Before You Start

This guide assumes you have familiarity with creating basic bank rules in QBO or Xero. You’ll need administrator access to your accounting software and corporate card platform.

Overview

25 min
Setup Time
Intermediate
Difficulty
Weekly/Monthly
Maintenance

What You’ll Learn

  • How to identify unique transaction identifiers for cardholders
  • Creating robust bank rules for employee-specific cards
  • Managing multi-party expense categorization efficiently
  • Strategies for reconciling corporate card statements

1. Preparation Steps

Before setting up advanced rules, ensure these are ready in your accounting software:

Required Accounts/Setups

  • Expense accounts for common categories (e.g., Travel, Meals, Software)
  • Employees or Vendors set up for each cardholder
  • Main Credit Card account (Bank/Credit Card type) connected to feed

Optional (but recommended)

  • Separate sub-accounts for major cardholders or departments
  • Tags or Classes for department/project tracking
  • Reimbursement account (if applicable)

2. Understanding Corporate Card Feeds

Corporate card platforms can feed transactions differently.

Method A: Single Feed (Main Account Only)

Transactions are batched under one primary credit card account.

Pros:
  • Simpler to set up initially.
  • Less clutter in transaction lists.
  • Good for very small teams.
Cons:
  • Harder to track individual spend.
  • Requires manual tagging/review.
  • Limits automation for sub-accounts.

Method B: Detailed Feed (Individual Transactions)

Transactions include details like employee name or card number.

Expert Tip: We strongly recommend using a detailed feed that includes employee names or card numbers. This level of detail unlocks powerful, automated rule creation for individual cardholders and significantly reduces manual work during reconciliation.

3. Key Concepts for Advanced Rules

Advanced bank rules leverage specific data points within transaction descriptions or payees.

Here is a sample code block to show how a typical transaction from a corporate card platform might look.

{
  "transaction_id": "TRX00123",
  "date": "2025-10-20",
  "amount": 75.50,
  "description": "STARBUCKS #1234 - J DOE",
  "card_last_four": "4321",
  "employee_name": "JOHN DOE",
  "merchant_category": "Food & Beverage"
}

4. Setting Up Your Bank Rules

  1. 1

    Identify Unique Identifiers

    Analyze your bank feed. Look for consistent patterns in the transaction description, payee name, or bank text that uniquely identify the employee or the specific card used (e.g., ‘J DOE’, ‘BREX *JOHN DOE’, last 4 digits of card).

  2. 2

    Create General Merchant Rules

    Start with broad rules for common vendors like ‘STARBUCKS’, ‘AMAZON’, ‘UBER’. Assign these to their respective expense accounts. These can apply globally or be refined later.

  3. 3

    Create Employee-Specific Rules

    For specific categorization per employee, use ‘AND’ conditions. Combine a merchant match with an employee identifier. Example: ‘Description contains STARBUCKS’ AND ‘Description contains J DOE’ to post to John Doe’s specific Meals & Entertainment account.

Common Error: Overlapping Rules

Ensure your rules are specific enough not to overlap. A general rule for ‘Amazon’ might inadvertently override a more specific rule for ‘Amazon Web Services - J Doe’. Order your rules (if your software allows) from most specific to most general.

5. Testing and Maintenance

Test Your Rules Checklist

  • Run rules on a batch of recent transactions (e.g., last week’s activity)
  • Verify transactions are coded to the correct expense accounts
  • Check that employee/vendor tags or classes are accurately applied
  • Confirm the total bank deposit amounts align with your corporate card statement

Need Help?

Get Support

Having trouble setting up your advanced bank rules? Our team can help fine-tune your accounting automation.

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