Payment-related Changes Driven by the Pandemic
By now, every organization should have identified its pain points that emerged after the pandemic took hold over a year ago. The question is, which organizations made the necessary changes to adapt not only to the crisis, but to the future workplace as well? Two payment-related actions your organization should be doing are described in this post. The short answer is, Commercial Cards of all types should be playing a bigger role. Is your organization keeping up?
Mandating Commercial Cards for Travel
Even if your organization is still prohibiting business travel today, you need to prepare for when it starts back up. Cancelled business trips were a nightmare to address last year, but cancellations can and do occur when a pandemic is not in play. The payment method used is a big factor that either helps or hurts your organization’s travel expense management efforts.
When employees are allowed to use their personal cards to book travel or even pay for a conference, they likely get reimbursed soon after. Then, if the employee cancels the trip, they might pocket the credit processed to their card. Your organization loses out. The best way to prevent this, as well as be able to track pending trips, is by mandating the use of a Commercial Card. See more…
Expanding the Options in Your Payment Strategy
For most organizations, employees working from home at least part of the time is likely to continue, regardless of the pandemic situation. Check payments pose a real challenge for remote accounts payable (AP) staff, as well as suppliers’ remote accounts receivable (AR) teams. Work-from-home (WFH) arrangements also make it harder for an AP person to reach a supplier via phone to pay an invoice with a traditional card (e.g., P-Card). Besides, this approach is inefficient.
The best solutions are rooted in electronic processes that require minimal labor. Straight-through payments (STP), also known as buyer-initiated payments (BIP) and push payments, are one. Falling into the category of electronic payables solutions, they are designed to fit into an AP process for paying invoices. Even if your organization is already using the Virtual Card form of ePayables, there is still room for STP/BIP, which suppliers might prefer over Virtual Cards due to the process ease. Learn more…
Beyond invoices, for employees—especially remote workers—Virtual Cards for their mobile wallets might be more appealing than traditional plastic cards. Card issuance is simplified and risk is reduced. See a related press release from last year about what Visa is doing in this arena.
Final Thoughts
We are seeing light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. Some organizations were nimble enough to implement the necessary changes when this emergency struck more than a year ago. Others were reluctant to adjust, perhaps hoping change would not be needed. It quickly became clear that a business-as-usual approach would not withstand the challenges. Continued inertia is not the right choice either.
At a minimum, your card program policies and procedures should have been updated to address remote workers. For more on this topic, access a related blog post from last October.
Change is good.
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About the Author
Blog post author Lynn Larson, CPCP, launched Recharged Education in 2014. With 20 years of Commercial Card experience, her mission is to make industry education readily accessible to all. Learn more…