Practical Revolut Business controls for UK startups: cards, multi currency accounts and approval workflows

Why UK Startups Need Financial Controls for Speed, Not Bureaucracy

When your startup is just a few founders, managing expenses on a personal card and reconciling them later feels fast enough. But as you hire your first team members, that informal system begins to creak. A surprise subscription fee or an unapproved expense can suddenly have a real impact on your runway. The challenge is implementing financial oversight for startups without grinding your team’s momentum to a halt with corporate red tape.

Knowing how to set up spending controls in Revolut Business is not about bureaucracy. It is about creating a framework that allows you to delegate purchasing power confidently. This enables your team to get the tools and resources they need while you maintain complete control over cash flow. This guide provides a practical, stage-appropriate approach for UK startups to implement these controls effectively.

Many founders resist financial controls, viewing them as restrictive processes that will slow everyone down. This perspective misses the fundamental purpose of modern controls in a startup context. They are not about saying 'no'; they are about creating clear, automated guardrails so the team can operate with autonomy and speed. Instead of every small purchase requiring founder approval, you set the rules once and let the system manage compliance.

This is not corporate bureaucracy for its own sake. The reality for most pre-seed to Series B startups is more pragmatic: controls enable safe delegation. The need for formal controls becomes critical once a startup team grows beyond 5-10 people. At this point, ad-hoc approvals become a bottleneck and the risk of unmanaged spending grows. By implementing sensible Revolut team spending limits and permissions, you allow your team to act independently within a budget you define, freeing up founder time to focus on building the business.

How to Set Up Revolut Team Spending Limits with Smart Cards

One of the most immediate financial risks for a growing startup is unrestricted team card access, which can trigger unexpected spending that drains cash before you even notice. The solution is to equip your team with cards that have granular, pre-defined limits and rules. This is a core part of effective business expense management in the UK.

What founders find actually works is a hybrid approach using both virtual cards and physical cards. You can create dedicated virtual cards for specific functions, which is ideal for managing online subscriptions. For instance, a SaaS startup could create a virtual card titled 'Marketing Tech Stack' with a monthly limit, used exclusively for tools like HubSpot, Ahrefs, and social media advertising. This isolates spending and makes it simple to track the exact cost of a specific business function in your Xero accounts.

For individual team members, physical debit cards provide necessary flexibility for travel and in-person expenses. Here, setting clear limits is key. A sensible starting monthly spending limit for a general software and expenses card at a pre-seed or seed startup is £250-£500. For roles with more significant spending needs, the limits should reflect their function. A typical monthly spending limit for sales roles with travel, for example, is £1,500-£2,000.

Revolut card permissions go further than just limits. You can block entire categories of spending, like gambling or cash withdrawals, and even restrict cards to specific merchants. For a Deeptech startup, a lab manager's card could be configured to permit purchases only from pre-approved scientific equipment suppliers, providing total control over the R&D budget.

Managing International Payments with a Multi-Currency Account Setup

As UK startups scale, their operations inevitably become more global. You might be paying for essential US-based software, hiring developers in Europe, or sourcing inventory from Asia. Missing or misconfigured multi-currency limits exposes you to avoidable FX fees and rate swings on every international payment, eroding your margins.

Paying an invoice in US dollars directly from your main GBP account is often the most expensive way to do business. Your bank applies its own exchange rate at the point of payment, which rarely favours you. The smarter approach is to perform a multi-currency account setup within Revolut Business. You can hold balances in EUR, USD, and other currencies, allowing you to pay international suppliers from a dedicated currency account. The pattern across SaaS and E-commerce startups is consistent: multi-currency controls become critical with recurring international payments over approximately £1,000 per month.

Consider an e-commerce startup in the UK that buys stock from a supplier in Portugal. By opening a EUR account, the founder can convert a larger sum of GBP to EUR when the exchange rate is favourable, then use that EUR balance to pay invoices throughout the month. This avoids being subjected to a potentially poor rate on the day an invoice is due. The savings are not trivial. Properly managing foreign currency accounts can save startups 1-3% on their total international payment volume. For a business with £50,000 in monthly international costs, that translates to £500-£1,500 in direct cash savings, which goes straight back into your runway.

Implementing a Scalable Revolut Approval Process

As your team and transaction values grow, you can no longer be the single point of approval for every payment. It creates a bottleneck and is not a scalable model for financial governance. Confusing approval-workflow settings can lead to misaligned roles, leaving shaky audit trails and creating compliance gaps. The goal is to implement a clear, tiered Revolut approval process.

This starts with establishing a separation of duties. In practice, we see that startups assign a junior operations manager or finance assistant an 'Admin' role in Revolut. This allows them to prepare payments, upload invoices, and set up pay runs. However, the funds cannot leave the account until an 'Owner', typically a founder, provides final approval. This dual-control system is fundamental for secure financial operations.

The next step is setting a clear threshold for when these approvals are required. For smaller, recurring payments, manual approval is inefficient. However, approval workflows are typically needed for payments over a certain threshold, such as £5,000. This ensures senior oversight on significant expenditures without creating friction for routine operational costs.

This audit trail becomes invaluable for more than just internal control. A scenario we repeatedly see involves R&D tax credits. To make a successful claim, R&D tax credit claims to HMRC require a clear audit trail of who approved specific expenses and when. Imagine a UK-based biotech startup that used Revolut to purchase a £20,000 piece of lab equipment. The Head of R&D, as an 'Admin', prepared the payment and attached the invoice. The CEO, as the 'Owner', reviewed it and approved the payment with the comment 'CRISPR equipment for Project Gene-Sys'. When accountants compiled the R&D claim, they exported this record. This provided the perfect, time-stamped evidence linking the expense to an R&D project and showing proper senior authorisation, satisfying HMRC's requirements.

A Phased Plan for Implementing Revolut Controls

Implementing financial controls in Revolut Business should be a phased process that aligns with your startup's growth stage. Attempting to roll out an enterprise-level system on day one will only create unnecessary friction.

• Pre-Seed (1-10 people): Start with the basics. Focus on taming day-to-day spending by issuing team cards with clear monthly limits. Create one or two virtual cards to manage all your recurring SaaS subscriptions and digital advertising spend. At this stage, the founder is likely still approving everything implicitly.
• Seed (10-30 people): As the team expands, formalise your expense management. Roll out individual cards for relevant team members with role-specific limits. If you are paying international suppliers more than £1,000 monthly, set up dedicated USD and EUR accounts to manage currency risk and reduce FX costs.
• Series A (30+ people): Now is the time for structured governance. Introduce the Revolut approval process for all payments over a set threshold, like £5,000. Formally assign 'Admin' and 'Owner' roles to create a clear separation of duties. This robust audit trail will be essential for future financial due diligence and tax claims.

These startup banking controls are not about restricting growth; they are the financial scaffolding that enables you to scale quickly and safely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the main difference between 'Admin' and 'Owner' roles in Revolut Business?
A: The 'Owner' role has full account permissions, including the final authority to approve payments and manage other users. An 'Admin' can prepare payments, manage cards, and handle administrative tasks, but typically cannot give the final approval for funds to leave the account, ensuring a crucial separation of duties.

Q: Can I change spending limits on Revolut cards instantly?
A: Yes, one of the key benefits of Revolut Business for startup expense management is the ability to adjust card limits, freeze cards, and change permissions instantly through the app. This allows you to respond quickly to new spending needs or potential security concerns without any delay.

Q: Are virtual cards safer than physical cards for online spending?
A: Generally, yes. Virtual cards can be created for specific vendors or subscriptions and can be set with tight spending limits or as single-use cards. This minimises risk if card details are compromised in a data breach, as the exposure is limited to that single card, not your primary account.