Blackbaud Rolls Out P-Cards, Expense Management Platform

Cloud software company Blackbaud is rolling out purchasing cards and expense management services for its corporate customers, the company said Tuesday (Feb. 5).

Blackbaud Purchase Cards are designed for “social good organizations” to digitize their accounts payable processes and enhance spend management for employees. The solution integrates expense management capabilities, allowing managers to set spend controls for individual p-card holders, and gain insight into spend trends.

The company said it plans to integrate its expense management solution into the existing Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT tool, which will allow staff members to submit and track their own p-card transactions and invoice requests.

Regions Bank has teamed up with the company to issue Visa cards to employees at social good organizations to make payments while traveling on behalf of their firms.

“We are excited to work with Regions Bank to deepen this commitment with the introduction of Blackbaud Purchase Cards, which help enable social good organizations to make the transition to automated purchasing and employee expense processes — drastically reducing administrative costs and fraud risk,” said Kevin Gregoire, president of Blackbaud’s Enterprise Market Group, in a statement.

In its announcement, Blackbaud cited RPMG Research Corporation data that projects annual purchasing card spend volume to grow 10.5 percent year-over-year through 2021.

Separate research from Dr. Mahendra Gupta and Richard J. Palmer published last year in Treasury & Risk found p-card spending has elevated to more than $350 billion a year in less than three decades. Despite that growth, researchers noted that companies are struggling to fully develop their p-card programs because “a high proportion of that pending is conducted by only a fraction of p-card adopters.”

In essence, 80 percent of all p-card spend is conducted by only 20 percent of p-card users, the report found, likely related to the challenges organizations face in implementing their p-card programs.