Setting corporate credit card limits for employees: A finance guide
As companies grow, so do vendor payments, travel costs, and everyday expenses. To keep business moving, employees need to make payments quickly. But an increasing volume of transactions makes expense management harder, and shared company credit cards become impractical and reimbursements pile up.
Corporate credit cards↗ simplify expense management as spending grows. However, without clear controls, they can cause budget overruns and compliance risks. When companies rely only on issuer-set limits, cards max out and employees get stuck at checkout.
Finance teams can prevent this by defining internal spending limits and applying the company credit card policy within their expense or card management platform.
This guide explains how credit caps work and how to roll them out so budgets stay on track without slowing teams down.What’s procurement management software?
What is a corporate card limit?
A corporate card limit is the maximum amount a company can spend using its business or corporate cards. For credit cards, this overall credit limit is set by the card issuer, based on factors such as the company’s financial health, credit history, and the terms of its agreement.
For prepaid or debit corporate cards, the available spending is restricted to the amount the company has deposited or funded in advance.
Corporate credit cards typically have two layers of limits:
- Issuer-level credit line: The card provider assigns a total credit facility to the business, defining the maximum overall borrowing capacity.
- Company-level controls: The finance team allocates portions of this facility to individual cards, departments, or teams by setting internal spending limits.
From there, finance teams add controls like merchant rules and receipt requirements, so every purchase lands where it belongs in the books.
Some organisations also use purchasing cards↗ and expense cards↗ to manage spending. While corporate credit cards are all-purpose, purchasing cards and expense cards support focused payments:
- Purchasing cards can be prepaid or credit-backed. Procurement teams often use these cards to skip long approval chains for large vendor payments.
- Expense cards are usually prepaid. They’re perfect for smaller, incidental expenses, like team lunches.
Where spending rules for these cards differ from corporate credits cards, the policy language should clearly outline the distinctions.
How issuers set credit limits
Credit limits depend on a company’s financial profile. As a benchmark:
- Smaller companies, with fewer than 50 employees, might start with an average business credit card limit in the low thousands (for example, £5,000), scaling into six figures as companies build payment history.
- Organisations with healthy cash flow and reliable settlement may qualify for a business credit card with high limits in the six-figure range.
Limits can also vary by provider. Issuers determine initial limits by evaluating the business’s revenue trends, cash on hand, payment behaviour, existing obligations, industry risk, and more. As usage and finances improve, limits may increase.
When choosing a card programme for your company, weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different credit cards↗, and balance fees against control to make an informed decision. The best business credit cards in the U.K.↗ provide a good benchmark for fees and control features, helping finance teams compare providers.
Why card limits matter for growing businesses
Spending caps help employees make approved purchases while stopping noncompliance charges at the point of payment. They also give finance teams greater control over how employees spend.
By setting card limits, finance teams can:
- Direct the budget to essential activities and apply tighter limits where overspending runs higher, such as travel and entertainment.
- Allocate budgets in advance for each team or project, shrinking last-minute overspend and emergency fixes.
- Enforce control at the point of use, with built-in rules that block or flag noncompliant transactions.
- Automate receipt capture and expense categorisation for approved purchases, keeping ledgers tidy and saving review time.
Companies can ensure employees stay within approved limits by prohibiting the use of company cards for personal expenses↗ in their credit card policy and defining clear remediation steps for accidental misuse.
4 best practices for setting corporate credit card limits
The practices below align credit caps with how teams spend, easing approval burden on finance teams.
Role-based limits
Limits matching responsibilities are better than seniority-based caps because they reflect actual spending needs. For example, purchasing roles — such as buyers and office managers — require higher allowances. Incidental spenders, like interns, can run on modest budgets.
Executive cards should carry lower limits unless the role involves vendor payments or frequent travel. If neither applies, seniority alone doesn’t justify higher limits, especially because office managers or central booking platforms typically handle payments for team dinners or meetings.
Temporary limits
Time-bound caps support temporary need for funds during cover launches, offsites, or relocations. Most modern card platforms let finance set these limits with a defined time frame, after which the limits revert to baseline automatically. Where automation isn’t available, finance can create a temporary virtual card or manually reset the limit.
Dedicated cards
Companies can also use dedicated virtual cards for specific spending categories, like subscriptions and major vendors. Each card serves one purpose, simplifying tracking. If a card is compromised or no longer needed, you can pause or cancel it quickly without disrupting other payments. This contains risk and keeps other operations running smoothly.
Ongoing reviews and adjustments
Monitoring card usage keeps limits fit for purpose. If accounts are frequently hitting their caps, consider increasing them; if spending stays far below, lower them. Repeated declines or refunds from the same merchant usually mean a rule doesn’t match real-world needs and requires adjustment. An example would be a merchant category restriction that blocks a legitimate supplier, or a per-transaction cap that’s set too low.
7 steps for managing corporate credit card limits
Here’s a simple process to help finance set clear limits while keeping spending easy to manage.
- Define baselines by role or department
Group employees by spending patterns, like travellers, buyers, project leads, managers, finance admins, and contractors. Draft baselines and category allowances per group, and review with department heads.
- Set temporary limits for project-based needs
For events, rollouts, and seasonal surges, finance can issue temporary cards or raise the limit on an existing one. On modern spend platforms, you can schedule limits to reset automatically. Where automation isn’t possible, finance can create a separate virtual card or document the approval with a set time frame, then manually revert to its usual limit once the period ends.
- Establish policies to prevent overspending and support compliance
List prohibited categories, and set merchant or spending restrictions where appropriate. To support compliance, publish receipt rules with clear timelines. Guidance works best when it’s short and specific, with examples for common scenarios.
- Monitor spending patterns in real time
Use dashboards to track spend by cardholder, department, project, merchant, and category. Investigate spikes as they appear.
- Review and adjust limits as the business scales
Maintain a monthly or quarterly review cadence to keep spending caps current. Record each change with a brief reason — new hires, vendor changes, travel season — to make future limit updates faster.
- Align limits with budgeting and financial goals
Set card limits that match each department’s budget. When you revise budgets, adjust baselines and category allowances in the same cycle to reflect the latest plan.
- Automate enforcement and receipt capture with Moss
Create rules to block out-of-policy categories, route exceptions to approvers, and issue receipts automatically after transactions. A spend platform like Moss makes this simple by embedding rules directly in the card.
With Moss, finance teams can set granular limits by user, project, or merchant. Moss also automates approvals and ensures compliant transactions without requiring manual follow-up.
How Moss makes corporate card limits smarter
Moss’ corporate cards↗ enable granular, policy-driven limits with real-time visibility. Finance teams can configure caps based on user, team, project, merchant, or category, and route exceptions immediately for approval.
Automation handles admin work, like capturing receipts at purchase and categorising transactions in flow. Approvals happen in the same workflow, so cards, reimbursements, and invoices all run through one system. And the system posts accounting entries to the right ledgers as activity occurs.
This unified approach is why Moss has scaled in multiple European markets. It connects seamlessly to local accounting stacks, giving finance teams consistent control and reliable reporting. Explore how Moss↗ can streamline your spend management today.
FAQs
Mia is part of the product marketing team at Moss, where she focuses on the card module and accounting integrations. With experience across finance, IT, and product management, she brings a deep understanding of financial operations and how to communicate their value clearly to customers.
