Get started with Procurement

Overview

Ramp Procurement brings purchase requests, approvals, and purchase orders (POs) into one workflow. It helps your business collect purchase details before spend occurs, route each request to the right reviewers, and manage the resulting PO throughout its lifecycle.

Note: Procurement requires the Procurement add-on; if your business is eligible, you may be able to start a 60-day free trial.

How Ramp Procurement works

The standard procurement lifecycle follows this order:

1. A requester chooses a published Program and submits a purchase request.
2. Ramp routes the request through the Program's approval policy.
3. After final approval, Ramp creates the PO.
4. Your team manages the approved PO, matches bills or card spend to it, and submits a change order when an eligible material change needs approval.

For the request submission experience, see Submit procurement requests. For the approved PO lifecycle, see Purchase orders in Ramp.

Set up Ramp Procurement

Use this sequence to launch Procurement without duplicating the detailed setup instructions in the Ramp Procurement quick start guide:

1. Create a Program. Open Manage spend > Programs, select Create program, and choose the appropriate starting point. To update it later, use Edit program.
2. Build the request form. Initial setup calls this walkthrough step Build your intake form. In the persistent Program editor, use Questions, Add a question, and Preview the request form. Add questions from categories such as PO fields and Vendor fields, then select Required for answers the requester must provide. To require a vendor email, add a Contact or Email question under Vendor fields and mark it Required. A Contact question collects first name, last name, phone, and email.
3. Configure approvals. Set the Approval policy, then configure the Change order approval policy or select Use the same approval workflow for change orders. See Configure Procurement workflows for workflow details.
4. Publish the Program. Publishing makes the Program available to its configured requesters.

For role setup and equivalent abilities through Custom Roles, see Procurement role configuration.

Find Procurement in Ramp

Use these destinations after setup:

• Manage spend > Programs to create and maintain Programs
• Manage spend > Requests to review pending requests
• Manage spend > Purchase orders to view and manage POs

Under Manage spend > Purchase orders > Settings, the available tabs are General, Default PO fields, Custom fields, Automation, and Import. The Import tab appears only when an accounting provider is connected. Use these settings for company-wide PO configuration; use a Program's request form and policies for per-Program intake and approval behavior.

Manage requests and purchase orders after launch

A pending procurement request can be edited by the requestor/creator, owner, or coordinator; anyone who has participated in its approval chain; the direct manager of its owner or coordinator when granted team-level procurement management permission; and users with company-wide procurement management permission, including Business Owners, Admins, Finance Admins, and AP Clerks.

After approval, Business Owners, Admins, and Finance Admins can edit all fields on a PO directly. Accounting/Bookkeeper and AP Clerk roles, along with Custom Roles granted the same ability, can directly edit secondary details such as the memo, payment terms, addresses, accounting coding, and attachments. Anyone else must use a change order for material changes such as amounts or line items. Archived POs cannot be edited. See Purchase orders in Ramp for the complete editing rules.

Change orders apply only to approved, non-archived POs that are not closed and were created in Ramp through a purchase request or CSV import. For POs tied to a Program, configure their approval behavior with the Program's Change order approval policy, then see Change orders for submission and review details.

Purchase orders created outside Ramp

How a PO enters Ramp determines what you can do with it:

Change orders are available for approved, non-archived POs that are not closed and were created in Ramp through a purchase request or CSV import. They are not available for Developer API or ERP-synced POs. For ongoing PO management and bill matching, see Purchase orders in Ramp.