How to Reduce Maverick Credit-Card Spend (Without Slowing Anyone Down)
The “Swipe-Now, Panic-Later” Problem
Corporate cards feel convenient—until you add up the fallout:
- Price creep – rush buys from Amazon or local suppliers nearly always cost more than your contracted pricing.
- Duplicate orders – Location A forgets Location B just stocked up, so you pay twice.
- Audit chaos – personal cards blur the paper trail; missing COAs or batch IDs become a compliance headache.
Across the operators we work with, those blind spots translate into thousands of dollars in avoidable spend every single month—plus hours of detective work for finance.
Three Moves That Shut It Down
1. Lock Purchases to an Approved Catalog
Staff only see compliant, pre-approved SKUs tied to their location and budget. No catalog SKU = no purchase.
2. Force a PO Before the Swipe
Virtual cards inside MainStem trigger a PO request first. Finance hits Approve, the card activates for that exact amount—no overages, no surprises.
3. Activate Live Budget Guardrails
Budgets sit inside the platform, not in a spreadsheet. Hit your threshold? The system pauses spend until finance reviews.
Result: rogue card charges drop sharply, and finance stops playing invoice detective.
Proof—Straight From the Floor
- Theory Wellness moved all indirect purchases into MainStem and gave finance a single, audit-ready trail for every transaction.
- Solar Cannabis centralized approvals on every PO, eliminating blind duplicate buys and untracked card spend.
Find Your Leak in 60 Seconds
- Run the ROI calculator – four quick inputs, no email.
- See the dollar drain from duplicate swipes and last-minute orders.
- Decide if handing that cash back to your margin beats business-as-usual plastic.
Because every unapproved swipe is a budget you never see again—unless you lock it down at the point of purchase.
MainStem — Procurement & Supply Chain Redefined
