Policies and Procedures

Policies and procedures (P&P) are the foundation of any card program. Even if your Purchasing Card P&P manual is current (and hopefully electronic), it could be lacking in other ways, resulting in repeated questions and compliance issues. Have you evaluated the manual’s topics and related content recently? Reviewing and updating P&P often fall to the bottom of someone’s to-do list. To help you gauge whether you are covering the right material, following are 12 broad topics to include. For more details about these topics, consider purchasing the guide noted on this page.

Primary Topics

  1. P-Card Overview

  2. Roles and Responsibilities

  3. How to Obtain a P-Card

  4. Card Security and Limits

  5. Card Usage

  6. Transaction Declines

  7. Transaction Reconcilement and Review

  8. Ongoing Training Requirements

  9. Card Expiration and Renewal

  10. About Program Auditing 

  11. Card Cancellation

  12. Reference Materials (e.g., glossary, user guide for the P-Card technology, relevant forms, etc.)

Format

Even if your management will not budge on what your policies and procedures (P&P) say, how you write them can boost or hinder cardholder compliance. Large, text-heavy paragraphs can be unappealing. To give them new life, separate general information from procedures and make procedures more prominent using an appropriate format. Design matters. Three common procedure writing formats are:

  • Step by step

  • Script

  • Decision matrix

For more information about P&P formats, consider purchasing the guide (noted on this page) for just $29.99.

How to Revitalize Your Purchasing Card Policies and Procedures has more than 20 pages of content—a real value! For providers who want to distribute the guide to multiple clients, there is a license option with no limit on the number of copies to share. 

Additional P&P Help

Does your organization need assistance evaluating its Purchasing Card policies and procedures? Contact Recharged Education.