10 ms·

Not card advice but operational advice: From being at startups where people tend to move fast and often move on, tell your staff that they can use the services

Not card advice but operational advice: From being at startups where people tend to move fast and often move on, tell your staff that they can use the services they need BUT you will only reimburse them for 3 months. After that, it must be on the corp card. I've seen too many times where AWS, Mailchimp, etc, etc are on someone's personal card and once they leave, everything blows up after a couple months. It's even worse if they left under bad terms. Give them some flexibility but make sure it comes to a single point of control.

yeukhon 10y ago
I would say save the hassles and just stick to the corps credit card. I experienced the AWS under a personal credit card issue, but AWS was quick to resolve the issue with us anyway. Though it is needless to say, also make sure you have a vendor email address to manage vendors. We have had vendor account signed up using work email but after the person left the company, we lose the account control and have to ping account manager. Sometimes, that process can take days to complete.
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  But if you make them stick to the corp card that means everyone has the # and you lose control and insight. That's dangerous at any stage but even worse when you're early stage and every dollar feels like $20. +1 to a vendors@ or similar email account.
  - eli 10y ago
    You can give everyone a separate card/number.
  - masukomi 10y ago
    so, you're arguing that it is acceptable to have the core services your company relies on be tied to a person who could quit or be fired at any time?!
    - caseysoftware 10y ago
      Yes, obviously.
    - some1else 10y ago
      I'm sure they will put in lots of overtime. Maybe fire them while they're asleep under the desk, and their card is out on the table.
  - pbreit 10y ago
    Give everyone a card and -1 to vendors@ (I can't stand that and don't see any benefit).
  - yeukhon 10y ago
    This is where you need to have an account payable setup. Your finance team/person should be responsible for the invoice. If this is a tiny small startup, the CEO should be the one signing up.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  Rather than a vendors@ email address for vendors, alias their old.employee@ address to someone else still with the company in a similar role (their replacement, if they have one). That way you won't miss sales queries, service notifications, or other stuff they used their email for. Update the accounts as necessary and it slows to a trickle quickly.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    That's assuming they didn't use their personal email account, which is probably likely if they were using a personal credit card.
    - pbreit 10y ago
      No, it isn't. And OP indicated "work email" and was advising use of vendor@ email.
- pbreit 10y ago
  How do you not have access to the departed employee's email account? I have never seen that as an actual issue.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    If they used a personal credit card, maybe they used personal email as well? There are a lot of people at my work who use their personal gmail for everything.
    - kalmari 10y ago
      maybe but dont count on it. compartmentalization is a thing as well as temp and prepaid credit services.
    - pbreit 10y ago
      Well, that's not smart. Employees should use company email addresses for company work. OP stated "work email" and advised use of vendor@ email which is what I was objecting to. Everywhere I've been, using vendor@ emails has been a pain and employee emails a non-issue.
8ytecoder 10y ago
On that note: create an alias accountspayable@ or something equivalent and use that for all invoicing. Absolutely disallow signing up for services with individual user accounts.
- pbreit 10y ago
  Why? I can't stand that and can't fathom the purpose.
  - toyg 10y ago
    Uh, for the same reasons parent mentioned: if the guy owning the account leaves (or steps under a bus), you're screwed.
    - pbreit 10y ago
      I have never seen that be an issue. Ever. Add: It seems to me an extremely remote possibility and trivially resolved.
      - parent5446 10y ago
        Clearly others have. I guess you can consider yourself lucky. It's a matter of mitigating risk.
      - scrollaway 10y ago
        "I have never had a car accident, therefore it's fine for me to drive like a maniac."
      - pertymcpert 10y ago
        No, it happens.
primitivesuave 10y ago
I would never use any service under an employee's personal card. If someone needs something, it takes 10 minutes get someone with a company card to save it as a payment method and add it to a google spreadsheet. This also ensures that we know exactly how much we are spending and on what. In the past, I've worked at a company where each team managed their own expenses. This led to situations like one team using a certain transaction email provider, and another team using a different one, rather than saving thousands of dollars by going entirely with one or the other. Costs should be managed at a corporate level, not at the level of the individual employee who is tasked with setting up transactional emails.
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  In an ideal world, I fully agree with this. In the short-term, get shit done world, sometimes things are messier and the edges are rougher and you need to allow for some of that. My 3 month rule is good enough to evaluate, try it out, play with some ideas, get some feedback, and then scale or kill. If you kill it, expense it and you're done. If you scale it (aka operationalize it), move it to the corp account. At Twilio, I saw this from both sides.. both as a purchaser and as an evangelist getting people to use our API.
  - primitivesuave 10y ago
    I think you have a valid point and in the grand scheme of things, SaaS accounting is hardly consequential to a company's success. But even in reality I would be worried about a management team that doesn't pay attention to control of a company's technical infrastructure. Having business expenses fall neatly under one bank account is not a complicated responsibility and doesn't get in the way of a "get shit done" attitude.
- dbg31415 10y ago
  > I would never use any service under an employee's personal card. If someone needs something, it takes 10 minutes get someone with a company card to save it as a payment method and add it to a google spreadsheet. This also ensures that we know exactly how much we are spending and on what. Totally agree. No reason to ever put something on an employee's personal card... way too many things could go wrong in that situation. Some examples I've seen over the years... * Employee doesn't document the service... so like all of a sudden your Zapier / IFTTT / Unito / etc. account that was responsible for forwarding various emails to the right people just stops working because an employee left the company. You had no idea how they set it up, and without them you're stuck trying to re-build what they had done. You're boned if you don't make time to document how services work, and audit how they are paid for. * Employee changes CC (less of an issue now since many recurring charges get updates to CC numbers) and doesn't realize they forgot to update the service... then a mission critical service fails. This happened to one of my clients back when Costco changed from Amex to Visa... the auto-update didn't work across card carriers, and the employee had all the emails from that service provider going into his spam folder... and presto our project management software stopped working for a day. A stitch in time saves nine... Make time to use the company card. * Employee with the payment card can often call customer support and gain owner-level privileges, even assuming they didn't start with them. If others on the team don't realize this... it can cause drama. Saw this happen a few times with Slack accounts at various companies. One employee started a company Slack... to try it out... ended up getting the free credits they used to (maybe still do) offer, upgrading to paid account... and then being a super admin. We had to go to the employee and get them to transfer account ownership to a company official so they couldn't just change the CEO's email to their own, reset the password, and get access to conversations they shouldn't have access to. Again... this all takes A LOT more time than just using the company card. * Employee leaves the company, loses access to email address, can't cancel the account that has the CC... gets stuck with a huge bill they can't cancel without canceling their CC. Was an easy fix, but just an awkward situation -- nobody had been using the service since the employee left, and since his card was on auto-pay he didn't notice the $150 / month charge for over a year. At that point his email address was long gone, we had to re-create it, reset the password, get customer support to cancel the account... total waste of a day for someone. We reimbursed the employee, but we had no way of getting a refund from the service provider. * Employee maxes out credit. Put AWS on your personal CC... have a swing month... boom you max out the credit card the employee had... who knows what other debt he was carrying, or what his limit was... or what the fraud triggers are on some no-name credit union card... it's a huge risk to leave this sort of thing up to your employee... some services will give you notice (again, that requires you having the emails go to the right people), but some will just cut you off. Huge risk to your company introducing this many unknowns. Final reason... because of perks an employee gets for using their personal card. This simply isn't fair to other employees... these rewards are a form of compensation... you don't want to have a policy that allows people benefits for not using the company card as that's a conflict of interest. Having a policy that requires people to get the service approved, documented, and on the company card will always save you time. "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast..." etc. Even for startups, letting people use personal cards is a horrible horrible idea. Take 10 minutes... do it right.
imjustsaying 10y ago
Whoa, I think OP is talking about which corporate credit card to use. Using a personal credit card of an employee sounds like an absolute nightmare. I know startups are strapped for cash, but damn.
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  It's not about being broke. It's about: "I need this tool to solve this problem right now. I can either go bug someone for the credit card and get off track or pull out my own card, get onto putting out the next fire, and settle the cash later." And as I noted, it's not a long term thing.. it's to allow experimentation in the moment.

yeukhon 10y ago

I would say save the hassles and just stick to the corps credit card. I experienced the AWS under a personal credit card issue, but AWS was quick to resolve the issue with us anyway. Though it is needless to say, also make sure you have a vendor email address to manage vendors. We have had vendor account signed up using work email but after the person left the company, we lose the account control and have to ping account manager. Sometimes, that process can take days to complete.

caseysoftware 10y ago
But if you make them stick to the corp card that means everyone has the # and you lose control and insight. That's dangerous at any stage but even worse when you're early stage and every dollar feels like $20. +1 to a vendors@ or similar email account.
- eli 10y ago
  You can give everyone a separate card/number.
- masukomi 10y ago
  so, you're arguing that it is acceptable to have the core services your company relies on be tied to a person who could quit or be fired at any time?!
  - caseysoftware 10y ago
    Yes, obviously.
  - some1else 10y ago
    I'm sure they will put in lots of overtime. Maybe fire them while they're asleep under the desk, and their card is out on the table.
- pbreit 10y ago
  Give everyone a card and -1 to vendors@ (I can't stand that and don't see any benefit).
- yeukhon 10y ago
  This is where you need to have an account payable setup. Your finance team/person should be responsible for the invoice. If this is a tiny small startup, the CEO should be the one signing up.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
Rather than a vendors@ email address for vendors, alias their old.employee@ address to someone else still with the company in a similar role (their replacement, if they have one). That way you won't miss sales queries, service notifications, or other stuff they used their email for. Update the accounts as necessary and it slows to a trickle quickly.
- ams6110 10y ago
  That's assuming they didn't use their personal email account, which is probably likely if they were using a personal credit card.
  - pbreit 10y ago
    No, it isn't. And OP indicated "work email" and was advising use of vendor@ email.
pbreit 10y ago
How do you not have access to the departed employee's email account? I have never seen that as an actual issue.
- ams6110 10y ago
  If they used a personal credit card, maybe they used personal email as well? There are a lot of people at my work who use their personal gmail for everything.
  - kalmari 10y ago
    maybe but dont count on it. compartmentalization is a thing as well as temp and prepaid credit services.
  - pbreit 10y ago
    Well, that's not smart. Employees should use company email addresses for company work. OP stated "work email" and advised use of vendor@ email which is what I was objecting to. Everywhere I've been, using vendor@ emails has been a pain and employee emails a non-issue.

8ytecoder 10y ago

On that note: create an alias accountspayable@ or something equivalent and use that for all invoicing. Absolutely disallow signing up for services with individual user accounts.

pbreit 10y ago
Why? I can't stand that and can't fathom the purpose.
- toyg 10y ago
  Uh, for the same reasons parent mentioned: if the guy owning the account leaves (or steps under a bus), you're screwed.
  - pbreit 10y ago
    I have never seen that be an issue. Ever. Add: It seems to me an extremely remote possibility and trivially resolved.
    - parent5446 10y ago
      Clearly others have. I guess you can consider yourself lucky. It's a matter of mitigating risk.
    - scrollaway 10y ago
      "I have never had a car accident, therefore it's fine for me to drive like a maniac."
    - pertymcpert 10y ago
      No, it happens.

primitivesuave 10y ago

I would never use any service under an employee's personal card. If someone needs something, it takes 10 minutes get someone with a company card to save it as a payment method and add it to a google spreadsheet. This also ensures that we know exactly how much we are spending and on what. In the past, I've worked at a company where each team managed their own expenses. This led to situations like one team using a certain transaction email provider, and another team using a different one, rather than saving thousands of dollars by going entirely with one or the other. Costs should be managed at a corporate level, not at the level of the individual employee who is tasked with setting up transactional emails.

caseysoftware 10y ago
In an ideal world, I fully agree with this. In the short-term, get shit done world, sometimes things are messier and the edges are rougher and you need to allow for some of that. My 3 month rule is good enough to evaluate, try it out, play with some ideas, get some feedback, and then scale or kill. If you kill it, expense it and you're done. If you scale it (aka operationalize it), move it to the corp account. At Twilio, I saw this from both sides.. both as a purchaser and as an evangelist getting people to use our API.
- primitivesuave 10y ago
  I think you have a valid point and in the grand scheme of things, SaaS accounting is hardly consequential to a company's success. But even in reality I would be worried about a management team that doesn't pay attention to control of a company's technical infrastructure. Having business expenses fall neatly under one bank account is not a complicated responsibility and doesn't get in the way of a "get shit done" attitude.
dbg31415 10y ago
> I would never use any service under an employee's personal card. If someone needs something, it takes 10 minutes get someone with a company card to save it as a payment method and add it to a google spreadsheet. This also ensures that we know exactly how much we are spending and on what. Totally agree. No reason to ever put something on an employee's personal card... way too many things could go wrong in that situation. Some examples I've seen over the years... * Employee doesn't document the service... so like all of a sudden your Zapier / IFTTT / Unito / etc. account that was responsible for forwarding various emails to the right people just stops working because an employee left the company. You had no idea how they set it up, and without them you're stuck trying to re-build what they had done. You're boned if you don't make time to document how services work, and audit how they are paid for. * Employee changes CC (less of an issue now since many recurring charges get updates to CC numbers) and doesn't realize they forgot to update the service... then a mission critical service fails. This happened to one of my clients back when Costco changed from Amex to Visa... the auto-update didn't work across card carriers, and the employee had all the emails from that service provider going into his spam folder... and presto our project management software stopped working for a day. A stitch in time saves nine... Make time to use the company card. * Employee with the payment card can often call customer support and gain owner-level privileges, even assuming they didn't start with them. If others on the team don't realize this... it can cause drama. Saw this happen a few times with Slack accounts at various companies. One employee started a company Slack... to try it out... ended up getting the free credits they used to (maybe still do) offer, upgrading to paid account... and then being a super admin. We had to go to the employee and get them to transfer account ownership to a company official so they couldn't just change the CEO's email to their own, reset the password, and get access to conversations they shouldn't have access to. Again... this all takes A LOT more time than just using the company card. * Employee leaves the company, loses access to email address, can't cancel the account that has the CC... gets stuck with a huge bill they can't cancel without canceling their CC. Was an easy fix, but just an awkward situation -- nobody had been using the service since the employee left, and since his card was on auto-pay he didn't notice the $150 / month charge for over a year. At that point his email address was long gone, we had to re-create it, reset the password, get customer support to cancel the account... total waste of a day for someone. We reimbursed the employee, but we had no way of getting a refund from the service provider. * Employee maxes out credit. Put AWS on your personal CC... have a swing month... boom you max out the credit card the employee had... who knows what other debt he was carrying, or what his limit was... or what the fraud triggers are on some no-name credit union card... it's a huge risk to leave this sort of thing up to your employee... some services will give you notice (again, that requires you having the emails go to the right people), but some will just cut you off. Huge risk to your company introducing this many unknowns. Final reason... because of perks an employee gets for using their personal card. This simply isn't fair to other employees... these rewards are a form of compensation... you don't want to have a policy that allows people benefits for not using the company card as that's a conflict of interest. Having a policy that requires people to get the service approved, documented, and on the company card will always save you time. "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast..." etc. Even for startups, letting people use personal cards is a horrible horrible idea. Take 10 minutes... do it right.

imjustsaying 10y ago

Whoa, I think OP is talking about which corporate credit card to use. Using a personal credit card of an employee sounds like an absolute nightmare. I know startups are strapped for cash, but damn.

caseysoftware 10y ago
It's not about being broke. It's about: "I need this tool to solve this problem right now. I can either go bug someone for the credit card and get off track or pull out my own card, get onto putting out the next fire, and settle the cash later." And as I noted, it's not a long term thing.. it's to allow experimentation in the moment.