How to Deploy the Navan Card Effectively at Your Company

Everyone knows the adage: You need to spend money to make money. Of course, organizations grow, so will their need to spend company dollars, as more employees join the fold and more business opportunities present themselves.

The Navan card can help. It’s a smart, policy-powered corporate card designed to improve the company’s expense management capabilities with every swipe.

But signing up for a corporate card solution is only part of the equation. If employees don’t know how and when to use it, they won’t — and the company can’t reap the benefits.

Here’s how to deploy the Navan card so that employees will actually want to use it. Finance and accounting teams — and the C-suite — will thank you for it.

Clear Spend Controls, Clear Policies

Processes exist to keep the business running smoothly across every part of the organization. Just like submitting design edits, booking client meetings, or filing year-end taxes, teams perform better when they follow clear guidelines.

The same applies to corporate card use. If employees don’t know how much they can spend, or where and when they can spend, it creates stress and confusion.

With the Navan card, you can set policy controls and spend limits that remove the guesswork and provide peace of mind for employees and financial leaders. It takes managing company funds to a new level.

Above: A close look at policy controls for entertainment using the Navan app

Establish limits on spending

Follow these guidelines to set up clear definitions of expense policies. Then set spending limits for every employee who will be using a physical or virtual Navan card.

What these limits look like will vary — and will likely change over time — as finance teams develop a better understanding of which departments need which funds for which needs. 

One dependency is where employees live or operate. A per diem of $50 a day for food and beverage in Omaha, say, will probably go further than in New York City.

It’s also essential to deploy multiple types of spending limits. For example, you can have a spending limit for each meal and a cumulative limit per week or month. This helps employees spend company money within reason on individual items and on a cumulative basis.

Automate Approvals

Manually approving every cup of coffee that comes through the system is tedious, time-consuming, and entirely unnecessary.

The Navan card eliminates this kind of manual work through built-in policy controls. The system handles a bulk of the approvals automatically, keeping manual approvals to a minimum. 

For larger purchases or transactions that fall outside of policy, it’s important to establish clear communication between admins, managers, and employees. That way, everyone understands what qualifies as appropriate spending.

This is where the next element comes into play.

Corporate Cards and Expense Management: The Perfect Match

With the policies set and in-policy expenses automated, finance teams need a way to view all of this spend and expedite expense reporting. Because, of course, no employee wants to file an expense report.

In the past several years, a shift has occurred on all sides of the corporate card and expense management equation. Organizations expect better visibility, control, and automation of their spend, and employees expect a digital-first, consumer-like experience.

With Navan, transactions are pre-coded and auto-categorized—from swipe to ERP. Get enriched transaction data automatically for every payment, including legal entity, subsidiary, region, department, cost center, and GL code. All data syncs seamlessly with your accounting system to speed up reconciliation.

By eliminating expense reports and paper receipts, the Navan card also reduces human error and creates more efficient workflows. Automating corporate card transactions also frees up manager bandwidth and keeps a detailed database of approved and accumulated spend.

Above: A desktop view of a complete expense spend overview using the Navan app

Choosing the Right Corporate Card to Adopt

Just like every company is unique, so is every corporate card solution. When looking for a way to make internal processes easier for financial teams, consider these obstacles that corporate cards can help companies overcome:

• Lack of control over employee spending
• Time wasted on tedious expense reports
• Limited visibility into real-time business expenses
• Slowed processes due to lost receipts and mismatched payments, and missing invoices

Why Choose the Navan Card?

The Navan card is a smarter way to manage company spending. Here’s what sets it apart:

• Built-in policy controls: Enforce custom spending rules at the point of purchase.
• Automatic approvals: Eliminate manual review for routine transactions.
• Real-time visibility: See transactions, budgets, and policy flags instantly.
• Global coverage: Use virtual or physical cards in USD, GBP, and EUR worldwide.
• Cash back on every purchase: Get up to 1.5% back with no annual fees (U.S. only).
• Integrated expense management: Sync directly with Navan Expense to skip traditional reports and streamline reconciliation.

Whether you’re scaling a fast-growing startup or optimizing spend at an enterprise level, the Navan card helps you stay in control, without slowing your team down.

The Navan Card — An Expense Management Solution

Not all corporate card systems are built the same. And when it comes to a card that employees want to adopt and use repeatedly, Navan checks all the boxes.

With Navan, companies can combine corporate cards with an award-winning corporate travel and expense management solution that covers the entire spend ecosystem, eliminating the manual processes and high transaction fees associated with other corporate card providers.

Take Paysafe. After deploying Navan's all-in-one solution, the company saw a platform adoption rate of more than 95%.

Additionally, corporate cards tied to the innovative Navan expense management system enable companies to generate more ROI by reducing processing costs, preventing fraud, and providing insightful data that connects revenue to spending.

Companies reap the benefits of automated approvals, corporate smart cards, and streamlined reconciliation. And who will miss expense reports? With Navan, everyone from traveling employees to accounts payable specialists and CFOs will experience the efficiencies that modern expense management offers.

Ready to streamline company spending and implement an all-in-one travel and expense management solution? Schedule a demo to see how our spend solutions work, or get up and running with Navan in just 5 minutes.