Brex Credit Card Review | Small Business Credit Card | Accountant's Perspective

0:22 One, qualification and credit limits

The first thing I like about Brex is the qualification and credit limits it provides to startup businesses.

Brex looks at bank balances and financial activity in determining credit amounts, unlike traditional banks that look at credit history. Now if you're a new business, you're like a baby, you have no credit history. You virtually have no credit, so it's a lot harder to establish a business credit card when you're a brand new business.

Brex also does not look at personal guarantees. It doesn't do personal credit checks. So it's a great way to start and establish business credit and get a business credit card.

0:55 Two, the rewards system

The second thing about Brex is their reward system. A lot of business owners are chasing points, chasing cash back.

With Brex they use a points-based system, so you get points back based on how you spend that money, and you get different points levels depending on the spend. One point per dollar for everything in general. Seven points on ride share, that's the most extreme. And what will happen is you'll be able to redeem points towards statement credits. It works out to about 14,000 points for every 100 spent.

Essentially you're going to be getting, in a cash back equivalence, about 0.7 percent to 4.9 percent. So the best way to maximize Brex from a rewards perspective is to use it on categories of spend that are going to give you more points, things like recurring software or restaurants.

1:45 Three, the admin portal

The third thing that I like about Brex is their administrative portal. If you've used other bank portals, you'll know that they're outdated, lacking in features, very minimal. Brex gives you a modern portal with the expected features, like a list of transactions, statements, payment management, and user and card management. But beyond that, it gives you so much more.

So in the case of user management, you have the ability to set the limits. You have the ability to have different permissions for users, so you can have a card user, you can have a card admin, somebody who could administer the whole portal, and you can have a bookkeeper, so somebody who has read only access to do the accounting but not anything else.

Another big feature is expense review. You're not going to see this in the traditional corporate card. Essentially Brex allows you to set up a policy and establish violations. So this could be things like a transaction requires a memo, a transaction requires a receipt, and highlighting big expenses. And then there's a portal wherein you can go in and review those transactions. Again, this is not something that you're going to get in a traditional corporate card, and it provides for better control over that spend.

2:56 Four, end user features

The fourth thing I like about Brex is the end user features.

So it starts with both having a virtual card as well as a physical card. A virtual card is a separate number that you can use for online transactions. So if your credit card gets compromised, you're not having to issue a brand new card, you just issue a new virtual card number. This is a great feature for those who do a lot of online transactions and have had to change out their cards regularly.

The second end user feature I like is a web portal and an app where the end user can track what they're spending on, they can capture their receipts, they can put memos on the transactions.

The final end user feature that I like is the ability to capture receipts. This comes in three methods. First is using the Brex app, where you can take a picture. Second, uploading documents into the web portal. And third, forwarding emails to an address that will put those receipts into those transactions in the Brex portal.

3:49 Five, accounting integrations

The fifth thing I like about Brex is their accounting integration. Brex integrates with a number of accounting software including QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite and more.

Let me talk specifically about QuickBooks Online integration. Brex has one of the best integrations of any fintech software there is when it comes to QuickBooks Online.

This starts with importing the chart of accounts and being able to map those to a preset list of categories. What Brex will do is it will take a transaction, it will map it to their categories, which you have then mapped to the chart of accounts, and when you go to export those transactions it flows perfectly.

The second thing is you can map departments to classes. So if you want to put in an additional layer of transaction coding, it automates that as well. Third, you can map specific vendors to specific categories. So if you have a vendor who is always going to be to a certain category, you can map that automatically. And finally, you can put in custom rules for specific transactions that you need to have go a certain way.

4:48 Bonus, corporate travel

Now I'm going to give you one bonus feature. Brex integrates with TravelBank for corporate travel. So you have, with a Brex account, also a corporate travel account. It gives you better points, it gives you centrally managed travel, and the spend flows into Brex automatically.

If you like this video, give me a thumbs up, subscribe to our channel, ask me a question in the comments and I'll answer it. And if you need help with Brex or other accounting services, reach out to LedgerGurus and the link below.