Accidental Personal Charge On Company Card

[sitoskyjm]

I've seen quite a few responses on this, but none as of recent.....

I am wondering how other peers handle errant charges that must be reimbursed by the employee. Specifically, I would like to do through payroll deduction, but would like to know if anyone had trouble with their legal department in doing so (given the various state-by-state defined laws and regulations on payroll deductions). 

We are moving towards a collective pay process so they cannot use our financial institution to pay direct and our ERP (we are a manufacturing company) is not designed to take payment easily and I'd really like to avoid having employees submit checks.

Let me know your thoughts community! Thanks!

[KevinD]

@sitoskyjm do you currently have a company card program you are using with SAP Concur or are you thinking of implementing one?

[sitoskyjm]

Kevin, thank you for the quick response.  We have a company card program. Ultimately, we are trying to cut out the middleman (Concur) from our payment process to our financial institution to optimize cash flow and guarantee rebates. In doing so, we will be "pre-paying" personal charges and our company will have to get reimbursed after. Trying to make the user experience better on the user instead of "sending a check" to the company.

[KevinD]

@sitoskyjm I see. I hope you have a plan in place for getting paid back for pre-paying personal expenses. In my experience, some employees aren't the most prompt in paying back the company. 

You may consider getting your legal department involved and have users sign something stating they will comply to paying back the company as part of being able to have a company credit card. Without a written policy, you wouldn't really be able to hold the employees responsible. 

[carmel_rochon]

We utilize payroll deductions. We have employees in Canada and New York, and don't run into any legal issues as far as I am aware (I know California has a lot of restrictions on Payroll deduction). As a safeguard, we have employees acknowledge that they are at risk of having their payroll automatically deducted if they ever misuse their firm credit card, and we alert them a week or so in advance that they will notice the deduction on their next pay. 

I have heard that some companies use Venmo or Zelle in place of cheques, but you mentioned that direct payment could be difficult with your new processes. Would it make sense for you to invoice employees who owe the company via your AP department?