How Does Your Company Handle/Manage Expense Cards For Field Techs?

Why not just have an Operations checking account with your techs having debit cards with their own names on them tied to that account?

Have you thought of using a purchaser/warehouse employee? You could have one person in charge of getting the materials purchased, and then when the purchase is made the technician is listed as the person picking up the materials/tools. That warehouse employee could also be the person that picks-up and delivers the materials to the site. Sometimes that saves time because we all know the technicians will turn a 10 minute HD visit into a 45 minute waste of time. A process I have seen at other companies is: Sales team wins the bid and sends it to the PM (or OPs). The PM creates the materials list from that and sends it to the purchaser. That purchaser will then acquire the materials form their preferred vendors and let the PM know where the materials can be picked up, or when the shipment will arrive. 

A lot of the companies I have been at have had fraud issues go on with their techs buying stuff they shouldn't on the CCs. If you have one purchaser, everything flows through them and all the receipts are centralized. At some companies, the office manager will also purchase the materials needed. The only time another CC is issued is to PMs to buy minor things in a pinch.

We thought about having the techs put on one account but it requires them going to the bank with a signer and that presents logistical challenges.

I may have made it sound like we have a large number of field techs, and we don't. Right now we have 3 lead installers/techs that have cards, and probably will add a 4th when we hire a new service tech.

Due to our installs, we buy quite a bit from Home Depot, conduit, outlet boxes, electrical items.

We aren't large enough to have full-time PM's and a warehouse guy. Not sure if we could buy everything and deliver. I imagine something would come up on the job that is needed and we did not provide them with it. We do have a list of common items they are supposed to have on the truck, PVC fittings, EMT fittings, boxes, etc but that has not been enforced.

I know we need to stop the multiple trips to Home Depot though. But I am focusing on bigger items that have a larger impact right now. 

The other day I had a tech in the office to run some HDMI cables and he didn't have an auger bit or Low Voltage box.... :facepalm

We started using Divvy recently and it has worked well. Ryan will do a post on this soon.

It's real easy to use, online-based management, apps for employees, plus personal account manager. We used to do it through our bank but our bank is stuck in the 1990s when it comes to cards and managing cards.

Funny enough these were the guys we filmed at ISC West earlier in the year:

The 1% back aspect is fine but the real benefit was its overall ease of use with managing various employees.

We use American Express.  Everyone has there own card with limits as to how much they can spend per month and what they can purchase.  The only issue so far is not everyone accepts AMX.