Expert: Arthur Naman - 11/12/2010

Question
I had a hard time finding the right expert.  If you are unable to answer my question will you please instruct me on the best way to find the correct expert?  
We have met with some bank representatives who want us to start using their Visa purchasing cards.  Our instinct it that maybe they are for larger entities.  We are a nonprofit with an approximately $1 million budget. While we are unsure if the purchasing card is for us, this does have us thinking about other electronic payment options such as the one QuickBooks offers.  Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Answer
I did not know what a purchasing card was, so I googled the term. It is basically a credit card given to an employee where the liability for purchases rests with the employer and not the employee who is the card holder. Visa is a common brand of purchasing card.

Thus if you issued a Visa purchasing card to your employees, they can make purchases for business use and not have to worry about having to make credit card payments. My guess is that the need for these would be based on the volume of purchases more that the size of the business. Thus, for example, if your employees traveled a significant part of the time, a Visa purchasing card could be used for travel expenses and eliminate the need for employees to make credit card payments and then seed reimbursement.

I expect that the bank is interested in having you use their Visa purchasing card because they will receive fees as the card issuer.

As for making electronic payments via Quickbooks (QB), I have used QB's electronic payments for receiving payments, but not making payments. If you can use QB for making electronic payments, either for receiving payments or making payments, I would encourage its use.