If you use a VISA check card from your bank you can easily monitor all expenses through your company bank account. I found this helpful for my startup, but as you get bigger and spend more money you'll probably want to look at cards that give you extras (cash back, etc...).
The big problem with that is that debit cards have much slower fraud protections than credit cards (depending on issuer, of course).
If fraud hits your debit card, your cash account is empty and things like rent may be getting returned while you deal with it. With a credit card, that's the credit card company's money so they move faster.
American Express Plum card used to have one of the best bonuses for quick repayment. It originally was 2% with no cap, if you paid it within 10 days. Or you could pay your minimum and defer the payment a month with no penalty. I think it is 1.5% now, which is still pretty good considering there's no cap.
I got it when I was doing a lot of affiliate marketing (no rebills, I swear), which is sort of like being a founder, and spending $xx,xxx a month on traffic. Getting 2% of that back was actually pretty sweet, considering my margins were 15-20% in general.
Capital One Spark Business Visa currently has 2% unlimited cash back and a $59 annual fee. When I signed up it was 1.5% cash back, no annual fee, and no minimum cash back rewards redemption amount.
Interesting. The Plum has a $199 fee after the first year. The one advantage for it would still be the ability to defer interest and payments for a month, but the Spark card may be a better option now, overall.
American Express SimplyCash Business Platinum has the standard one statement month-long interest deferral, 3% cash back on telecom bills and 3% cash back in a category you choose (shipping expenses, advertising, travel, some other ones I forget), no annual fee, and no minimum redemption amount. If you get both the SimplyCash card and the Spark card you can use each accordingly to maximize the cash back percentage, and get all the cash back accrued as statement credits every month. It is a small improvement to cash flow that adds up.
My advice would be to make sure you have more than 1 card. There will be a fraudulent purchase at some point leading to a card re-issue. You don't want to be dead in the water for a few days while that happens!
Very true, learned-from-experience type advice. Some banks my not really get the need and ask a bunch of questions, but in my experience they were more excited for the opportunity to charge more credit card fees :)
I would suggest to get the second business card (not for every employee, but for paying your critical service bills) from a different provider altogether, since the goal is to make sure the backup works when the primary one doesn't for whatever reason. So choose for example your bank's card as primary, with a corporate Amex as backup.
Thats why i like Amex, their fraud detections systems quite advanced. Even when my card had fraud on it and they issued a new card #. All vendors still worked with the old card number.
Or just get a credit card through your local bank (or anything with a nearby physical branch). I've had corporate cards replaced and reprinted for me same-day.
From being at startups where people tend to move fast and often move on, tell your staff that they can use the services they need BUT you will only reimburse them for 3 months. After that, it must be on the corp card.
I've seen too many times where AWS, Mailchimp, etc, etc are on someone's personal card and once they leave, everything blows up after a couple months. It's even worse if they left under bad terms.
Give them some flexibility but make sure it comes to a single point of control.
I would say save the hassles and just stick to the corps credit card. I experienced the AWS under a personal credit card issue, but AWS was quick to resolve the issue with us anyway.
Though it is needless to say, also make sure you have a vendor email address to manage vendors. We have had vendor account signed up using work email but after the person left the company, we lose the account control and have to ping account manager. Sometimes, that process can take days to complete.
But if you make them stick to the corp card that means everyone has the # and you lose control and insight. That's dangerous at any stage but even worse when you're early stage and every dollar feels like $20.
This is where you need to have an account payable setup. Your finance team/person should be responsible for the invoice. If this is a tiny small startup, the CEO should be the one signing up.
Rather than a vendors@ email address for vendors, alias their old.employee@ address to someone else still with the company in a similar role (their replacement, if they have one).
That way you ?won't miss sales queries, service notifications, or other stuff they used their email for. Update the accounts as necessary and it slows to a trickle quickly.
Well, that's not smart. Employees should use company email addresses for company work.
OP stated "work email" and advised use of vendor@ email which is what I was objecting to. Everywhere I've been, using vendor@ emails has been a pain and employee emails a non-issue.
On that note: create an alias accountspayable@ or something equivalent and use that for all invoicing. Absolutely disallow signing up for services with individual user accounts.
I would never use any service under an employee's personal card. If someone needs something, it takes 10 minutes get someone with a company card to save it as a payment method and add it to a google spreadsheet. This also ensures that we know exactly how much we are spending and on what.
In the past, I've worked at a company where each team managed their own expenses. This led to situations like one team using a certain transaction email provider, and another team using a different one, rather than saving thousands of dollars by going entirely with one or the other. Costs should be managed at a corporate level, not at the level of the individual employee who is tasked with setting up transactional emails.
In the short-term, get shit done world, sometimes things are messier and the edges are rougher and you need to allow for some of that.
My 3 month rule is good enough to evaluate, try it out, play with some ideas, get some feedback, and then scale or kill. If you kill it, expense it and you're done. If you scale it (aka operationalize it), move it to the corp account.
At Twilio, I saw this from both sides.. both as a purchaser and as an evangelist getting people to use our API.
I think you have a valid point and in the grand scheme of things, SaaS accounting is hardly consequential to a company's success.
But even in reality I would be worried about a management team that doesn't pay attention to control of a company's technical infrastructure. Having business expenses fall neatly under one bank account is not a complicated responsibility and doesn't get in the way of a "get shit done" attitude.
> I would never use any service under an employee's personal card. If someone needs something, it takes 10 minutes get someone with a company card to save it as a payment method and add it to a google spreadsheet. This also ensures that we know exactly how much we are spending and on what.
Totally agree. No reason to ever put something on an employee's personal card... way too many things could go wrong in that situation. Some examples I've seen over the years...
* Employee doesn't document the service... so like all of a sudden your Zapier / IFTTT / Unito / etc. account that was responsible for forwarding various emails to the right people just stops working because an employee left the company. You had no idea how they set it up, and without them you're stuck trying to re-build what they had done. You're boned if you don't make time to document how services work, and audit how they are paid for.
* Employee changes CC (less of an issue now since many recurring charges get updates to CC numbers) and doesn't realize they forgot to update the service... then a mission critical service fails. This happened to one of my clients back when Costco changed from Amex to Visa... the auto-update didn't work across card carriers, and the employee had all the emails from that service provider going into his spam folder... and presto our project management software stopped working for a day. A stitch in time saves nine... Make time to use the company card.
* Employee with the payment card can often call customer support and gain owner-level privileges, even assuming they didn't start with them. If others on the team don't realize this... it can cause drama. Saw this happen a few times with Slack accounts at various companies. One employee started a company Slack... to try it out... ended up getting the free credits they used to (maybe still do) offer, upgrading to paid account... and then being a super admin. We had to go to the employee and get them to transfer account ownership to a company official so they couldn't just change the CEO's email to their own, reset the password, and get access to conversations they shouldn't have access to. Again... this all takes A LOT more time than just using the company card.
* Employee leaves the company, loses access to email address, can't cancel the account that has the CC... gets stuck with a huge bill they can't cancel without canceling their CC. Was an easy fix, but just an awkward situation -- nobody had been using the service since the employee left, and since his card was on auto-pay he didn't notice the $150 / month charge for over a year. At that point his email address was long gone, we had to re-create it, reset the password, get customer support to cancel the account... total waste of a day for someone. We reimbursed the employee, but we had no way of getting a refund from the service provider.
* Employee maxes out credit. Put AWS on your personal CC... have a swing month... boom you max out the credit card the employee had... who knows what other debt he was carrying, or what his limit was... or what the fraud triggers are on some no-name credit union card... it's a huge risk to leave this sort of thing up to your employee... some services will give you notice (again, that requires you having the emails go to the right people), but some will just cut you off. Huge risk to your company introducing this many unknowns.
Final reason... because of perks an employee gets for using their personal card. This simply isn't fair to other employees... these rewards are a form of compensation... you don't want to have a policy that allows people benefits for not using the company card as that's a conflict of interest. Having a policy that requires people to get the service approved, documented, and on the company card will always save you time. "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast..." etc. Even for startups, letting people use personal cards is a horrible horrible idea. Take 10 minutes... do it right.
"I need this tool to solve this problem right now. I can either go bug someone for the credit card and get off track or pull out my own card, get onto putting out the next fire, and settle the cash later."
And as I noted, it's not a long term thing.. it's to allow experimentation in the moment.
I have some very important advice for startups that is tangentially related. Make sure that your AWS account is not on someone's retail account. They can never, ever be separated. Your order history is not deletable and AWS resources, data, etc. cannot be transferred between accounts. Additionally, the root account is required for many activities.
Amex Gold and Chase Business Preferred are great for anyone spending a lot on online marketing as you can pick advertising as your category and get 3X points on all of that spend.
Possibly the best card for startup business expenses is the Chase Ink. It gives 5x points on office supplies and telco, and quite a few ISPs count as utilities. Getting 5x points on your server bills is very nice.
Points can be transferred to airline partners for super cheap international first and business class tickets (10¢ per point of value, often), or can be redeem at 1.5¢ per point for any cash flights or hotel rooms on their travel portal. Worst case, 1¢ per point as cashback.
Amex also has quite a few great business card. The Business Rewards Gold, The Business Platinum, and the Business Starwood SPG cards are the best.
I'm not convinced it's worth our time to figure out which credit card we should be using. Granted, our expenses are low, but the math just doesn't make sense.
If you're spending much on advertising I would give Amex Platinum a look. They offer 3x points on one category per year and advertising is one of the options. The points add up fast and come in handy for flights.
If you pay your AWS bill with the Amazon Rewards Visa, the transaction is categorized under Amazon and you'll get 5% rewards (only redeemable on Amazon though)
I was unaware of that- thanks for the info. I should also add that 5% is only for Prime members. Without a Prime subscription, you will only recieve 3%
Capital One Spark Business (Visa) has worked great for us.
Very friendly service, good online system (not as great as Amex though), $15K limit from day one for a new business with zero revenue at the time. Best of all, 2% cash back on every single purchase (no categories), which adds up to real money when you put all of your expenses like AWS on it.
In the past, I used a USBank based service for small businesses. Low rates, API to get purchases, and fairly easy to get/qualify for. Assign credit limits per-employee and per category (so, for example, Maintenance Guy A can't purchase any food/beverages, but, can buy stuff at Grainger/home improvement stores, and has a limit of $500 per transaction, but a total credit limit of $5,000).
Why? I've used them for over 25 years for company accounts. They bank most of the VCs as well. They understand startups, while all the other banks around here are used to big businesses and retail.
Curious: were you a direct SVB client? I can recommend them enough, I basically can't imagine a better banking experience unless someone made the tech side of it better. I have heard recently of a lot of folks on HN who are somewhat unhappy with SVB because they're clients through Atlas and those accounts are apparently a bit clunkier and less worked through. Is that the case?
Get a 2% cash back card. I think capital one has them. If you're running an ecommerce business for example with low margins but high spend (on google adwords or whatever), getting that 2% cash back really can be a huge boost to your profitability.
this 2%. nerdwallet for help. I have yet to see anyone beat the 2% back other than bonus signons - but those are 1 time and on a 2-3 year horizon go with 2%.
Fidelity has a 2% one as well that deposits cash into a fidelity investment account vs CapOne where you have to apply points to other transactions to utilize the full 2% back (and CapOne redemption only applies to certain Merchant Category Codes... FYI Timeshare/Rental in Orlando for a week is not redeemable by CapOne and is not the same MCC as a Hotel)
The CapOne 2% business card is called Spark Cash and doesn't have the redemption restrictions that you're describing (I think you may be thinking of their Venture card or another personal travel card). The only two downsides to the Spark card (in comparison to the Fidelity cashback card or Citi double cash) are that applying for it likely dings you in all 3 major credit reports (as opposed to just one like most cards) and also that it carries a $59 annual fee after the 1st year.
My startup has a spark card and being able to get the amazon gift cards as the 2% bonus was great, but unfortunately for some reason amazon gift cards are no longer available as one of the gift card options. Had to start getting home depot and target cards instead :/.
If you're considering personal cards, USAA has 2.5% cash back on everything if you have a bank account + $1000/month direct deposit with them. http://usaa.com/limitless (limited to certain states)
"This card would be your best option for non-category spend (apart from the Discover it Miles, that offers 3% cash back for the first year). Obviously this is a loss leader for USAA, but they would be trying to make that money back on the checking account that requires the $1,000 direct deposit. Most other financial institutions have used bank account bonuses instead, but Fidelity also loses money on their 2% card but still come out ahead as cardholders have larger Fidelity deposits than non-cardholders. I suspect USAA will need to add some limits to this card to make it sustainable, but the limited membership might make this unnecessary."
Doctor of Credit is the only worthwhile credit card/bank account/money saving blog to follow. The rest of them collect commission from referrals and it shows from their content, for example advertising a small sign up bonus for the AMEX Platinum when there was a much larger bonus available and pimping Chase cards hard. The doctor has a strict no referral policy to stay neutral and provide the best content.
The Limitless card is pretty much a market test at this point and not an established product.
We fall into a business category you describe and have a 1.5% cash back card...with a current balance of just over $1.3m, which we will pay off in full later this month, and then do it all over again :)
Definitely make sure you get one where they're willing to scale up the credit limit. Our cardable expenses are now more than our limit so we have to pay it off multiple times a month.
I know a lot of companies where the executive puts the expenses on their own card and then files an expense report at the end of each week.
In fact, even as a non-executive I'd have no problem putting SaaS on my points earning personal card if I trusted that my expenses would be reimbursed in a timely manner.
I've gotten multiple free flights and hotel rooms this way.
I might get down voted a bit because people could argue that the company should reap the rewards from any points but I don't personally see an issue with it.
When are we going to stop the insanity around credit card points and get to a system where credit card usage is no-frills and cheaper across the board?
If you have high expenses and want to leverage a good rebate, I would recommend getting the Alliant Cashback Visa Signature Credit Card.
It offers a 3% cash back off all purchases during your first year and the annual fee ($59) is waived during the first year. 2.5% cash back after the first year.
I've been running my affiliate business for a long time on several cards, but have so far found amex gold / platinum to be the best if you have any measure of marketing expenses.
The gold business card gives 3X points on Facebook/google ads, while the business platinum gives 1.5x points on purchases over $5k (useful for equipment purchases). You also get 50% points back on preferred airline travel bought with points directly through amex.com
I do realize that not everyone has credit sufficient to get these two, but if accessible they are great.
Another vote for the Capital One Spark card. We are getting $500/mo + back via the 2% cash back, which has been a much better value for us than the miles we were getting previously with an Citi AAdvantage American Airlines card.
I have a reminder setup to request a statement credit at the end of each month and it hits our P&L as income.
Something else to be aware of is that some business cards will hit your personal credit score. The Capital One Spark card I have does, but the Citi AAdvantage card I had previously doesn't.
I pay in full every month so it actually improved my credit score a few points as it added $30K in available credit with 0% utilization, but if you are going to carry a balance you could take a hit on your personal credit score - especially if your available credit utilization is high.
Agree with others are (sort of) saying. If you're a 5 person team and the CEO please keep the card on your name. Then, create a accountspayable email address so you're the only member in it. Then, whenever you get a CFO on board, include him on the account -- this should be possible on the card provided -- however, the main point is that you're aware of things that go on with your account. Have some kind of process in place so there's dual approval on critical operations (txns above a certain amount, voiding transactions etc).
Neither of these are real credit cards, they are prepaid debit cards. I suppose I could imagine a few use cases if you deal with a lot of contractors/temporary employees but at that point I'd rather just deal with reimbursements.
Just keep in mind when applying that you might have personal joint liability for your business card's balance. We have a Chase Ink Business Cash card that I applied for as a representative of our company and had to provide my SSN on the application. The card was approved no problem but looking at Chase's offerings enticed me to apply for the Sapphire card for myself. I got denied a Sapphire card despite a damn near perfect credit score and qualifying income. When I called in to dispute being denied arguing that my personal card shouldn't be impacted by a business card, this is how I learned that I was jointly liable for my business card payments as well. Chase auto-denied me due to "multiple consecutive applications" since they don't consider business and personal to be separate if the SSN used is the same.
Point is, make sure you read the fine print before you apply - joint liability may not be standard on all cards. Our bank issued us their business Visa with a very generous line and it is only connected to our business account with no joint personal liability.
So if the company goes belly up its possible that you'll end up holding the bag? That is horrifying coming from someone who has worked for mismanaged companies.
An employee using the company card usually does have some personal liability for the card. Liability does not arise in the case mentioned above where the company goes bankrupt. However, if an employee makes unauthorized charges to a company card, the company can refuse to pay them as they do not fall underneath the company card policy. Those charges then become the employee's responsibility.
Be careful with company credit cards, even if you're only an employee!
Don't worry about the card "benefits", worry about your procedures. Interest rate doesn't matter: you pay off the card every month, right? And time spent trying to optimize this is time you should be putting into your business.
For procedures:
- everyone should have a company card in their own name. This means you don't wonder who placed that order for 55 gal of lube on Amazon; it will clearly be John Doe or Jane Smith. Since it's a company card, you'll get the bill and will be able to manage recurring purchases (e.g AWS) after the employee leaves. On the other hand if they accidentally order a bridesmaid's dress on the company card (happened at one of my companies) you can make sure the employee is on the hook for it.
- no expenses reimbursed -- only company card to be used.
SVB does this very well -- the employees get individual bills a day or two before the company consolidated bill arrives (all sent to the company -- again so the employee has a chance to catch that bridesmaid dress before the boss sees it).
I have: SPG Business Amex (most recurring purchases); Amex Platinum (certain travel purchases). I use my personal Chase Sapphire Reserve and SPG Amex for some reimbursed expenses as well. I have a Chase IHG MC and an Amazon Prime (5%!) Visa that I use for IHG and Amazon, respectively (and the IHG for the rare cases I need a MasterCard).
Aside from the 2-5% return by using these cards, (and warranty, travel, etc. benefits), I find amex billing statements the easiest to reconcile across multiple purchasers.
I've seen a few people mention using check or debit cards and that is almost always a bad idea. You lose the fraud protection and you are giving vendors and employees direct access to your checking account.
For your particular situation I would probably just open a credit card account with whoever your startup banks with. Beyond that I would probably explore do the following (in rough order depending on your company size):
1. Using Personal Guarantee: If you are an early startup you probably cant get easily get a business card without a personal guarantee. In this case its really up to the founding team's credit worthiness and I would recommend Amex/OPEN, Capital One Spark, and Chase Ink. All of these will probably require a personal guarantee to start but these particular ones won't go on your personal credit report (Some other cards may).
2. Establishing Credit: Create a Dunn and Bradstreet account, update it, and make sure you have a good web presence. The easiest business credit accounts to establish are UPS, Fedex, Amazon, Staples/OfficeMax/Depot, Frys, Uline. Open them and pay your bills on time (and in full). This will all boost your D&B Paydex score even if you are only making small purchases from each.
3. Utilize your Bank: In SF Wells Fargo is actually quite good for a small startup, SVB is good once you have funding, and US Bank/First Republic are good alternatives. This is your best bet for first major business line of credit (LOC). A business LOC is almost like a credit card and could even have better terms for repayment. If and how you should actually use it depends on your company and your finances, however if you get one without a personal guarantee they will probably limit your expenses to business expenses.
4. Get Credit without PGs(personal guarantees): Once you are seasoned for around 3-9 months you can start looking to getting credit without a personal guarantee. Beyond your bank I would look at US Bank, Amazon, Amex Business, Cap One Spark. If by that time you have funding and more substantial bank deposits approval will be much easier.
I'm going to assume you're trying to maximize for cash back and ignore other potential perqs like price protection, extended warranties, etc.
I'd say your two best bets would be either the Chase Ink Preferred or Amex Business Rewards Gold. Both offer 3 points per dollar spent in some categories. The Amex card explicitly lists cloud computing, the Chase card includes internet and online advertising. I'd recommend doing a bit of research to make sure your spending fits into the bonus categories.
If you're redeeming the points for statement credit you'll get 1 cent per point from Chase and .6 cents per point from Amex. There are other ways to redeem points that may be more valuable to you but this should be the minimum value you get.
Both cards have annual fees so you should definitely do the math to see if you'll at least break even on the fee. If you won't break even or you don't use the spending categories that have bonuses you might prefer something simpler. Citi offers cash back cards for businesses that give 1.5% or 2% cash back on all purchases. The 2% comes with an annual fee so once again you'd need to do the math to figure out which one is right for you.
Am also in San Francisco. In 2011, exactly one year after my bankruptcy, I got a Capital One card w/ a $750 credit limit and a $75 annual fee. Three months later I got a another Capital One card w/ a $2000 limit and no annual fee. I'm guessing Capital One is a great company to go with, especially when it's "live off credit cards" time and your credit rating is in the crapper :)
A less snarky answer is to join Credit Karma and see what they recommend. It's a great service for $0.
If you need a high limit but don't have strong credit I'd recommend the Amex gold charge card. I was getting $3-5k limits on other cards but got a 50k limit straight away with this card. It had the 3x rewards on certain categories like online advertising mentioned above, but the balance must be paid in full monthly.
Not for the US: http://holvi.com is great for Finnish, German and Austrian startups. You can get multiple cards, comes with bookkeeping built in and reimbursement functionality.
- very small team (< 5 people)
- mostly used for online services (e.g., servers, SaaS, api ...)
- rarely travel
- in San Francisco