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Group CFO? Get the complete guide to multi-entity spend control (feat' top CFO insights)
Group CFO? Get the complete guide to multi-entity spend control (feat' top CFO insights)
Basic card controls won’t cut it at scale. When you have hundreds of employees spending across teams, markets, and cost centres, surface-level limits just won’t hold up. You need real, custom control — not just over who spends, but how, where, and why. Learn how to use advanced card controls to build a better spending framework without getting in the way of agility.
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Picture this: One of your non-finance teammates books an out-of-policy first-class flight on the company card. Another signs up for software you never signed off on. And meanwhile, you’re trying to close the month with half the data and twice the headache.
You need tighter controls on spend without constant manual checks, chasing, and policy reminders. And that’s where (with the right tech) features like advanced card controls come in.
Whether it’s auto-deactivating cards, setting up fuel cards, or something else, using a solution with advanced corporate controls isn’t a “nice-to-have,” it’s how fast-moving finance teams use tech to stay in complete control of spend — without becoming the bottlenecks.
Instantly issue a virtual card for one-time purchases (that will automatically deactivate after use) with single-use virtual cards. Buy a conference ticket or software license — or issue them to freelancers or contractors to keep company funds safe and secure.
Managing recurring payments? Assign a card for this, mark as a recurring payment (if your solution allows), and centralise all your subscriptions to make payments more visible, avoid duplicate spend, and stay on top of what’s actually being used.
With the recurring billing market set to grow to almost $8 billion in 2025, subscription-based spend is officially the new normal. Now, more than ever, you need the right card controls and automation to stay on top of it without needing to micromanage every transaction.
Restricting payments to “pre-approved vendors only” lets you ensure that employee spend only happens with your preferred suppliers and helps keep your cardholders compliant with spend policies by automatically preventing off-contract spending.
With vendor-specific cards, you can set rules that ensure cardholders only purchase IT equipment from your chosen retailer, such as Dell, and can’t spend elsewhere.
Leading finance in the logistics industry or managing spend across a field sales team?
Restrict cards to fuel-only purchases and empower fleet drivers and sales teams to travel frequently without worrying that their cards won’t get accepted on the road.
Card declines can cause serious issues, from missed refuelling stops to drivers falling ill. With advanced card controls and well-accepted cards (like Payhawk cards powered by Visa, for example), you can eliminate many of your potential risks and bottlenecks. Set custom rules, prevent fraud, and ensure every transaction is smooth, secure, and fully in policy.
Managing T&E spend has always been tricky. If you have lots of employees travelling for work, you likely want to control spend more tightly when they're on the road.
With advanced card controls via a solution like Payhawk, you can easily restrict purchases to specific merchants, such as hotel companies or airlines, and allow employees to spend funds only when on business trips; in essence, your corporate card becomes a T&E card.
Worried about employees losing their physical cards? There's good news: Virtual cards like T&E cards minimise security breaches because there's nothing to lose. Instantly freeze the card and block funds to keep company money safe in an instant.
If you're managing multiple projects, like a marketing campaign, for example, it makes sense to create project-specific cards. These can streamline project spend, helping you track expenses at a project level. These specific cards also let you limit spending restrictions to keep projects within budget.
Employee benefits can help you build trust and loyalty with your employees and support long-term talent retention.
So, it's no surprise that many organisations take advantage of flexible corporate cards by turning them into benefit cards. Allocate funds to the card for employees to spend on professional development, to pay for a gym membership, or treat them to a team lunch budget.
Whatever your industry, procurement is typically a major source of spending, often representing a huge 50-70% of a company's total spending.
But procurement doesn't need to start and end with purchase orders. A procurement card can help simplify routine purchases with custom set spending limits and/or auto fund approvals under certain amounts.
Different seniority levels within your business will typically require different levels of spend and spend approval. You might want to allocate larger budgets for department heads, for example, while restricting junior staff members to smaller amounts.
Use a solution that lets you set custom spending policies for your cardholders in bulk or by individual, however best suits your company and team setup.
Problems with late expenses? You need an auto-blocking feature.
If employees don't upload receipts in a timely fashion, you can automatically block their card. Let's say, for example, they still have three receipts to upload; the auto-block will kick in, and they can't spend funds until they submit their previous expenses, encouraging better expense management hygiene and an accountable spend culture.
Keep tight control over company-wide spending by blocking specific categories so employees can't spend on entertainment, gaming or alcohol, for example. Stop your employees spending on unauthorised activities and help keep your purchases down to only those that add value and align with business goals.
It's not about trust; it's about offering freedom without risk.
If you're dishing out virtual cards to contractors or temporary workers, they might only need access to funds over a short period of time, or perhaps you want to restrict spending for all non-travelling employees to business hours. By setting these time-bound restrictions, you can closely monitor spending across all entities.
Set regional restrictions to prevent international spend by employees who don't travel abroad. With Payhawk, for example, you can apply these controls to individual or team cards as part of our broader spend management solution.
Capping the amount per transaction means any unauthorised large purchases can't happen — or at least can be flagged and rerouted through the appropriate procurement channels.
If employees need to spend £2,000 on a new laptop, for example, they must seek approval through the pre-defined approval workflow, significantly decreasing the risk of fraudulent spend and keeping everyone accountable for large purchases.
Setting a daily maximum spending limit means you are not only keeping a tight hold on travel expenses or meal allowances, but it also simplifies budget management, ensures compliance with spending policies, and reduces fraud, all while improving financial visibility and accountability.
Need to record all spend without cash flying around and complicating things?
Disable ATM withdrawals to prevent someone from withdrawing cash from an ATM, and measure cash flow more effectively.
If you decide your corporate card is for in-store purchases only, you can avoid unauthorised web purchases by enabling and disabling online payments for specific users. This helps you keep certain cards for certain purchases.
Use a system like Payhawk to obtain all of the above advanced card controls and manage additional fund requests quickly and easily.
Put yourself in your employees’ shoes, for example, after requesting funds through the app or web portal, the approval chain triggers, automatically notifying every approver and asking for sign-off. If the approver deems the fund request suitable, the funds are transferred immediately into the cardholder’s account and are ready for last-minute purchases, e.g., an event booth upgrade.
Want to auto-approve for smaller amounts? Simply select the amount in the Payhawk solution and breeze through approvals without fuss.
If you’re having the age-old debate of whether you should implement a corporate card or continue reimbursing staff to ‘protect’ your business funds, here’s why you should consider switching to corporate cards…
With employee reimbursements, you put your staff out of pocket, even for a short time, which can cause a multitude of problems, not least stress, worry and anxiety — they have bills to pay, and this approach to expense management can mean they’re short on cash.
Plus, you can’t see the spend until they submit their expenses, which could be weeks away, leaving you in the dark about business cash flow.
Eliminating reimbursements also plays a key role in decreasing the risk of expense fraud. With reimbursements, it’s easy for inaccurate or even fabricated expenses to slip through — whether it’s inflated mileage, non-business purchases, or duplicate receipts. By switching to corporate cards, every transaction is tracked in real time, linked to the appropriate team member, and automatically categorised, leaving a clear digital audit trail. This transparency and control make it significantly harder for fraudulent claims to occur.
It’s pretty much plug-and-play for your employees. Administrators can create cards, both physical and virtual, from within the Payhawk dashboard.
Getting cards into your team’s hands is just the start. The real magic happens when Payhawk fits effortlessly into your existing tools and workflows.
David Watson, Group Financial Controller at State of Play Hospitality, says the following about his experience of switching to Payhawk:
Taking corporate credit card transactions away from the traditional banks to a product that directly integrates with NetSuite was a game changer Now we save time and make better decisions thanks to complete visibility over our multi-entity spend.
As David explains above, we integrate seamlessly with your existing tech stack — ERPs like NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, accounting software like QuickBooks, Sage Intacct and DATEV and HR systems, including Bamboo HR and Workday.
Not only that, but we have powerful developer APIs for you to build your own advanced integrations. Our software will always work with your current tech, which makes everything so much easier.
Data syncs across platforms, so Payhawk becomes a centralised way to access reliable and accurate financial data — a must for scalability across multiple entities.
Ready to see our advanced card controls in action? Request a personalised product demo.
Trish Toovey works across the UK and US markets to craft content at Payhawk. Covering anything from ad copy to video scripting, Trish leans on a super varied background in copy and content creation for the finance, fashion, and travel industries.
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