Set up your spend approval policies

Overview

Approval policies on Ramp govern the steps required to approve spend issuance, card edits, reimbursements, and bill payments. You can define who needs to approve what and when, as well as keep certain people informed via notifications. Any user can add approvers to the approval chain while an approval in-flight; only Admins may remove approvers.

Ramp makes it easy to customize approval workflows so admins can define the right set of people to approve expenses based on the amount.

Approval policies cover:  

• New spend requests
• Card edits
• Reimbursements
• Bill payments
• Vendors (new)

Jump to:

• How to set approval policies
• Editing in-flight approvals for cards, reimbursements, and bills
• Creating custom groups and department/location owners
• Separation of duties

Setting approval policies

You can add approval policies for new cards for users, managers, and reimbursements by heading to Settings > Expense Policy. Approval workflows are separated by the specific type of spend that is being put up for approval (e.g., spend requests, reimbursements, bill pay, and post-transaction).

To learn how to set up the approvals for each spend object, please find the relevant Help Center article linked below:

• Spend request approvals
• Expense approvals (transaction and reimbursements)
• Bill Pay approvals

If the approval chain has the same user within multiple approval steps, we'll smartly de-duplicate so that the user has to approve the request only once.

Please note that if you update or add a new approval policy, it won't affect card, reimbursement, Bill Pay, or post-transaction approvals already in flight.

In-flight advanced approvals

For in-flight approvals, any user may add additional layers for new cards, reimbursements, or bills. Only Admins may remove approvers. However, Admins and Owners cannot be removed from in-flight bill approval flows. This feature is especially helpful if additional review is needed on approval or if a team member is currently unable to approve a transaction. Updates to the approval flow will be reflected in the event history tab.

Once the last approval has been made, no additional approvers may be added. 

Note: This does not apply to post-transaction reviews.

Custom groups and location/department owners

Admins may create custom approval groups & create approval owners for departments and locations. Assign groups and owners to approval policies rather than one by one to ensure your approvals have coverage even if a team member is absent.

Groups are created with OR functions, requiring only one member of the group to approve for a specific approval layer. New groups can include existing groups or individuals. Users with the 'employee' role may not be added to approval groups.

If a Location and Department owner approval is added as a step in the approval chain, please ensure that the Location and Department owners are set for each location or department. If an owner is not set and is included in the approval chain, the item requiring approval will route to all admins at your company and any of them can make the approval.

How to create a custom group

1. Navigate to People > custom groups > Create a custom group. Enter the relevant info and click Create group. Your new group is all set!
2. To add your new group to an approval chain, navigate to Settings > Expense Policy, and click edit or add a new approval layer. Your new approver group will be an option in the Select approvers dropdown.

How to add location or department owners

1. Navigate to the People tab.
2. Click on the Departments or Locations subtab.
3. Click to edit the owner and then select the checkbox next to each person you'd like to add as a department or location approver.
   

Separation of duties

If your business requires that the individual that creates the spend object (e.g., the requestor) can't approve their spend, you can enable the Separation of Duties toggle within the approval chain settings. 

If the toggle is on, when an individual requests spend and they are within the approval chain, they will be removed from the approval chain and will be replaced with admin approvers. This means any admin can make the approval.

Please note, that only business owners can toggle this setting on and off.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Can I set up circular managers?
We do not allow circular managers. If you try to create a circular management structure, our system automatically breaks the loop by unassigning the user who was already being managed and now becomes the circular manager.