Visa has released a new white paper, titled, "Commercial Cards and
Financial Compliance," to help organizations meet financial
accountability requirements in many countries around the world. The
paper identifies best practices in electronic payment programs for the
travel and entertainment (T&E) management process and Procure-to-Pay
function deployed by companies worldwide to help satisfy compliance
requirements and achieve more control and visibility over spending.
Commercial card programs leverage technology to build efficient
controls, monitor adherence and provide the data necessary to mitigate
control-related risk.
The paper, co-published with ACTE Global, the association of
corporate travel executives, and released today at the annual
Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) Global Education
Conference in Munich, Germany, focuses on corporate card and
purchasing card (P-card) program strategies, which are an integral
part of best practices because they help companies meet control and
audit requirements. Corporate cards are used primarily for T&E
expenses, while P-cards are primarily used by companies for expenses
related to maintenance, repair, operations, and office supplies.
"Commercial cards are an integral part of best practice control
strategies as they leverage technology to help with compliance and
build efficient controls at each stage of the Procure-to-Pay process.
These programs are key in helping minimize spend out-of-policy and
employee misuse, by providing visibility into spend," said Janet
Zablock, vice president, Visa Commercial, Visa Inc. "The power of
corporate and purchasing cards to bolster control over spending and
help comply with regulations is compelling."
T&E Best Practices
Leading companies also ensure that T&E policies are aligned with
overall procure-to-pay objectives and are actively endorsed by senior
management. Best practices that contribute to enhanced control for the
travel management function include:
-- Centralized travel management: Centralizing improves the
ability to track and analyze travel spend.
-- Company-wide travel policies: Developing and distributing
travel restrictions, mandates, and policy updates means that
employees are aware of and understand policies, and are more
likely to follow them.
-- Coordinated event planning through travel management function:
Coordinating improves the ability to track events planning and
other unique travel spend as a subset of overall firm travel
spend and increases ratio of spend through preferred vendors.
-- Implementing a T&E card program: Card programs facilitate a
degree of control through card features and through back-end
audit and exception reporting.
Procure-to-Pay Best Practices
Similar to travel managers, purchasing managers seek to create a
more transparent and accountable purchasing system. Visa has
identified best practices employed by companies worldwide to optimize
the entire Procure-to-Pay process, including sourcing, order
placement, payment and settlement, reconciliation, control and audit
and reporting.
Financial Regulations
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is designed to help ensure financial
transparency in publicly traded companies in the U.S. SOX has impacted
companies worldwide that have enacted policies to implement end-to-end
process controls and the periodic monitoring of organizational
compliance. Once SOX became law in the U.S., many other countries
around the world implemented laws that enforced or recommended
adherence to strict corporate governance principles. While these laws
vary in degree of stringency as compared to SOX, they have two common
core themes - the enforcement or recommendation to implement
organizational controls and the periodic monitoring of organizational
compliance.
To view the entire Compliance white paper, including a
comprehensive overview of T&E and Procure-to-Pay Best Practices and a
description for how corporate and purchasing cards can help ease
financial compliance, visit www.visa.com/compliance.
Notes to Editors:
About ACTE Global: The Association of Corporate Travel Executives
(ACTE) is a not-for-profit association established to provide
executive-level global education and peer-to-peer networking
opportunities. Membership spans all of business travel, from corporate
buyers to agencies to suppliers, and accords all sectors equal
membership. ACTE serves more than 5,000 executives in 49 countries.
For more information, visit www.acte.org.
About Visa Commercial: Visa Commercial payment solutions -- Visa
Business, Visa Corporate and Visa Purchasing -- combine payment with
information to create intelligent payment solutions that are designed
to enable business and government organizations of any size and type
to reduce costs, streamline operational and payment processes, and
make more informed business decisions. Backed by Visa's unsurpassed
acceptance, Visa Commercial products and services are designed to
provide a complete way to manage payment-related processes, including
travel and entertainment and procurement expenditures, payroll
distribution, and information management. For more information, visit
www.visa.com/visacommercial.
About Visa: Visa operates the world's largest retail electronic
payments network providing processing services and payment product
platforms. This includes consumer credit, debit, prepaid and
commercial payments, which are offered under the Visa, Visa Electron,
Interlink and PLUS brands. Visa enjoys unsurpassed acceptance around
the world and Visa/PLUS is one of the world's largest global ATM
networks, offering cash access in local currency in more than 170
countries. For more information, visit www.corporate.visa.com.
