Employee cards and spend controls: how we run them in a small agency

Why we give staff their own cards

Before we had employee cards, every purchase a colleague made for the agency went one of two ways. Either they paid personally and claimed it back, which meant a form, a receipt chase and a delay that nobody enjoyed, or they asked to borrow the company card, which meant the card number circulating in places it should not. Both were a tax on getting work done.

The case for employee cards is mostly about time and visibility, and both matter more in a small business than a large one, because the person doing the expenses is usually also the person running the company.

How Capital on Tap employee cards work

Capital on Tap offers unlimited free employee cards. Each card is linked to one named person and to the company’s single credit account and limit. The issuer’s own description: “Capital on Tap lets you issue an unlimited number of employee cards and set individual spending limits on each card from the Cards page in your portal.”

Issuing a card. From the Cards page in the portal you select “Request New Card”, enter the employee’s name and mobile number, and they receive a link to confirm their details and agree to the terms. Once approved, a physical card is posted (physical card in 2 to 5 business days) or a virtual card is available immediately in their app. The cardholder activates the physical card by logging into their own Capital on Tap account, after which they can see their PIN and their own transactions. Hand the card to the person it is issued to; do not activate it on their behalf.

Live visibility. Transactions appear in your portal and app as they happen, and you can turn on push notifications. Cardholders can upload receipts from the app at the point of purchase, and a Receipt Chaser setting (under Notification settings, then Receipt Reminders) nags them if they do not.

Freeze and unfreeze. Any card can be frozen instantly from the app or portal and unfrozen the same way. That is the right first move for a lost card, a suspicious transaction, or a cardholder who has gone quiet about receipts.

Limits, ATM permissions and roles

Spending limits. Each card can have a limit limits per billing period or per transaction, set when you issue it and changeable afterwards from the Cards page. A per-billing-period limit suits a role with steady, predictable spend; a per-transaction limit suits a role where the risk is one large purchase rather than many small ones. You can set both. Remember that all cards share the company’s credit limit, so per-card caps should add up to something sensible against the total. On a modest company limit that is a real constraint, and it is one of the reasons the credit limit matters more than the headline rewards.

ATM withdrawals. You can block cash withdrawals on any individual card: Cards page, select the card, change the “ATM Withdrawals” permission. We would block it on every employee card by default. Cash on a credit card is the one place the free card gets expensive: interest on cash withdrawals from the day you take them, the account is limited to two withdrawals and £400 in any 24 hours, and cash earns no points, unlike cash withdrawals or fees. The avoid interest guide explains the cash trap in full.

Roles. Separately from cards, Capital on Tap has three user roles. Administrator is for a co-director or trusted partner and can manage the team, edit business details and see everything. Accounts is for a bookkeeper or accountant: they can view transactions and manage the accounting integration but not change core settings. Employee is the default for staff: they can use their card and see only their own activity. Administrator and Accounts users can additionally be granted advanced permissions such as managing team cards and payments. Give the bookkeeper the Accounts role rather than sharing your login.

The Authorised User terms: who is liable

Employee cards come with their own document, the Authorised User Terms and Conditions, which sit alongside the credit agreement and the personal guarantee. They are short and worth reading, because they answer the question every owner should ask before issuing a card: what happens if a member of staff misuses it?

The answer is that the business carries it. The terms say the business is bound by, and ratifies, all acts and omissions of each cardholder, and is legally and financially responsible for them, including all spend on a supplementary card and, in the indemnity clause, “any fraudulent acts” of a cardholder. Any personal guarantee given on the account continues in full force and the guarantor is liable for the acts of every cardholder under it. So the director who signed the guarantee is, in the end, personally exposed to whatever an employee puts on a card. The personal guarantee guide covers what that means.

On the cardholder’s side, by using the card each cardholder agrees to be bound by the terms, confirms they are acting as the business’s agent, must be at least 18 and connected to the business (as an employee, director or partner), and must keep the card and any security details private. Capital on Tap can speak to a cardholder about specific transactions on their own card, but not about the account more generally unless you have said it may. Points belong to the account, not the cardholder. And the terms are explicit that if a cardholder has been removed as a director at Companies House, their access should be cancelled immediately.

A spend policy people actually follow

A spend policy for a small team does not need to be long. It needs to answer four questions in plain language and be given to each cardholder before the card is.

1. What the card is for. Name the categories: client travel, software under a value, equipment under a value, subsistence on client days. Then name the things it is not for, explicitly, including cash, personal purchases even if repaid, and anything that would need a contract.
2. How much. State the per-transaction and per-period limits you have set in the portal, so the card declining is expected rather than embarrassing, and say who to ask if a legitimate purchase exceeds them.
3. Receipts. Photograph and upload through the app at the point of purchase, not at month end. Say what happens if receipts are missing: the card is frozen until they appear. Then actually do it once.
4. What happens on leaving. The card is cancelled on the last day, and any spend after notice is given needs approval.

The portal enforces the second point; the app makes the third easy; the first and fourth are management. Keep a signed copy. If a dispute ever arises about an employee’s spend, the policy and the Authorised User terms together are what you will rely on.

When someone leaves

The failure mode is not malice; it is a card that stays live in a drawer and a subscription that keeps renewing on it. The sequence that avoids it:

• On notice: freeze the card if the person no longer needs to spend, or lower its limit if they do. Review every recurring charge on that card and move anything the business still needs to another card, ideally a virtual card of its own.
• On the last day: cancel the card and remove the user in the portal. Capital on Tap’s terms say to cancel access immediately once you no longer wish to authorise someone, and that removal takes effect on notice to them.
• Afterwards: pending transactions made before cancellation still settle, and refunds to a cancelled card still credit the account, so nothing is lost by cancelling promptly. Ask for the physical card back and destroy it; the chip still holds data.

If the leaver was a director, cancel on the day they resign, regardless of anything else. The terms single that case out.

Reconciliation with the accounting feed

Employee card spend arrives in your accounting software through the same feed as the main card: Capital on Tap syncs every 12 hours to Sage, Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent and more, and the feed includes card payments, refunds and interest lines. Each transaction carries the cardholder, so a bookkeeper can see at a glance whose purchase a line was and which receipt it should match.

Three things to check at month end. First, that every employee line has a receipt against it, which is where the Receipt Chaser and the frozen-until-receipts rule pay off. Second, that refunds have been matched to the original purchase rather than posted as income; they also reverse the points earned, since points are cancelled on refunded purchases. Third, that any non-sterling purchase by a cardholder has been posted at the sterling amount the statement shows; on Capital on Tap there is 0% non-sterling transaction fee, so the statement amount is simply the converted amount. The accounting sync guide covers the feed itself, pending versus settled lines, and the common problems.

Give the bookkeeper the Accounts role so they can see everything and manage the integration without being able to issue cards or change payment settings.

Employee cards vs Pleo-style expense tools

Dedicated expense platforms such as Pleo do the employee-card job with more software around it: approval flows, per-category rules, mileage, and receipt matching that is more automated than a card issuer’s app. The difference is in what you are paying for and how it is funded.

For a team of three to ten where the owner or a bookkeeper reviews spend monthly, free employee cards on a credit account do the job and pay you for it. For a larger team, or one where line managers need to approve spend before it happens, a platform’s workflow may be worth its per-user fee. The Pleo comparison sets the two side by side, and the Amex comparison covers the charge-card alternative, where employee cards are included but the balance is due in full monthly.

Setup checklist

1. Decide who genuinely needs a card. Fewer cards, each with a clear purpose, beat one for everyone.
2. Write the one-page spend policy and have each cardholder acknowledge it.
3. Issue the card from the Cards page with the person’s own mobile number; let them activate it themselves.
4. Set a per-billing-period limit, a per-transaction limit or both, checked against the company’s total limit.
5. Block ATM withdrawals on every employee card unless there is a specific reason not to.
6. Turn on Receipt Chaser and push notifications.
7. Give the bookkeeper the Accounts role and confirm the accounting feed is showing cardholder names.
8. Put “cancel card, remove user, reassign subscriptions” on the leaver checklist alongside laptops and logins.

The card itself is the easy part. What makes employee cards work in a small business is that the limits are set before the card goes out, and that receipts are enforced once, early, so that nobody has to be chased again. Everything else in the review about the card applies equally to the cards your staff carry.