Truist Business Lifecycle Advisory How commercial cards can boost your bottom line

The most direct benefit of implementing a corporate card program is on your company’s bottom line, where efficiencies and rebates can add to available working capital. Replacing paper checks and ACH payments with virtual cards through Truist’s ePayables solution, for example, can have a dramatic impact on your expenses.

The cost to write a physical check can be $4 or more^{Disclosure 1} once you factor in things like employee time, printing, error resolution, and postage. The cost of a card transaction, by contrast, is typically less than $1. The card has the added benefit of extending the amount of time your company’s cash remains in your own working capital mix, depending on the grace period and your credit terms.

Your card program may also generate rebates that can be applied directly to your bottom line. Rebates on card usage are funded by the interchange fees paid by merchants and can offset or exceed the program fees themselves, with some large programs generating six-figure returns. Some companies may even use the rebate to help fund other initiatives, such as corporate travel or investments.

The bigger a company gets, the more important it is to implement a program appropriate to its size, Ziolkowski adds. There are no hard-and-fast rules, but when a company has grown to $75 million in annual revenue or is generating more than $10 million each year in payables, it may want to consider an upgrade.

“The more complex you are, the more opportunities you have to streamline that complexity with a commercial card program,” Ziolkowski says. She points to the example of a Truist client that was growing rapidly through acquisitions. They used data from their commercial card program to help integrate those acquired companies and the cost centers they brought into the deal, while also making it easy to separate those new costs for analysis.

“There are a number of reporting elements that commercial cards can clarify that would otherwise just be co-mingled within a client’s financial statements,” she says.

If your company already has a card program with another provider, your relationship manager can discuss the right mix of cards or the benefits of consolidating multiple accounts or programs with Truist, which may include upgraded features and service.

The role of your relationship manager doesn’t stop when the card program is implemented. They work with you to analyze data, review spending limits, and tweak any other options to maximize return. Truist can also help optimize internal efficiencies by advising clients on how other best-in-class organizations manage their card programs and define Travel and Purchasing Policies. Monitoring how employees use the program, how processing costs are changing, and how much you’re getting back through rebates can provide solid metrics to evaluate effectiveness.

“This way you can be sure you’re optimizing your cards and achieving your financial objectives,” Ziolkowski says. “Ensuring that our clients maximize the value of their card program is important to Truist, and it really drives overall satisfaction with the program.”