How to deal with Business Card Purchases that cardholders haven't entered

For most organisations that have business cards, it's not uncommon to find a small number of business card transactions on your bank statement that haven't been entered by cardholders.

Whilst ExpensePlus provides an easy and efficient way to handle card purchases that haven't been entered upfront, we'd recommend that you consider encouraging cardholders to enter purchases either at the time of making purchases or within a few days as this will:

  • Save the cardholder time - entering upfront saves cardholders from having to think back 4-5 weeks to remember what the purchase was, and find the corresponding purchase details
  • Reduces lost receipts - it's far less likely a cardholder will lose or not be able to find a receipt if they record purchases as they go
  • Enables budget holders to view accurate expenditure - entering purchases upfront enables budget holders to better manage expenditure
  • Saves the Finance Team time - reconciling statements where business card purchases have been entered takes just 2-3 seconds per transaction

Unlike other purchase types where users have an incentive to enter purchases (because otherwise payments won't be made), cardholders have far less incentive to enter purchases because the money has already been spent. To enable good governance and provide clarity for cardholders many churches and charities have a business cardholder policy in place that cardholders are required to read, sign, and agree to before they are issued a debit/credit card. You can find out more about this AND download a free template that can be adapted in this blog article.

This Helpguide article covers the most efficient way to deal with transactions without the need for you to contact cardholders or to have to wait for cardholders to enter these purchases. If you are wanting to get an overview of the usual process of entering card purchases, see this article: How do Business Card Purchases work?

How to deal with Business Card Purchases that cardholders haven't entered

During bank reconciliation, if you come across a business card purchase on the statement you have uploaded that has not been entered by the cardholder, the following process will enable you to reconcile the transaction without the need to contact cardholders or send cardholders' individual statements and it will avoid the need to have to wait to complete bank reconciliation and create accounts.

This process will:
  • Provide you with an efficient way to deal with card purchases that haven't been entered and complete the bank reconciliation process
  • Auto-generate an email at 7 am the following morning to each cardholder who has card transactions they need to update and provide receipts for
  • Budget holders and leaders will be able to view reports that include all income and expenditure much sooner, rather than having to wait
  • The receipts screen will keep track of card purchases that still need a receipt and enable you to send reminder emails at the click of a button.
On the match transactions screen:
(1) select a bank transaction (left-hand table). If there is no there is no corresponding card purchase on the right-hand table, the purchase won't go green - instead an 'add' icon will appear next to the transaction

(2) click the add transaction icon, and then in the popup, select the business card purchase option

(3) Enter the purchase details
  • The cardholder name or card number should appear within the transaction description, enabling you to correctly allocate the card purchase to the correct card holder (we'd highly recommend you do NOT allow cardholders to share business cards with others and instead provide each member of staff that needs a business card with their own card - as this will enable you to allocate purchases correctly to the correct cardholder AND prevent issues with not knowing who made a particular purchase). Card purchases will appear within the profile of the cardholder, as if they entered the purchase themselves, enabling to view and update the purchase details
  • The supplier name should also appear within the transaction description enabling you to select or add this
  • The description field can be left blank if this is not known
  • A fund and category do need to be entered although this will be updated later by the cardholder when they are notified of the purchase. Many organisations create themselves a 'z. to be updated' expenditure category within their general fund which they allocated card purchases entered at the point of bank reconciliation to (which the cardholder who made the purchase and therefore knows which category it should be allocated to, then updates)
Note: if you have more than one bank account with debit/credit cards - it's typically worth (a) checking the right-hand table of both card accounts before adding a card transaction, as you might find it has been entered, but the wrong bank account selected (you can move it, just by clicking the edit button to the right of the purchase), and (b) naming bank accounts clearly and training cardholders as to which bank account to select when entering transactions based on the account their debit/credit card is linked to, (c) consider moving to just having one card account for your organisation.

To better understand the Bank Reconciliation module, please view the module overview video here.

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