Purchasing Card, Virtual Card, or other payment method? A company for which I did some consulting work was initially planning to adopt P-Cards for certain orders under $2,000. After all, this is where P-Cards traditionally excel. However, a review of the facts revealed otherwise in this case. My ultimate recommendation to them was to back away from their P-Card plan and instead consider Virtual Cards. Keep reading to see why and how this case might align with circumstances within your organization. 

The Situation

The company thought it was spending too much time on low-dollar purchases. Specifically, buying departments had too many invoices to approve and, subsequently, accounts payable had too many invoices to pay. It sounded like a great P-Card opportunity until they mapped out the related purchase-to-pay (P2P) process for these orders. The purchases in question utilized an eInvoicing model for which the suppliers, in conjunction with invoice submission, electronically provided various order details requested by the company. The P2P process was quite slick. The main drawback was the invoice volume; orders under $2,000 comprised approximately 55% of the activity.

Changing to a P-Card process would have actually complicated everything, negating the benefits of P-Card usage. They had cost analyses to prove it. Ironically, the company had a separate P2P process (not their eInvoicing model) that could have benefited from P-Card adoption.

A Better Solution

In their eInvoicing model, Virtual Card payments could have helped by retaining the existing process efficiencies, but providing a secure, electronic payment option. Low-dollar invoices could be consolidated into fewer payments for AP to make and tweaks to their invoice approval process could reduce the burden on buying departments.

Key Takeaways

When contemplating a change to your payment strategy, be sure to:

• specifically identify the pain points you are trying to solve
• revisit your P2P requirements, as perhaps some simple tweaks could resolve the pain points
• document today’s P2P process cost and what it might be after implementing a particular change
• research various options before making any decisions

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About the Author

Blog post author Lynn Larson, CPCP, is the founder of Recharged Education. With 20 years of Commercial Card experience, her mission is to make industry education readily accessible to all. Learn more…