducing errors, and saving valuable time.
Instead of manually importing transactions, an integration ensures that every purchase is automatically recorded in your accounting software, categorized correctly, and matched with receipts or expense details.
This automation minimizes the risk of mistakes that come with manual entry, such as duplicate transactions or misclassified expenses.
By reducing administrative work for finance teams, businesses can focus on more strategic financial decisions rather than spending hours on reconciliation.
Plus, a seamless integration improves audit readiness by ensuring all transaction data is accurately stored and easily accessible when needed.
5) Monitor Spending In Real Time
With the right corporate card in hand, your finance team will be better positioned to monitor and control spending in real time.
Here’s how.
Spending Policies
Spending policies are an important part of successful fleet management.
Whether your employees are driving cars, work trucks, vans, semis, or even construction equipment, if they don’t have some rules to go by, they’re probably just going to fill the tank without thinking about what’s best for the business.
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, you can use the advanced spending controls that come with top-tier corporate cards to create policies.These could include when and where spending is allowed, dollar limits on certain expenses (e.g., food), and the necessary records to go with it.
Notifications
Setting up real-time notifications through your corporate card can help you stay on top of fleet spending no matter when or where it takes place.
For example, you may choose to set the system so that you receive a live notification when a transaction is declined, looks suspicious, or exceeds some limit that you’ve set.
Monitoring these real-time notifications gives your business the ability to respond immediately if spending strays outside expected limits and to prevent issues from getting worse, getting more expensive, or doing more damage than necessary.
Head Off Theft And Fraud At The Pass
If a card gets stolen or lost, or you suspect that theft or fraud might be happening (thanks to the notifications you set up), a good corporate card will allow you to take care of things quickly and easily.
Coast, for example, lets you lock cards yourself with one click through an easy-to-use admin portal — no customer service call necessary.
Corporate Card + Fleet Technology
Ideally, you want your corporate card to work together with the telematics on your vehicles (and other fleet technology you use every day) to help you monitor fleet activities and control spending.
With your fleet tech and your spending pipeline working together, you’ll be able to achieve a “full-circle” view of your fleet in real time so that small issues don’t get away from you and grow into larger (more expensive) issues.
Does your current corporate card integrate with fleet mainstays, like Samsara, Verizon Connect, Lytx, Azuga, Geotab, and Fleetio?
Make the switch to one that does for even more insight into ways that you can cut costs and make your entire operation work better.
6) Combine Your Corporate Card and Fuel Card
Combining your fuel card and corporate card into a single program simplifies expense management by giving you full visibility into all spending from a single pane of glass.
Instead of juggling multiple card programs, finance teams can review, reconcile, and manage all transactions in one place — eliminating the complexity of tracking separate accounts, statements, and payment cycles.
With a unified card program, businesses can streamline workflows, enforce consistent spending controls, and reduce administrative overhead.
By consolidating fuel and non-fuel expenses into one seamless system, companies gain greater control, improved reporting, and a more efficient approach to managing business spending.
Manage Your Corporate Fuel Purchases With Coast
Managing your fleet’s expenses shouldn’t mean juggling multiple cards and software solutions. With Coast, you can streamline all your expenses—from fuel and vehicle-related costs to any other purchases your team makes—into a single, easy-to-use program.
- Comprehensive fuel management
Coast has everything you need for fuel management, offering strict and flexible controls, advanced fraud prevention features, and real-time visibility into transactions. Seamless integrations with your existing fleet tools ensure you stay connected and in control without the need for multiple platforms. - Controlled spending for technicians
Beyond fuel, Coast allows your technicians to cover any necessary expenses with the same level of control. You can set specific rules by merchant category, block individual merchants, and even create exceptions when needed. With built-in receipt capture, your employees can upload receipts at the time of purchase—making end-of-month expense reports smoother and increasing compliance. - Secure office purchases
Coast is also a smart solution for any office purchases your team makes, offering virtual cards for secure payments. This means you can manage all types of spending—from field expenses to office supplies—with one program. - Simplified expense review and reporting
With all expenses in one place, Coast gives you complete visibility to simplify your expense review and month-end close process. Effortlessly categorize transactions and sync them directly with QuickBooks Online to save time and reduce manual work.
Coast doesn’t just help you manage expenses—it helps you take control of them.
To learn more about how Coast can help your company, visit CoastPay.com today.
