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Have you ever considered whether you should seek the benefits of a business credit card, or just stick with your consumer card? While it’s possible to use either kind for your business, there are many reasons why you would chose to use a card that’s specifically designed for small business use.
Related: Best Business Credit Cards for Startups
To understand why, consider these seven perks that you can only get with a small business credit card.
7 Business Credit Card Benefits you Don’t Want to Miss Out On
1. Rewards for Business Purchases.
While your personal card might offer you extra points cash back at a supermarket or a department store, you should expect your small business credit card to offer you the most rewards where you make many of your business purchases. For example, the
offers you . The offers .2. Extra Features for Employee Cards.
While personal cards will allow you to add additional authorized cardholders, a small business credit can offer you more robust features to manage their use of this card. For example, American Express small business cards allow you to impose spending limits on each card, and receive alerts and summary reports.
3. Designate an Account Manager.
With a personal credit card, the primary cardholder will be the only person authorized to manage the account. This can be very inconvenient when you would prefer your partner, finance manager or administrative assistant contact the card issuer to make changes to your account. But with an American Express small business credit card, you can designate someone else as an account manager to take some of the administrative burden out of your hands.
4. Spending Summaries.
Most personal credit cards won’t offer you detailed spending summaries that can help your business. However, a small business credit card can have very robust reporting features. For example, the Capital One Spark Business cards offer quarterly and year-end summary to get a custom, itemized report of your spending. This can help you to simplify your planning and budgeting while assisting you at tax time. American Express offers year-end summaries that categorizes your spend by month and purchase type, and helps you to track your business expenses down to the smallest detail.
5. Track Receipts.
This is one of the best business credit card benefits because it’ll make tax time much easier for your business. You probably know that it’s important to track business receipts, but a small business credit card can help in this area by offering tools to automate the process. For example, the Chase Ink app allows you to save photos of your receipts. You can then tag transactions and classify the expenses using custom categories that you can choose. American Express also offers Spend Manager to add receipts and notes to your transactions either via desktop or your mobile device.
6. Download to QuickBooks.
QuickBooks is an extremely popular accounting tool for small businesses, and it can be immensely helpful when you can download your transactions into. Several small business card issuers such as Bank of America and American Express offer you the ability to connect your account with QuickBooks.
7. Business Discount Programs.
Small business credit cards can also participate in discount programs offered by the card’s payment network. For example, Mastercard offers the Easy Savings program that features savings at hotels and restaurants as well as on travel and business services. Likewise, Visa offers its SavingsEdge program that also includes savings from major merchants that offer services for business owners. To take advantage of these services, you just need to register your card in advance. Then, you’ll automatically receive a discount on qualifying purchases.
Related: Best business credit cards
This article was originally written on April 2, 2018 and updated on June 14, 2018.
A big plus for using the business cards is they most don’t report on your personal credit. Therefore the utilization does not affect your fico.
Good point Charlie! That is a great benefit, although some do report to personal credit reporting agencies. You can see which ones do here: https://wp.staging.nav.com/resource/do-business-credit-cards-report-to-personal-credit/