Set up your spend approval policies

Overview

Approval policies on Ramp govern the steps required to approve funds issuance, 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 is 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 funds requests
• Edits
• Reimbursements
• Bill payments
• Vendors (new)

Jump to:

• Setting approval policies
• In-flight advanced approvals
• Creating custom groups and location/department owners
• Separation of duties

Setting approval policies

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


Using Ramp’s workflow builder to set up approvals? You can test your workflows before going live—learn how it works in our Simplified Workflow Builder FAQ.

To set up approvals for each type of spend, refer to the following Help Center articles:

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

Ramp automatically de-duplicates approval chains—if the same user appears in multiple approval steps, they’ll only need to approve once.

Note: Updating or adding a new approval policy will not affect funds, reimbursement, Bill Pay, or post-transaction approvals that are already in flight.

In-flight advanced approvals

For in-flight approvals, any user may add additional layers for new funds, 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 funds 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.

What happens to an approval chain when accounting fields are updated?
If no one has approved or rejected a transaction, Ramp will automatically update the approval chain to the most recent policy if accounting fields are changed.