Purchasing cards (p-cards) impact favorably on transaction processing for both purchasing and payables. Primarily aimed at lower-dollar transactions, which tend to make up a large percentage of a company's transactions, p-cards can significantly reduce the high processing costs associated with small purchases. P-cards effectively aggregate multiple small transactions into a single monthly bill.
From a payables perspective, p-cards reduce the number of invoices a company receives. Purchases of offices supplies, for example, might be made several times a month. If the purchases are made on a p-card, all the transactions will be contained in a single monthly bill rather than in multiple invoices. (Similarly, purchases do not require purchase orders; controls are implemented within the p-card program, including limits on what can be purchased to how much may be spent.)
Cost is also reduced if the p-card provider is able to code the purchases to your general ledger based on a default code used for vendor purchases.
TAPN provides a lot of information and tools on p-cards. See TAPN's Reports on p-cards, specifically,
- Commercial Card Market: an Overview,
- Best Practices for Purchasing Card Programs, and
- Guide to Purchasing Card Implementation.
And in AP Tools see
Also see Benchmarking and Best practices.
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