Moving your card spend onto Float usually means digging through old statements, working out which vendors need their own card, and creating each one by hand. Float Intelligence's Onboarding Agent does that work for you. In the app, you'll find it as Smart Card Setup. Upload your recent credit card statements, and the Onboarding Agent analyzes your spend and recommends a set of cards with vendor, cardholder, limit, and currency already filled in. You review the list, change anything you want, and create the cards in one go.
This article walks you through the full setup, from uploading statements to creating your cards.
Please note: This feature is only available to customers without any Float cards and to new customers who joined Float from September 29, 2026 onwards.
Guide Overview
Step 2: Upload Your Statements
Step 3: Let Float Intelligence Analyze Your Spend
Step 4: Review Your Recommended Cards
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Who Can Use Smart Card Setup
Only Primary Admins and Admins can run Smart Card Setup. If you're a Manager or Spender, you won't see the entry points, so please ask an Admin on your team to run it.
Smart Card Setup is available to Canadian entities. It isn't available for US-domiciled entities yet.
Before You Start
You'll need recent credit card statements from your current card provider. Float recommends at least 3 months of statements — the more spend history Float Intelligence can see, the better it can tell recurring vendor spend from one-off charges. Statements can be PDF or CSV files.
You don't have to finish anything else first. The intro screen shows a short checklist of optional steps that make your recommendations better, but none of them block you from starting:
- Verify Your Business: unlocks physical cards and USD cards
- Connect your accounting integration: lets Float match GL Codes to each card automatically
- Connect HRIS (Professional and Enterprise plans only): helps Float identify cardholders automatically
- Create Custom Submission Policies (Professional and Enterprise plans only): lets you pre-configure approval rules before your cards exist
You can skip any of these and come back to them later. If you do step away to finish one, we show a link to return to your setup where you left off.
Step 1: Open Smart Card Setup
There are two ways in:
- From your Welcome Guide on the web app (app.floatfinancial.com), find the Smart Card Setup banner and select Get Started.
- From the Cards page, open the Create Card menu and select Smart Card Setup.
Both go to the same place. If you've already started a setup and left partway through, the button reads Resume and takes you back to the step you were on.
Step 2: Upload Your Statements
- Drag your statements into the upload area, or select it to browse your files. You can add several at once.
- Wait for each file to finish uploading. Files show a spinner while they upload and their file size once they're done.
- If you added the wrong file, hover over it to remove it.
- Select a PDF to preview it in a side panel, so you can confirm you've uploaded the right statement before analyzing.
- Please note that CSV files don't have a preview option.
- Once every file has uploaded without errors, select Continue.
The Continue button stays disabled until all your files have finished uploading successfully.
Please note: Float meets the highest security standards for storing your statement information, and we will never use it without your consent. SOC 2 Type 2 and PCI-DSS certified. Learn more
Step 3: Let Float Intelligence Analyze Your Spend
Float Intelligence reads your statements, pulls out the transactions, and works out which vendors deserve their own card. The screen walks you through each stage as it goes.
This can take several minutes, depending on how many statements you uploaded and how much activity they contain.
You don't have to sit and watch it. Close the screen, and the analysis keeps running. You'll get a notification with a Resume button when your recommendations are ready, and the Smart Card Setup banner on your Welcome Guide will read Resume. Closing the browser tab or reloading the page won't stop the analysis either.
If you stay on the screen, Float takes you straight to your recommendations when the analysis finishes.
Step 4: Review Your Recommended Cards
This is the step that matters most. Nothing is created until you say so, and nothing is selected for you.
Your results are split into two tables:
- Recurring spend: vendors Float Intelligence found charging you regularly. These are the recommended cards.
- Other expenses: one-off charges that didn't form a pattern. You can turn any of these into a card too.
Select the cards you want using the checkboxes, or select all. As you select, the footer keeps a running total of the limits you're committing to and the number of cards you're about to create. You can't continue with nothing selected.
To see why a card was recommended, open it and check the Float Intelligence Reasoning for that card. You can also open the transactions behind any recommendation to see the actual charges it came from.
Editing a single card
Select a row to open its details, where you can change the card name, cardholder, card type (virtual or physical), currency, limits, and — depending on your plan — its Spend Compliance Policy, GL Code, and Merchant Categories.
A few things worth knowing here:
- Cardholders that Float Intelligence inferred from your statements are shown as suggestions. Check them before you create the cards.
- If the right cardholder isn't on your team yet, you can create a new User without leaving the card details.
- If your business uses Spend Compliance Policies, a card's policy limits which GL Codes it can use. The Default policy doesn't restrict them.
- You can also build a card from scratch here if Float Intelligence missed a vendor you know you need.
Editing several cards at once
Select two or more cards and a bulk edit bar appears, showing how many cards you've selected. From there, you can set the Cardholder, Card Type, and Currency across all of them at once — plus Spend Compliance Policy and Merchant Category on Professional and Enterprise plans, or GL Code on the Essential plan.
Bulk edits apply across both tables. The count on the Apply button is exactly what gets changed.
USD cards and verification
USD cards have two requirements:
- Your business must be verified. Until it is, USD cards can't be created at all.
- The cardholder must have completed identity verification. USD isn't available for people who haven't.
If you reassign a USD card to someone who isn't verified, the card falls back to CAD. Users you create during setup start out unverified, so USD won't be available for them until they complete verification.
Step 5: Create Your Cards
When your list looks right, select the button to create your selected cards. Float shows a running count as each one is created.
You can close this screen and carry on with something else while your cards keep being created, and you'll get a notification when they're done.
Once they're created, Float shows you what to do next:
- Connect a bank account (or add funds, if you've already connected one) so your new cards have spending power
- View cards to see them on your Cards page
- Return to card recommendations to create more from the same analysis
- Start a new analysis to upload a different set of statements
If any cards fail to be created, Float tells you which ones and lets you retry them. The cards that were created successfully are never created twice. Cards that failed stay in your recommendations list.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Can I leave partway through and come back?
Yes. From the upload step onwards, Float keeps your uploaded statements, your selections, and any edits you've made to individual cards. Return through the Resume button on your Welcome Guide banner, or from the Cards page, and you'll land on the step you left.
What if the analysis doesn't find anything?
You'll land on an empty recommendations list with the option to add more statements. This usually means the statements you uploaded didn't contain readable transaction data (e.g., a summary page rather than a full statement). Add more statements, or start the setup over with a different set.
Why can't I select USD for a card?
Either your business isn't verified yet, or the cardholder hasn't completed identity verification. Business verification gates USD cards entirely; cardholder verification gates USD for that specific person. See Steps to Verify Your Business on Float.
Can I run Smart Card Setup more than once?
Yes. Select Start a new analysis to upload a fresh set of statements. Starting over clears your current recommendations, so Float confirms before it does. If you have cards you haven't created yet, create them first.
What happens to cards I didn't create?
They stay in your recommendations. You can come back through Smart Card Setup and create them later, as long as you haven't started a new analysis.
Can I still create cards the normal way?
Yes. Smart Card Setup is an addition, not a replacement. You can create cards one at a time from the Cards page at any time — see Creating Float Cards as an Administrator (Virtual & Physical).
Something went wrong during the analysis. What now?
If the analysis runs into an error, you'll see two options:
- Retry runs the analysis again on the same statements.
- Upload new statements lets you upload your statements again and restart the setup.
Closing the screen doesn't cancel your setup; it'll return to the same point when you come back. If it keeps failing, contact us at support@floatfinancial.com.