How the Rho corporate card helps businesses control spend

Pre-Set Card Limits

This feature helps you enforce strict spend limits so that you never see a surprise charge. When you create a new virtual Rho Card, you have three credit limit options to choose from.

Recurring (physical and virtual Rho Cards)

This is the standard setting. You can assign a monthly card limit for a specific Rho Card you create. When you reach the monthly card limit, all future transactions will be declined until the limit resets with the next billing period.

Fixed amount (Virtual Rho Cards only)

In this case, your Rho Card can work like a gift card where you assign a value where a card can no longer be accepted once that amount of spend is reached. Not only does this help employees stick to a budget with specific expenses, but it also limits any harm that leaked card details can inflict on an organization.

Single-use (Virtual Rho Cards only)

Rho Cards can be programmed only for a single card swipe. After the payment settles, the card is disconnected. This is perfect for paying a large vendor bill due at the end of the month without any risk of that same card being misused in the future.

Did you know? You can generate an unlimited number of physical and virtual Rho Cards with pre-configured spend controls to help enforce your expense policy and speed up your expense management processes.

Advanced Controls

In this step of the Rho Card creation process, you have two options you can take advantage of – merchant-level controls and spend category controls.

Merchant-Level Controls

In the Merchant Control feature, a cardholder can list which merchants they would transact with. If a merchant is not on this list, this control would decline fraudulent or non-compliant transactions, thus protecting your business.

This feature works hand-in-hand with others listed, creating a tailored experience that helps CFOs and finance teams control organization spend and limit security risks.

You can pre-program Rho Cards only to be accepted at a specific list of merchants (up to 20), limiting unexpected charges.

For instance, one everyday use case we see with customers like Anti Agency Group is assigning individual Rho Cards to manage spend on platforms like Facebook, Google, and TikTok.

Spending Category Controls

With this feature, you can configure controls on the macro level, meaning if there is a particular sector/industry that your business regularly conducts business with, you can set those industries, and other industries that deviate from your list will be blocked.

For example, you can select ‘Airlines’, ‘Air Carriers and Airports’, and ‘Flying’ categories if you want the card only used for air travel expenses.

Custom active dates (virtual Rho Cards only)

Virtual Rho Cards with this feature enabled will only be accepted during date ranges that you specify.

For instance, you could give a contractor a corporate card for the 3 months they’re with the company and want the card’s expiration date to align with when their contract ends.

This prevents out-of-compliant spending from occurring after that period, further reducing your organization’s corporate card surface area in case you forget about one-off cards.

International Spend Permissions

Your admin can easily toggle international card spend for individual cards on and off. This can be used when you're based in the US, and your business does not transact internationally.

Multi-tiered approval workflows

Customers want even more customizability and dynamic controls, as expense policies can be complex.

If an expense is minor, you may only need a single approver, but the reality is that many businesses want more controls and more eyes on money going out of the door. For those higher-expense items, having only one layer of approvals is not ideal.

With Rho, clients can create multi-tiered approval workflows. This experience is optimal for businesses in the 10-50 employee range with a central approver for expenses (like a CFO) but also want to incorporate a first level of approvals for additional control.

But what about organizations with employee counts that are too large for a CFO to manage all expenses centrally?

Skip-level manager approvals

Some clients with larger employees wanted the ability to incorporate multi-level approval workflows that aligned with their org chart by also accounting for skip-level manager approvals.  

Rho customers can configure skip-level manager approvals. For example, you can configure expenses above a certain threshold to require an employee’s direct manager to approve the expense before sending it to the skip-level manager for final approval.

Wrap-up: Businesses control spend better with Rho

Rho offers a fundamentally unique solution that sets it apart from traditional practices. We take away all the heavy lifting involved in enforcing organization spend policies, so that CFOs and finance teams can spend more money driving growth instead of spending hours on manual minutiae.

Businesses have long relied on waiting for credit card statements to reconcile transactions. They use outdated expense software that often creates hassle than ease, compounded by the never-ending chase for employees to submit their expense reports. The result: Delayed processes and wasteful spending before you can track it.

Interested in demoing Rho today? Get in touch and learn how Rho compares to legacy solutions like SAP Concur and Expensify.