Enable early automatic payments for your card statements

Note: This article primarily applies to Ramp Administrators. Cardholders may find other articles in the Payments, limits, and statements section to be more applicable.

Set up early automatic payments to ensure you will always have an available balance for your expenses. Ramp will automatically debit your linked account when your cleared and pending card balance reaches a percentage of your available card capacity. Ramp checks the threshold when you save the setting, after qualifying card balance changes, and periodically.

Note: If you enable this feature after your balance reaches or exceeds the set threshold, Ramp checks the threshold immediately. A new transaction is not required.

How to set up

Company > Statements & payments > Early autopay

Step 1: Determine what percentage of your available card capacity you want to trigger an automatic payment. Ramp offers four percentages:

Step 2: Determine your payment preference. Ramp offers two payment preferences:

Pay cleared balance (default)
Pay cleared + pending balance

Setting up early autopay threshold and payment preference in Ramp

Payment preference

Ramp has two payment preferences, allowing you to determine the payment preference best for your business operations.

Pay cleared balance

Ramp will automatically debit only the cleared balance:

Benefits:

Statement payments always reconcile to statement amount because early auto-payments only debit cleared transactions, and statements similarly only include cleared transactions
Card balance will never be negative

Drawbacks:

The maximum number of pending payments is based on the linked bank account's payment history and number of business entities. Reaching that maximum could prevent additional payments. If this happens, contact Ramp Support.

This payment preference may be best if your business has a high volume/dollar amount of:

pending transactions that ultimately are reversed (e.g. hotel holds) or
returns of goods and services

If you select this payment method, Ramp suggests setting the trigger at 80% to ensure you have a large number of cleared transactions to prevent you from reaching the maximum number of payments.

Pay cleared + pending balance

Ramp will automatically debit the cleared and pending balance, reducing your balance to $0.00:

Benefits:

Card balance is reduced to $0.00, completely freeing up your available balance

Drawbacks:

Statement payments may not reconcile to statement amount, as statements only include cleared transactions, and payment could be made for a transaction that is ultimately reversed
Card balance could be negative, as a pending transaction could later be reversed (e.g., return, hotel hold)

This payment preference may be best if your business:

does not have many reversed transactions or returns
has a lower business limit but a high spend, allowing you to free up your card balance completely

If you select this payment method, you may be unable to reconcile your statement payments to your statement, as pending transactions can change.

Use cases and examples

Example 1: Single entity with Pay cleared balance

Early autopay setup:

Available card capacity: USD 50,000
Early autopay trigger: 80% of available card capacity (triggers at USD 40,000 in cleared + pending balance)
Early autopay payment preference: Pay cleared balance

The business currently has $35,000 in cleared transaction and $4,000 in pending transactions

Total cleared ($35,000) + pending ($4,000) is $39,000, which does NOT trigger early autopay threshold

$2,000 of the $4,000 pending transactions move from pending > cleared

Total cleared ($37,000) + pending ($2,000) transaction is still just $39,000. Early autopay is still not triggered

Business makes a transaction of $3,000, which adds to their balance as a pending transactions

Total cleared ($37,000) + pending ($5,000) transaction is now $42,000

Early autopay threshold for the business is triggered, Ramp automatically debits $37,000 (cleared transactions only) from the linked bank account

Your card balance is $5,000, which is the total pending transactions

Example 2: Single entity with Pay cleared + pending balance

Early autopay setup:

Available card capacity: USD 50,000
Early autopay trigger: 80% of available card capacity (triggers at USD 40,000 in cleared + pending balance)
Early autopay payment preference: Pay cleared + pending balance

The business currently has $35,000 in cleared transaction and $4,000 in pending transactions

Total cleared ($35,000) + pending ($4,000) is $39,000, which does NOT trigger early autopay threshold

$2,000 of the $4,000 pending transactions move from pending > cleared

Total cleared ($37,000) + pending ($2,000) transaction is still just $39,000. Early autopay is still not triggered

Business makes a transaction of $3,000, which adds to their balance as a pending transaction

Total cleared ($37,000) + pending ($5,000) transaction is now $42,000

Early autopay threshold for the business is triggered, Ramp automatically debits $42,000 (cleared and pending transactions) from the linked bank account

Your card balance is $0.00

Example 3: Multi-entity with Pay cleared balance

Early autopay setup:

Available card capacity: USD 100,000
Early autopay trigger: 50% of available card capacity (triggers at USD 50,000 in cleared + pending balance across all entities)
Early autopay payment preference: Pay cleared balance

The business has 3 entities with the following in cleared and pending:

Entity A has $15,000 in cleared transactions and $5,000 in pending transactions ($20,000 total)
Entity B has $10,000 in cleared transactions and $10,000 in pending transactions ($20,000 total)
Entity C has $8,000 in cleared transactions ($8,000 total)
The total cleared and pending transactions across all 3 entities in $48,000, which does not yet trigger the early-auto pay threshold

Entity C then makes a $5,000 transaction, which adds to its balance as a pending transaction

Total cleared + pending transactions across the entire business at $53,000

Early autopay threshold for the business is triggered. Ramp automatically debits only the cleared amount from each entity's linked bank account:

Entity A: debit $15,000
Entity B: debit $10,000
Entity C: debit $8,000

The total balance for the business is now only the pending transactions:

Entity A: $5,000
Entity B: $10,000
Entity C: USD 5,000
Total: USD 20,000

Example 4: Multi-entity with Pay cleared + pending balance

Early autopay setup:

Available card capacity: USD 100,000
Early autopay trigger: 50% of available card capacity (triggers at USD 50,000 in cleared + pending balance across all entities)
Early autopay payment preference: Pay cleared + pending balance

The business has 3 entities with the following in cleared and pending:

Entity A has $15,000 in cleared transactions and $5,000 in pending transactions ($20,000 total)
Entity B has $10,000 in cleared transactions and $10,000 in pending transactions ($20,000 total)
Entity C has $8,000 in cleared transactions ($8,000 total)
The total cleared and pending transactions across all 3 entities in $48,000, which does not yet trigger the early-auto pay threshold

Entity C then makes a $5,000 transaction, which adds to its balance as a pending transaction

Total cleared + pending transactions across the entire business at $53,000

Early autopay threshold for the business is triggered. Ramp automatically debits each entity's cleared and pending balance from its linked bank account:

Entity A: debit $20,000
Entity B: debit $20,000
Entity C: debit $13,000

The total balance for the business is now $0.00