Young woman using credit card to pay for food delivery. - Pixel-Shot // Shutterstock What is a p-card? How to choose a purchasing card
P-cards, or purchase cards, are company cards that employees can use to make business purchases without going through the traditional purchase request and approval process. This avoids the long wait times between needing to make a purchase and getting it approved. It’s also an alternative to employees using their personal credit cards for business expenses and filing for reimbursement.
Also known as procurement cards, p-cards allow your employees to spend company money when they need to. The best p-cards offer complete control by allowing businesses to limit spending categories and create daily, weekly, or even trip-long limits. These features provide more visibility and control while cutting down on the time spent tracking expenses, creating expense reports, and balancing your books.
During the early years of a business, employee expenses might be manually managed. Employees may pay for client entertainment, flights, and office expenses on a personal credit card that is later reimbursed.
Now, fast-forward to when a growing small business has multiple teams and departments. The finance leader may be dealing with stacks of paper receipts to match transactions, unauthorized purchases, and time-consuming manual data entry.
To keep up with the high volume of card payments, more spending rules and spreadsheets are created. But that only creates more approval requests and manual work. Plus, everyone is confused about what counts as a business expense.
Employees deserve p-cards or purchase cards to manage expenses more effectively. Ahead, Ramp explains what p-cards are and how they compare to business credit cards..
What is a p-card?
P-cards, or purchase cards, are company cards that employees can use to make business purchases without going through the traditional purchase request and approval process.
Also known as procurement cards, p-cards allow employees to spend company money when they need to. They’re an alternative to employees using their personal credit cards for business expenses and filing for reimbursement.
Plus, purchase cards help avoid long wait times between needing to make a purchase and getting it approved.
The best p-cards offer complete control by letting businesses limit spending categories and create daily, weekly, or even trip-long budgets. These features provide more visibility and control while cutting down on the time spent tracking expenses, creating expense reports, and filing reimbursements.
What can a p-cards be used for?
Employees can use p-cards for products and services they need to do their job. Common p-card use include:
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Office supplies, including stationery and electronics
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Entertainment, like client meetings or hospitality expenses
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Travel expenses like airfare, hotel bookings, and meals
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Small equipment purchases like home-office furnishings
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Training materials and professional development courses
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Vendor services like printing and catering for office events
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Emergency purchases, such as minor repairs or last-minute supplies
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Software and subscriptions
Organizations other than businesses often use p-cards to let their members make purchases without using personal cards. For instance, many universities give students p-cards for tax-exempt school-related purchases. Similarly, government agencies use P-cards to simplify buying goods and services for their operations.
The right purchase cards streamline procurement, empower employees to make necessary purchases, reduce unnecessary spending, and simplify financial reporting.
Simplified expense management
Sometimes, employees need to spend company money on travel or business expenses. Using outdated methods like written purchase requests and manual expense tracking creates unnecessary complications.
The best p-cards simplify the process by letting businesses set vendor restrictions. For example, a manager could set a monthly hardware limit and allow purchases only at specific hardware stores. That way, you eliminate the need for prior written approval and manual reimbursement processes since employees use the company’s P-card.
Some p-cards, including Ramp, also offer automatic receipt matching. Employees simply take a picture of their purchase receipts, and Ramp will categorize their spending, matching their receipts to their purchases.
Better spending control
Traditional corporate credit cards can lead to issues like:
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Frivolous purchases: Without merchant restrictions and spend limits, it's hard to distinguish necessary expenses from unnecessary ones, and it's difficult to track who made these purchases.
Corporate purchase cards address these problems by offering better control over spending. With a p-card, you can set vendor restrictions and spend limits, eliminating faulty purchasing processes and unrestricted spending. They provide clear visibility into employee spending with detailed reports for full transparency.
P-cards are a huge advantage over traditional B2B payment methods like ACH, checks, and wire transfers, which offer little control over how and where employees spend company money.
Finance managers might spend too much time each month paying bills, reviewing manual purchase reports, and tracking down receipts. These tasks waste valuable hours.
P-cards streamline the accounting and bill payment process. When an employee uses a company purchase card, it automatically updates company records with all details, including receipts and invoices.
P-cards also allow businesses to set strict spending limits and vendor restrictions so that purchases align with company policies. Detailed transaction reports make it easy to monitor spending and catch any policy violations early. With P-cards, all expenses can be compliant with company standards, reducing the risk of fraud and errors.
How do p-cards work?
Procurement cards are especially useful for small, frequent, or decentralized spending, like office supplies or local vendor payments. A well-run p-card program gives your team more flexibility to buy what they need while giving finance teams more control, visibility, and automation.
Here’s how a typical p-card program works from setup to reconciliation:
1. Setting up the program
Most companies set up p-card programs in partnership with a bank or card provider. They’ll define key rules—like who gets cards, what they can spend on, and how transactions are tracked.
Once the structure is in place, p-cards are issued to employees, departments, or roles that regularly make purchases. Unlike reimbursement models, purchases go directly on the card and are tied to a central account or credit line—no out-of-pocket spend or waiting on reimbursements.
2. Distributing cards and assigning users
P-cards are assigned based on roles, teams, or purchasing needs. Each card has a unique identifier, making it easier to trace spending back to the right person or department. Most systems also include role-based controls to limit which vendors or types of expenses each card can be used for.
3. Controlling spend and enforcing policy
One of the biggest benefits of p-cards is built-in control. Companies can limit spending through rules like:
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Daily or monthly transaction limits
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Merchant category restrictions to block certain vendors
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Time- or location-based usage windows
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Extra approvals for higher-risk purchases
These controls help prevent misuse and make sure purchases stay aligned with internal policies.
4. Making purchases
Employees use p-cards to buy directly from approved vendors. Transactions run through the usual credit card networks but are automatically flagged, categorized, and synced to an expense or procurement system. This removes the need for manual purchase orders or one-off approvals—saving time and speeding up small operational purchases.
5. Tracking spend in real time
Most modern p-card systems integrate with expense management or ERP tools. This gives finance and procurement teams real-time visibility into transactions, flags policy violations as they happen, and simplifies how expenses are tracked and categorized, achieving more oversight without needing to review every single purchase manually.
6. Reconciling charges
At the end of the billing cycle, cardholders—or their managers—review transactions, match receipts, and add any notes. Finance teams reconcile those charges with budgets or project codes, then pay the full statement to avoid interest. This process is faster than traditional invoice matching and reduces the month-end close workload.
7. Staying compliant
P-card programs also make auditing easier. Since each purchase is logged, categorized, and tied to a user, finance teams can quickly pull reports, flag exceptions, and show compliance with internal policies or regulatory requirements. It also helps reduce fraud and identify opportunities to consolidate vendors or save on costs.
What’s the difference between a corporate card and a p-card?
P-cards and corporate credit cards may look the same. But, there are a few key differences between the p-cards and traditional corporate credit cards.
P-cards are designed to help improve the procurement process, saving time and money by imposing restrictions on how and where employees can spend corporate money.
Traditional corporate credit cards have fewer restrictions. Our quick comparison table breaks down the key differences:
Card features comparison between a corporate card and a p-card. - Ramp
P-cards and business credit cards have different use cases and functionality. While P-cards are usually assigned to employees and have custom spending controls, business owners use business credit cards to finance their expenses.
Card features comparison between a business card and a p-card. - Ramp
How to choose a p-card provider: top features to look for
The best p-card providers simplify the job of a finance leader and lets them focus on more high-value tasks.
A p-card provider should have these six features:
Unlimited physical and virtual cards
Some p-card issuers have a limited number of cards available per company. When companies go over that limit, they’ll have to pay fees on each additional individual card.
Unlike traditional corporate cards, the best p-cards allow you to set clear spending limits for specific purchases or time frames. That way, employees know exactly how much they can spend and don’t have to fill out purchase or reimbursement requests.
Visibility into transactions
Purchasing card programs need to provide real-time visibility into spending as it happens. When managers have a clear picture of all their expense transaction data, they can ensure compliance and prevent unauthorized purchases. Detailed transaction reports provide insights into spending patterns, helping businesses make informed financial decisions and keep their budget on track.
Block and approve purchases from specific vendors
Look for p-cards that ensure employees only spend company money at approved vendors. You can specify which vendors are allowed and block unapproved ones.
Integrate with your accounting software
Manually transferring spending records to accounting software like Xero, Sage Intacct, and QuickBooks is time-consuming and tedious. A p-card program and expense management software must integrate with top accounting software.
Companies like WayUp use Ramp’s features to save over 80 hours of work each month, cutting operational costs and boosting efficiency.
Automatic receipt matching
One major pain point in traditional procurement is matching receipts. Businesses need paper receipts for taxes, but manually matching them to p-card transactions is tedious and time-consuming.
Look for p-cards linked to expense management software that has automatic receipt matching. Automating the process can help you close your books up to 88% faster, as it did for Marqeta.
Procurement cards should do more than just let employees spend company expenses. Businesses need an all-in-one expense management solution that helps their finance team streamline processes. P-cards should also help employees follow expense policies and eliminate the need for manual data entry.
This story was produced by Ramp and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
