Commercial Payment Cards Can Help Companies Worldwide Satisfy Financial Compliance Requirements.New White Paper Offers Travel & Entertainment and Procure-to-Pay Best Practices to Achieve Financial Accountability MUNICH, Germany -- 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 Compliance requirements are a series of directives established by United States Federal government agencies that summarize hundreds of Federal laws and regulations applicable to Federal assistance (also known as Federal aid or Federal funds). 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 ACTE Association for Career and Technical Education (formerly American Vocational Association) ACTE Association of Corporate Travel Executives ACTE Approvals Committee for Terminal Equipment ACTE Anodal Closure Tetanus Global, the association of corporate travel executives | The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) is a not-for-profit professional association of business travel stakeholders throughout the world. The ACTE purpose is to advance the interests of the business travel industry, to promote industry networking , 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 A Purchasing Card is a form of company credit card that allows goods and services to be procured without utilising a traditional purchasing process. Purchasing Cards are usually issued to employees who are required to operate within a set of company rules and guidelines which (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 Office supplies is the generic term that refers to all supplies regularly used in offices by businesses and other organizations, from private citizens to governments, who works with the collection, refinement, and output of information (colloquially referred to as "paper work"). . "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 cen·tral·ize v. cen·tral·ized, cen·tral·iz·ing, cen·tral·iz·es v.tr. 1. To draw into or toward a center; consolidate. 2. travel management: Centralizing cen·tral·ize v. cen·tral·ized, cen·tral·iz·ing, cen·tral·iz·es v.tr. 1. To draw into or toward a center; consolidate. 2. 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 Event planning is the process of planning a festival, ceremony, competition, party, or convention. Event planning includes budgeting, establishing date and alternate date (rain date), selecting and reserving the event site, acquiring permits, and coordinating transportation 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 See SOX. (SOX (1) (Schema for Object-oriented XML) An XML schema developed by Veo Systems and Muzino Communications, which was submitted to the W3C. SOX is based on DTD, but adds data typing and reuse mechanisms. ) is designed to help ensure financial transparency in publicly traded companies publicly traded company A company whose shares of common stock are held by the public and are available for purchase by investors. The shares of publicly traded firms are bought and sold on the organized exchanges or in the over-the-counter market. 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 Corporate Governance The relationship between all the stakeholders in a company. This includes the shareholders, directors, and management of a company, as defined by the corporate charter, bylaws, formal policy, and rule of law. 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 See peer-to-peer network. 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 Visa Electron is a debit or credit card available across most of the world, with the exception of the United States, Canada and Australia. The card was introduced by VISA in the 1980s and is a sister card to the Visa Debit card. , Interlink INTERLINK - A commercial product comprising hardware and software for file transfer between IBM and VAX computers. 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. |
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