Corporate Card Policy: What to Put in It and How to Enforce It

Use this outline, then fill each part with your own rules:

1. Purpose and scope: who the policy covers, including contractors if they get cards.
2. Eligibility: which roles can hold a card and who approves it.
3. Permitted and prohibited spending: categories that are allowed, and those that are never allowed, such as personal purchases, cash advances, gambling or gifts above a set value.
4. Limits and approvals: per-transaction and monthly limits by role, and what needs pre-approval.
5. Receipts and coding: how quickly cardholders must upload a receipt and category.
6. Software and subscriptions: how new tools are requested and paid.
7. Travel and entertainment: booking rules and meal limits.
8. Violations: how you handle misuse and repayment of personal charges.
9. Offboarding: card cancellation on the last day.

Pair it with your broader spend policy template if you have one, so travel, reimbursement and card rules don't conflict.

Set them by role and by risk, not one number for everyone. A few practical patterns:

• Give a low default limit, and raise it for named cardholders with a reason.
• Require approval before purchases above a set amount, and for any new vendor.
• Use single-use or vendor-locked virtual cards for online purchases, so a leaked number can't be used elsewhere.
• Restrict merchant categories where you don't expect spend.
• Send an alert to the manager and finance when a card exceeds its limit.

Say a sales rep travels twice a month. In this example, you might set a monthly limit to cover travel and meals, and require a manager's approval for anything outside those categories. Review limits every quarter so they don't drift upward.

Require a receipt and a business purpose for every transaction, and set a deadline, such as a few days after the charge. Automated tools can chase receipts, send reminders and lock cards when items are overdue.

If you only follow the tax rule, the IRS generally requires documentary evidence, such as a receipt, for business expenses of $75 or more, and for lodging in any amount. Your policy can be stricter than that, and many companies require every receipt. If you reimburse employees, an accountable plan that requires substantiation and return of excess advances keeps reimbursements from being treated as wages, so confirm your setup with your CPA. Also see records retention and audit defense for how long to keep them.

SaaS spend is where cards leak money. Employees sign up for tools, forget them, and the charges renew. Set these rules:

• New tools are requested through a form, with an owner and a business reason.
• Each subscription gets its own virtual card with a limit near the expected cost.
• Finance reviews a list of active subscriptions each month or quarter.
• Owners cancel unused licenses, and the card is closed when the tool ends.
• Annual renewals are flagged 30 to 60 days ahead.

One card per vendor makes cancellation easy and reveals price increases quickly. Card platforms such as Brex and Ramp include controls like these, but the policy defines what you want them to enforce.

Announce it in a short meeting, have each cardholder sign, and set up the controls the same week. Give each person a one-page cheat sheet with the three rules they'll use most: what the card is for, how to submit a receipt and who to ask before a large purchase. New hires should get the card and the sheet on the same day, so habits form from the first charge. Then keep it alive:

1. Review exceptions monthly: missing receipts, limit breaches, out-of-policy categories.
2. Follow the violations process the same way every time, including asking for repayment of personal charges.
3. Close cards when people leave, and confirm virtual cards attached to vendors are moved.
4. Update the policy when your business changes, such as new countries or an audit.

Compare provider approaches in Brex, Ramp and Navan and Brex versus Ramp for tech startups, and see the treasury policy series for how spending rules fit with cash management. Have an attorney or HR adviser review the final wording before it becomes a signed condition of employment.