How Charge Cards Will Help a Contractor Complete Jobs On Time and On Budget

A Midwest contractor is about to do something that most business owners would call crazy: They’re giving charge cards to every one on their staff. Not just site supervisors and foremen. Not just full-timers. Everyone. Even the apprentice carpenter and summer intern.

Counterintuitively, having all these cards in circulation will make it easier, not harder, to track spending. Bookkeeping will be simpler, not more complicated. And management will have zero concern about charge card abuse and fraud.

The contractor will also save money. Every eligible purchase an employee makes will earn 1% cashback – Terms Apply.

The charge cards are PEX Visa^® Commercial cards, a feature of PEX Credit Expense*, a new kind of credit line built to drive flexibility and efficiency in day-to-day operations.

Get Credit Where You Need It When You Need It—With No Annual Fees or Interest

PEX Credit Expense is a non-revolving line of credit that gives you up to $75,000 in buying power with no annual fees or interest. You then distribute this buying power through our one-of-a-kind PEX Visa^® Commercial charge cards.

PEX Credit Expense gives you the flexibility to send anybody on your team to buy what you need when you need it, from a package of nails or a pallet of bricks.

You issue the PEX Visa^® Commercial charge cards, not the bank. No applications. No employee credit checks¹. No personal guarantees. You can issue up to 250 cards for free. That’s how the Midwest contractor can give everyone a card.

Also, you decide how much of the credit line to allocate to each card. You can give site managers and foremen a larger share of the credit line. You can give everyone else less. In fact, most employees at the contractor will have no credit on their cards. Administrators will distribute credit in seconds through a portal on the PEX Website or mobile app.

Say a drill breaks, and the foreman wants to send someone to buy a new one. No reason to hand over his card and his credit line. The foreman can send anyone with a PEX Visa^® Commercial charge card. It takes seconds to load it with enough credit to make the purchase. And just that purchase.

Cards Can Only Be Used the Way You Say They Can Be Used

PEX Credit Expense runs on the PEX spend management platform. It lets you set rules about when, where, and how much an employee can spend with the card. If an employee tries to make an unauthorized purchase, the system will deny the charge and send you an alert.

If the need proves legitimate, an administrator can log into the system and deploy credit for the purchase. You don’t have to hold up the line at Home Depot for more than a minute.

Your employees can easily buy what you need but not what you don’t.

Keep Your Vendors Honest

PEX Credit Expense gives you unlimited virtual vendor cards. These cardless cards have an account number, expiration date, and security code—just like any physical charge card. And you can use them at any merchant or vendor that accepts Visa charge cards.

The big advantage: you can create a virtual vendor card for a specific purchase, vendor, recurring payment, subscription, and more. Then you can tailor the transaction rules for each vendor you’ve assigned a card.

Surprise charges and rate hikes have become a thing of the past. And you never have to jump through hoops to cancel a subscription you no longer want. Just deactivate the card.

On top of that, PEX Credit Expense lets you create unlimited virtual vendor cards at no cost. And you’ll earn 1% cash back on virtual vendor card purchases, just like any PEX Visa^® Commercial card purchase.

Real-Time Visibility and Automated Accounting Reconciliations

With PEX Credit Expense, you don’t have to wait for reports. The PEX platform instantly alerts you when a charge is approved or declined. You always know how much money you spent and who spent it.

Users themselves get a mobile app that lets them photograph receipts and submit them with General Ledger codes tagged to specific budgets. Allocations are automatic, saving your bookkeeper time.

Furthermore, PEX integrates with major accounting software packages—including Procore and other construction-industry-specific tools. It takes just a couple of clicks to reconcile transactions and export them to your accounting records.

No Credit Checks or Personal Guarantees

Applying for PEX Credit Expense does not affect your credit score. We don’t report your application to credit bureaus or require a personal guarantee to qualify.

Instead, we will do a 90-day lookback on your business checking account. From this, we qualify you for a $2,500 – $75,000 credit line and a 7- or 30-day credit cycle. At the end of each credit cycle, PEX initiates an ACH for the total of cleared transactions during the credit period.

Pay Less Than You Owe

There is no interest charged on any of the purchases. And the 1% cashback reward goes to your company, not the individual card users. And there are no separate rewards statements or gimmicks.

When we initiate the ACH at the end of the credit cycle, we simply apply your 1% cashback bonus to the bill. Whatever you spend in the month, your payment will be less.

Works Seamlessly With PEX Prepaid Debit Accounts

If you’re already a PEX customer, you won’t need a separate account for PEX Credit Expense. You can manage your PEX Prepaid Visa^® cards and PEX Visa^® Commercial charge cards from one console. Let your customer success manager know you want to apply for PEX Credit Expense.

If you’re not a PEX customer, schedule a free demonstration of our platform. See how contractors, solar installers, and other construction companies gain flexibility and efficiency with the PEX Platform. And how PEX Credit Expense can help you complete more projects on time and on budget.