Company credit cards

I have a company credit card at the moment where the payment of that credit card sits entirely with the company. I work as a consultant engineer.

Due to the costs associated with running it (administration and fees) the company are wanting to move to a “company credit” card where responsibility for payment sits with employee, i.e. me. As somebody who travels within the UK frequently and overseas occasionally the associated costs of UK travel and hotels would then wash through my bank accounts, potentially £1,000’s a month. Having only ever worked for the same company for the last 18 years I am keen to understand whether the proposed new scheme is normal – what are peoples’ experience with company credit cards outside my goldfish bowl?

Company amex

Bills come to me

I will have put my expense claim in before the bill arrives anyway

I put my expenses in my savings account until the bill is due

Although the card is in my name, it doesn’t show up on any credit reports at all

Yes, perfectly normal. I’ve had it when working at large companies such as PwC and smaller companies.

Hmmm
Having put most of my salary down as expenses before I wouldn’t be keen, when finally gettin my company card the director who had to sign it off asked if I wanted the hassle, then told him what I was lending the company every month…

If costs are an issue I would be more worried about being left in trouble by the company

I’ve been in a similar situation for the last 5 years. How well it works depends on how efficient you are at doing your expenses, how efficient the company is at paying and when your credit card bill is due compared to when your expenses are paid. When my company’s payment department got lax the FD “gave” me a float that was about 20% more than a typical expenses bill to cover any lag.

The only other “gotcha” is how they report the expenses to HMRC. Some years (but the company isn’t consistent) they get reported as a benefit. I then need to put an equal sum on my return as a business expense to balance it out. Minor niggle but just something to be aware of.

Due to the costs associated with running it (administration and fees) the company are wanting to move to a “company credit” card where responsibility for payment sits with employee,

Hmm I wonder how this is cheaper for the company? Can’t see it’d be less admin and the fees have to go somewhere. Is pretty common though.

Yes entirely normal. When I worked for a company that used that system I happened to have two bank accounts one of which I hardly used so I used that for company expenses to keep it separate from my own finances.

Went through something similar 10 years ago.

In theory it’s pretty simple – you use the card as you see fit, make an expense claim and settle the balance every month.

As ever though life isn’t always that simple.

fuel can be a pain, but you just have to accept that you’ll need to pay some personal cash to settle the bill at the end of the month to cover your personal mileage (unless you can make your work fuel cover your personal – everyone does that right?)

The biggest thing that annoyed me was I’d get this bill every month for £600 or so, just another thing to deal with, but it was due by x date or penalties etc would apply etc – then sometimes HR would drag their feet with my expenses, or reject something or other and I’d have to argue it. A couple of times I had to pay it and wait to get the money back.

Be careful about who and how the card is managed too, if it’s a corp card that just has your name on it, that’s one thing, a card that belongs to you is quite another. I wouldn’t do that.

Thanks for the replies . It sounds as though I will have to suck it up.

baden – Member
Thanks for the replies . It sounds as though I will have to suck it up.

Never assume you have to suck it up 😉
If you have been there 18 years and come up high on the expenses spend go and have a proper word with HR/Finance about what the options are.

corporate card here. have to reconcile the statements every month or so with receipts but no responsibility for paying etc.

used to run my own card and just submit receipts etc and pay it off myself. made me a bit more disciplined about submitting expense claims in a timely fashion..benefits were I ran a cashback type card and used to get a £2-300 bonus back a year.

our old accountants used to **** up my p11d every year and as a result of many discussions with HMRC trying to tax me on expense payments i’m now on self assessment. plug the same numbers in and it goes through fine. just changed accountants so we’ll see what happens this year.

Hmm I wonder how this is cheaper for the company? Can’t see it’d be less admin and the fees have to go somewhere. Is pretty common though.

I have to admit when we had a card and never saw the bill things were a bit more Wild West, we’d use them as and when, ‘Lunches’ generally went on the cards, but in truth the rules stated you had to be with a client or away from home to have lunch on the company, not 300m from the office in the pub or grabbing a boots mealdeal.

Fuel just went on, ‘personal mileage’ was a strange concept we’d heard about maybe.

Anyway, we’d use them and at the end of the month we were asked to send in receipts which got lost, lost in the post, ‘never gave me one’ etc and the HR guys who weren’t even in the same county let alone office dealt with it all.

When it went the other way things immediately changed – having to justify it all before you got the money to pay your bill and serious consequences if you didn’t clear it made sure of that.

Oh, and a little warning to the OP – 12 months after that, as I was leaving, they did away with them all together than staff were given cut-rate personal CCs to use instead.

I’ve always had this and as far as a I was aware it was the norm. It just requires a bit of organisation. Most months I don’t expense anything but a long haul trip and 2 weeks living in a hotel can put a wadge on it. That is probably easier to handle than lots of small transactions.

FWIW my wife travels an aweful lot. Until recently she did 3 or 4 days out of town. Her expenses were vast and complicated. She had a second account to keep it all separated from her normal finances. You shouldn’t incur any losses.

you are being asked to use your personal credit score to fund the company. even as a small company we don’t do that (anyone putting in claims of hundreds every month gets a company card).

Beware though, that even with a company card the terms are usually that you are joint a severally liable. I discovered that from a liquidator once – fortunately my card had little use that month!

corporate card here. have to reconcile the statements every month or so with receipts but no responsibility for paying etc.

This. Except for mileage. Having taken several months to get (non CC) expenses paid before, I’ll be rogered sideways before I loan the company any of my money.

What jon said.

Our lot went through a phase of trying to covertly get us to book our flights on personal cc (intercontinental expensive flights so not cheap) just made it clear that if they were not prepaid I’d not be flying citing my own lack of “cashflow”

We have company Barclay Cards, the company settles the bill each month.

When I used to spend a lot of expenses including buying materials and getting drill rigs repaired and bribing farmes with tractors etc I had a separate bank account with a direct debit (not credit) card linked to it. I put in a float of my personal money, put in expenses claims which would then get paid directly into the same bank account.

Have done every way – Corp Card paid centrally (amex), corp card paid out of my own account (amex), own card, company pre-paid expenses & I just pay for extras.

For any corporate card your own personal credit history is searched for ID purposes, but the credit risk belongs entirely to the company (so you won’t see it appear on an equifax report as a risk, ever, even if they go bust, but you will see an id check, like you do when getting an insurance quote ).

Do not be tempted to set up a direct debit as delays in payment from your company can leave you seriosuly out of pocket. Re-expense any fines you get from the CC company should you not receive payment in time. A separate basic bank account (with no o/d facility) can help you here – simply set up a payment that you can acitvate when you get paid.

If its AMEX, ask if they have a rewards scheme. I made a gadjillion airmiles just by pushing my expenses through a corporate BA amex. They’re naff all use for booking economy tickets (unless you like flying on a tuesday at 3am, via madrid, in separate seats). but great for upgrades and occasionally hotels.

Personally I prefer it all centrally paid, but bean counters are bean counters & they’ll have found some way to save 0.0265p per month.

Haven’t ever had a “company card” but to me that’s always meant the company pays the bill each month. When I was travelling more I’d pay on my own CC but most of the time flights/trains/hotels could be booked through a portal and billed to the company directly so it was normally just meals, petrol and other bits and pieces.

I do know some who choose to do it all on their own CC, if you have cashback or a points scheme it can be beneficial to put loads of expenses through as long as you’re not at financial risk if an expenses payment doesn’t come through. A mate was flying back and forth to Amsterdam, staying in a hotel most weeks for years, and the John Lewis points pretty much refurnished his house.

This sounds like the worst of all worlds though. You shoulder the risk, you don’t get any incentives, and you (and your employer) still have the faff of an expenses process to deal with it all.

Last company card I had was an Amex for which I was personally responsible. It was a pain as if expenses department where slow I would have to pay it before I got the money back. On leaving the company I had a dispute over an expense and never got the money back.

A mate was flying back and forth to Amsterdam, staying in a hotel most weeks for years, and the John Lewis points pretty much refurnished his house.

I’d have a concern about this as he’s getting a benefit. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some tax implication.

We use to get, when starting employment, an imprest of £500 which was used to cover out of pocket expenses upon eventually leaving it was paid back but in the interim it covered the lag between expenditure and reimbursement. Maybe you could wangle something like this.

I have a corporate Amex for which I am responsible. I have no regular payment set up. This is good because if I forget to do my expenses Amex phone me up and get shirty. They’ll cancel my card if it’s more than a few months outstanding.

This makes me do my expenses on time!

We use to get, when starting employment, an imprest of £500 which was used to cover out of pocket expenses upon eventually leaving it was paid back but in the interim it covered the lag between expenditure and reimbursement. Maybe you could wangle something like this.

Isn’t the interest free period on the credit card effectively doing the same thing?

I’ve got a company AMEX as well, my responsibility to settle the bill and company policy puts acceptable levels of spending and times for paying it off.

I used to use my own card and get the cash back associated with the expenses which was nice but probably not financially allowed.