Prepaid expense cards – A guide on managing your offline business expenses

Prepaid expense cards are still predominantly used by most businesses despite online payments and transactions like UPI soaring in this era of digitization.  Why, you ask? While online payments have their place, offline expenses and transactions are still prevalent and widely used by businesses simply because they cannot be done away with as of now. Industries with the majority of their workforce offline, like hyperlocal delivery, logistics, transportation, travel, food and beverage, retail sales, e-commerce businesses, and small businesses are still relying on prepaid expense cards for managing their offline expenses on a daily basis.  With the onset of the global pandemic, the offline industry is in need of constant revamps, adjustments and innovations, now more than ever.  But, before we dive deeper into what these innovations can be and how prepaid expense cards can be the frontrunner for these changes, let’s understand the basics first.

What are offline expenses? 

Offline expenses are transactions that you make offline like cash or physical cards like Debit or Credit cards. These offline expenses would vary right from procurement of raw materials, supplies, produce, vendor expenses, transportation expenses, travel expenses to miscellaneous expenses. 

What are the current challenges for offline expenses?

Managing these ever-increasing and varied expenses can get difficult and challenging. Manually executing every single expense  & reconciling them is a daunting task, to say the least. Not to mention, it can take up a lot of time as well. So, what can be the solution?  Answer: Prepaid expense cards. Prepaid expense cards, or commonly known as corporate expense cards, help in simplifying expenses. Yet, a majority of businesses do not know what they are and how they can be leveraged. Let’s paint a picture for you to understand better how and why expense cards are essential in managing finances better for your business. Imagine this- You’re a manager whose team is on the go and you are also responsible for deciding the budget for your team.  Now, you have an additional list of tasks that you have to manually do to keep these expenses in check like – 

1. Approve expenses when requests come
2. Approve reimbursements claims
3. Help accountant/ finance teams by matching up receipts with expenses made

Or let’s say – You’re an employee who needs to claim official expenses. You’re on the go, traveling or on the field, getting stuff done, and when you get back instead of celebrating your closed deals, you sit and worry about the thousand receipts you have to stock and also about not losing these receipts for your claims and reimbursements. You pay from your pocket, keep track of where you’re spending it and along with that, you need to have the receipts to claim for your reimbursements.  To top it all, imagine having to repeat this process every thirty days. The process is a nightmare, to say the least for every manager who wants to stay on top of his team’s expenses and every employee who wants to not stuff his receipts while on the go. This is where prepaid expense cards or corporate expense cards come in. They simplify the whole process and reduce manual dependency and labour. But first, let’s answer the most obvious question.

What is a prepaid expense card?

A prepaid expense card or a corporate expense card is a card for offline expenses which is preloaded with a fixed amount and can be swiped at multiple places, countless times until the limit gets exhausted. It looks the same way as a physical debit or a credit card but eliminates and reduces the workload that comes with it. These cards help in keeping a tab on cash payments and all offline transactions.

Why should a business have an expense card? 

If you’re still wondering why your business should have an expense card, here’s why –  Every growing business, big or small, has multiple expenses to deal with.  For every growing business, while the focus is on expanding and getting work done, it usually gets derailed to the nitty-gritty of how one can manage expenses and business better.  Prepaid expense cards not only save you from all the hassle of managing business expenses but also help you in saving cost and time. 

Prepaid expense cards- the smartest way to manage your offline business expenses

Let me take you through what could have been different in the above scenario by using an expense card. You, the manager, preload an allocated amount in the card and distribute it within the team. Depending on the overall budget, and the team you set spending limits and authorize and approve access for your team. The team is on the go and can now swipe the card as and when required. By having these prepaid expense cards your team doesn’t have to pay a single penny out of their pocket nor stock up receipts and stuff it in their wallets or purses.  Once your team swipes the card, they are notified of it on WhatsApp with a message which now pops up asking for the receipt. They take a screenshot of the receipt and upload it, for proof of the expense.  They then log in to the dashboard and send it to you for approval.  You approve these receipts that they’ve uploaded and voila it automatically gets reconciled.  You also have the liberty to revoke the card at any time for any of your team members. 

Stay on top of your offline expenses with prepaid expense cards

You control the spending and increase the visibility of offline spends on your terms. With every spend being tracked, it’s super easy to reconcile by the end of every month, making your and your finance team’s lives stress-free. They save you from those countless & exhausting approval calls for authorization and manual work of going through every receipt and validating those receipts. They save your team from stocking up innumerable receipts and countless hours they spend keeping track of their expenses.

Open’s expense card- A smart expense card for all your offline expenses

At Open, we understand every need that a growing business has and we have multiple products and services catering to these needs that a business has. It’s the only efficient, smarter, and swift way to manage all your business financial needs in one place. Open expense card is not just any other expense card, but a smart expense card– your card, your budget, your rules, your expenses – we just help you track & reconcile all of them instantly. Head over to Open and get your hands on the prepaid expense cards now!   Related Articles – Everything you need to know about Open’s Corporate Cards How to manage online subscriptions with Open’s business virtual cards Step up your expense management game with virtual cards Top 11 most asked questions about virtual accounts How Open brings banking & finance together for your business Set up an online store & smartly grow your business with OpenStore