Business Credit Cards: Why Every Small Business Needs Them

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 29th, 2010

Copyright 2006 Edward Vegliante

The potential benefits and advantages of using credit cards for any small business are too significant and probably too numerous to be easily ignored.

Business credit cards are in fact an excellent tool for managing small business expenses. At first this may seem to be a strange statement in view of the well known fact that it is much easier for spending to spiral out of control when using plastic than when somebody is paying hard cash. Indeed this is one of the key factors in human nature that has helped make the credit card business so successful and prosperous. However the truth of the matter is that impulse spending or reckless expenditure is usually very unlikely in business spending. If anything most small businesses have to count their pennies carefully to survive. So the downside of plastic money or credit cards does not come in play at all.

Purchases Are A Critical Area For Small Business - Credit Cards Can Help

Spending and purchasing is an important part of any business big or small. In fact expenditure and purchases usually have such a major impact on the bottom line that the general financial performance of a business depends on it being run properly. To start with timely information is so important that it has often meant the death or survival of many a small business. It is often important to know where the money is going so that problems can be detected early and action and decisions taken in a timely fashion to avert more serious financial problems for a small business.

This is exactly where one of the key advantages of credit cards for small businesses comes into play. The magic here is in the expense reporting that comes in the form of detailed and itemized monthly statements. Analysis is further made even easier with the inclusion of category breakdowns.

So, if for instance expenses are running overboard in a certain area and which will definitely have an impact on profits, then it can be seen early and dealt with. Quite often runaway costs or expenditure are the symptom and not the disease, so the small business manager gets a chance to identify the ?disease? early and deal with it accordingly.

Business Credit Card Reporting System Ideal For Small Business Owner

Anybody with some small business experience will deeply appreciate this advantage because the reality on the ground is that the principal decision maker or decision makers in a small business will usually tend to be very busy and involved in dozens of different critical activities in the business that identifying potential problems is never an easy thing. But with business credit cards and their detailed reporting system through statements, the ball game changes dramatically to the advantage of the small business owner.

What makes things even easier and more convenient is the fact that most business credit card issuers provide statements that are available online and can be downloaded and merged with some popular small business accounting software. This saves on valuable time for the often-understaffed small business operation. In fact with this online option, daily monitoring is made possible.

The result of all this is that just by obtaining a business credit card, a small business turns its? accounts department into a paperless but extremely efficient reporting unit that is actually run by somebody else who end up footing most of the overhead costs that go with it.

When you add other advantages that go with business credit cards like cash back rewards and frequent flyer airline miles, then the importance of every small business using business credit cards becomes obvious.