Introducing Stampli Card: Control Corporate Credit Card Spend

Dear Stampli Community,

Stampli’s mission has always been to provide Controllers and their AP team full control and visibility over all company spend, regardless of the payment method. We believe payment methods shouldn’t determine the process; AP determines the process. 

In support of that, today I’m pleased to announce a brand new addition to the Stampli platform: Stampli Card, the most powerful way to issue, process, and control corporate card spend inside Stampli.

Solving for Shadow Spend

AP teams work incredibly hard to ensure that they have effective processes in place, and careful controls set-up to manage spend.

But one of the most significant issues facing Controllers and AP teams is the rise of “Shadow Spend,” where corporate procurement policies to obtain proper approvals and authorization for spend are avoided by placing purchases on a corporate credit card for online subscriptions and purchases. This leaves AP teams lacking visibility into these credit card purchases until the monthly statements arrive. Consequently, this disrupts the entire procure-to-pay process and controls put in place by AP to ensure proper oversight and authorization into all company spend.

As a result, AP is forced into a manual and time-consuming process to determine who made the purchase and what it was for, verify approvals, hunt down the proper documentation, and manually enter in their financial system to close the books.  

Envisioning a Better Solution

The major issue with how corporate spend is handled currently is that corporate cards are managed outside of where invoices are processed. It’s not integrated into the systems that AP teams already use to manage the rest of a company’s spend, adding an entirely separate component that needs to be managed (and doesn’t even incorporate the same controls). Ultimately, AP is required to look across multiple systems in order to understand the total scope of spend happening in the company. It’s an inefficient and fragmented experience.

That wasn’t the vision we had for our customers. 

Instead, we wanted to offer a solution that could help AP teams easily manage their spend in one place, without having to sacrifice or compromise on their existing controls or processes. The next level of evolution for corporate card spend – where Stampli focused – was to create a way to treat a card transaction just like any other payment method inside the process that you already worked so hard to implement inside the company.

What Teams Can Accomplish with Stampli Card

The Stampli Card was designed to give AP the control needed to properly manage all corporate spend regardless of the payment method by bringing corporate cards and invoices management together, all-in-one place.

The Stampli Card is built on top of the Stampli platform you already know and love. AP teams can issue, limit, suspend and cancel cards on-demand. With AP controlling card issuing, the proper approvals and controls happen in advance of any transactions, such as who is authorized to make the purchase, how much they can spend, what they can spend it on, and how often they can use the card (one-time, multiple-times, or cyclical). AP can also pre-define specific fields such as GL-coding, vendor, and more to ensure the proper cost allocations.

Built the Stampli Way, where flexibility, collaboration and automation are center stage with the Stampli Card, giving AP teams the control they need. This includes the ability to:

• Manage invoice & credit card spend all-in-one place. Whether a purchase is invoiced or placed on the Stampli Card, Controllers and AP teams now have complete visibility and control into all transactions as they happen in one centralized location, one system, one user experience.
• Create cards on-demand with proper controls and approvals. Set controls at card issuance of who can use them, amount limits, usage parameters (single-, multi-, or cyclical-use), vendors, or purpose.
• Instantly suspend or cancel cards as needed to control misuse or violation of company policies.
• Automated reminders, receipt matching and collection of supporting documents.  Stampli matches uploaded receipts to credit card transactions. Cardholders are automatically notified and can easily add supporting receipts.
• Automatic capture and syncing of card transactions to Stampli and your financial system. Stampli Card transactions are automatically captured and processed like invoices inside Stampli. Stampli matches transactions to uploaded receipts and reminds cardholders to provide supporting documentation as needed. Everything is then synced directly to the organization’s financial system of record, directly from Stampli.

Building The Future of Spend Management

Our job at Stampli is to empower the relationship between our customers and their vendors.

Nearly a year ago, we first introduced Stampli Direct Pay, an optional service with maximum business-to-business (B2B) payment flexibility. It gives you the option to pay vendors by automated clearing house (ACH) or paper checks, or pay vendors outside of Stampli. You get to choose.

An extension of that same payment flexibility, the Stampli Card was created to help you facilitate card transactions through your existing controls and processes. Unlike our competitors, our aim is not (and will never be) to force your vendors to receive payments by credit card, but rather it’s to ensure AP has full control over spend for vendors that prefer credit cards over other payment methods. Everything about Stampli has been built to work with your systems and processes, not make you uproot all your work just to fit into our software. 

Our primary focus will always be to build the tools to empower AP, and offer our customers the flexibility to select the appropriate ways to do this for their business – whether that means managing everything within Stampli, or relying on Stampli for your core invoice processing and using other tools to complete payments in your preferred way.

By creating a flexible, reliable, and AP-first platform, our hope is to empower finance teams everywhere to combat shadow spend while upholding effective and efficient controls to manage spend no matter the payment type. In this way, AP teams and Controllers can be the strategic partners they’re meant to be.  

We thank you for being part of Stampli’s community and for supporting our work. We’re excited to be building the future of spend management in accounts payable. Your feedback has always been integral to Stampli. As always, get in touch with us if you have questions. 

Sincerely,

Eyal Feldman, Founder & CEO of Stampli