What is a Purchase Card:
The greekbill Purchase Card will help your chapter to pay bills, buy chapter materials, and manage finances. Purchase cards are reloadable debit cards that the chapter can order for their team to use for expenses or to reimburse members.
It gives full visibility on all transactions and is very beneficial for tracking your expenses on the system. Chapter Admins will easily be able to make purchases and have peace of mind knowing all chapter spending can be regulated and all funds can be transferred back to the chapter account when needed.
Cardholders can use their card with designated vendors without having to worry about managing cash on hand. With your Purchase Card, you now have complete transparency and accountability with online reporting, spending, and expense tracking because it syncs all transactions with the greekbill platform when the cardholder makes purchases.
Managing a Purchase Card:
To order a new purchase Card
Banking dashboard -> Purchase card tile- > Manage - > Order a New card
Request a new card: To request a new purchase card, you will need the following information for the cardholder:
- Name
- Officer position
- DOB
- Phone #
- Mailing address
NOTE: This mailing address is where the card will be shipped and is the billing address for any online transactions.
After submitting the cardholder information, the application will be reviewed for approval. The cardholder should receive the card in the
mail within 7-10 business days after approval. Chapters can order as many cards as needed; there is no restriction on how many cards a chapter has.
Once you submit the information, you cannot edit the information. If you need to change the name listed or spelling, you will need to order another card.
NOTE: The card is shipped in an unmarked white envelope, it comes from the company “trans card” and not greekbill. If the card does not arrive within 2 weeks, then we recommend re-ordering the card again.
Once the card is ordered it will appear on the purchase card dashboard with the note” Card is currently inactive and needs to be activated.” Once the card arrives in the mail, the cardholder needs to activate the card before you can start to load or unload funds.
Once the card is active, the chapter can add or remove funds at any time.
Adding funds to a card: Enter your requested loan amount and provide a reason. After submitting this request, funds will be debited from the chapter’s bank
account. Funds will be available to use within minutes; check the purchase card summary page to verify funds were loaded on this car.
To load funds, you will need to fill out the information below Select “Continue”
- How much do you want to add to the card?
- Please provide a brief explanation of why you are loading funds.
Adding funds to the card will withdraw from your chapter’s bank account and load onto your purchase card. Removing funds will immediately unload from the
card and credited back to your chapter’s bank account. Cardholders can only spend money that’s available, if they need to spend more then the cards
needs more funds loaded. The Purchase Card is not a credit card; it acts as a prepaid card.
Remove funds from a card: Enter the amount that you are requesting to unload from the card. After submitted, funds will be removed immediately from the card and credited back into the chapter’s bank account. To unload funds, you will need to fill out “How much do you want to remove from the card?”
If you click “Remove all Funds” it will auto-populate the current balance on the card.
- Cancel a card: Provide the reason for canceling the card. After submission, the card will be canceled immediately and all funds from the specified card will be unloaded. Any funds that are unloaded from the card will be credited back into the chapter’s bank account.
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- Reason for canceling the card
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- Cost: The first two cards are free, any orders after that are $5.00 per card. There are no transaction fees with the purchase cards.
- Activity Tab: Will list all of the activated cards and all of the card's load and unload activity. It will track when the card was activated and canceled. You can look at the activity for just one card or for all the cards within the selected date range.
Managing transactions - "View all transactions"
View all transactions:
One of the main benefits of utilizing the purchase card feature is the ability to easily track your chapter expenses and have full visibility on all the purchases made on behalf of the chapter.
To view this information, Banking dashboard -> Purchase card tile- > Manage - > View all transactions
Select the account you want more information for by clicking on the blue Hyperlink/ the purchase card name and last 4 digits listed. Adjust the desired date range and click “Get Transactions”
With Every transaction made on the purchase card on the Check report greekbill will automatically add a line item on the system with the information below:
- Posting Date
- Description
- Vendor – Comes over as Uncategorized Vendor – needs to be identified
- Chart of Accounts – Comes over as Uncategorized Expense – needs to be identified
- Type
- Check #
- Amount
This makes tracking your expenses very easy because every expense has been tracked and is listed. You do not need to add all the information manually. All you need to do is categorize your transaction vendor and chart of accounts.
If you click on the blue “CHECK” hyperlink you will get a pop-up window to manage the transaction.
You will be prompted to assign:
- ·Vendor – if the vendor is not already listed, you can click + Add Vendor and put in the details of the vendor.
- Chart of Account –The sub bucket you would like to track this expense for, it will then link and show up in your expense reporting.
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- You can choose to “Add another Line” and Split the expense. This will allow you to more accurately assign the amount you spend based on the various budgets though it was all purchased through one transaction.
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- Description - this will help you identify the transaction for internal recorded purposes.
- Amount - If you split the transaction, it will allow you to edit the amounts.
- Memo- Once the transaction has been updated correctly, click “Submit” to save.
- If you go to the check module you will be able to search for any transaction, because they are tracked as a check on the system
NOTE: the transaction check number will start with a “PC” this will help you identify this is a purchase card transaction.
Pending charges – There is an option to search for any pending charges on the purchase card. This will load any transactions that have not yet been processed yet.
NOTE: Some vendors such as hotels or airlines can hide a deposit for up to 90 days and that can affect your purchase card balance.
NOTE: The balance on the transaction review dashboard VS the Balance on the purchase card dashboard could vary based on pending charges. The bank register report is a way to review this. Bank register report: your account history for the purchase card. This report should have the most real-time data on the balance of the card. You can always export this report to do your reconciliation or comb through the data.
NOTE: When you load funds to your purchase card, greekbill will automatically add a journal entry to track the movement of funds from one bank account to another. You don’t need to add any checks or deposits to be able to reconcile the accounts.
Declines:
Insufficient funds – the transaction you are attempting to make is larger than the amount on the card. Once you load more funds, it will process successfully.
Wrong billing address– You need to put in the correct billing information, if you are putting in the wrong info it will be declined. You can locate the address associated with the card by clicking on the purchase card's name on the purchase card dashboard. A popup window will appear with information on the card including the billing address.
NOTE: The wrong zip code is a big reason why it may be declined
Your card is locked – there was some activity that was suspicious and the card is temporarily locked. This will be posted on your Purchase card dashboard if that is the case. An example is the wrong Pin number was imputed incorrectly multiple times.
Trying to use it for restricted uses - Merchant and cash access restrictions from ATMs, cash-back options, gambling establishments, liquor stores ETC. For example, you can’t use the card to purchase gift cards.
If you have questions about purchase card declines, reach out to your greekbill rep for help.
Purchase card approvers- “Settings” section:
Based on the organization's policies, there may be some checks and balances in place for a chapter to use the purchase card Program.
The Setting tab will allow you to add the need for approvers or to be notified of any activity on the card Such as:
- Order Card
- Add Funds
- Cancel Card
- Transaction Limit- if the card is used to make a payment over a certain balance added it will trigger a notification to the approver that it was made.
If you choose to add approvers for the various actions you will need to provide the information below:
- Admin approval required? Yes or No
- Add admins who can approve a fund load request. – You will be prompted to search within the roster and give a member or advisor the approval status to approve or deny any card loads.
- How many admins are required to approve a fund load request? You can decide how many admins are needed for the action to be approved.
- Add admins who will be notified via email of a fund load request. No action is required by them, this will just keep them in the loop of the card's activity.
Once a request is made, the approvers will receive an email with a link to approve or deny a load. The notification/ email goes to the email linked to the user name/ email address on file.
NOTE: The funds will not be loaded unless the funds have been approved by the outlined number of approvers.
How to see if a card has been approved – Go to the activity section on the purchase card dashboard, there you can view the various Purchase card activities -load requester, the request, the amount requested, Date of request, and Status for the actions such as:
- Card Activation- When the card became active
- Card Loads- When and how much was loaded
- Card Unloads – When and how much the card was Un-Loaded
- Card Cancellation – When the card was canceled.
The Activity Status will be a hyperlink if there are approvers required. You can click on that hyperlink for more information on who approved or denied the action. It will include the date of the approved load or decline. If the load is still pending, it will list all of the approvers and give you an option to “Resend the Notification”. It will also list who has already approved the request.
NOTE: The funds will not be loaded unless the funds have been approved. If it is still pending then it is waiting on the approvals with approval status to approve the load.
NOTE: the Settings tab will list all the purchase card approvers. If you don’t have the correct approvers listed, you can just update the approvers thereby selecting the EDIT button in the upper right-hand corner for the various actions on the settings page. You may be restricted by your roles and permissions to edit/ update this information. In this scenario, you will need to reach out to your greekbill representative to get them assigned correctly to either add or remove an approver.
NOTE: If the approvers are changed before a card load/ unload has been approved and completed, you will need to re-request the action because the approvers who were listed before will no longer have an active link to approve the request.