Delegate approvers

Overview

Available on Ramp Plus. See Ramp Plus overview for plan details.

Delegate an approver for your Ramp inbox when you're going out of the office, whether you're feeling under the weather, taking a vacation, or going on leave. Set someone as your backup to unblock your team's spend.

Important: Adding a delegate approver affects both existing and future approval chains. When you remove a delegate, they are removed from future approvals only — they remain on any approvals where they were previously added. This cannot be reversed.

What can the delegate approver and original approver do and see?

Delegate approvers can do the following on behalf of their assigned user(s):

• Receive approval requests on behalf of the delegator (requests, transaction reviews, reimbursements, bills)
• Receive the weekly "Missing Items" email on behalf of the delegator

The original approver will continue to have the same approval functionality and receive notifications for items pending approvals.

Note: Delegate approvers will only see approvals they've completed in their own history. They won't have visibility into approvals made by the approver they're covering for.

Who can be a delegate approver?

Any non-Guest user who can serve as an approver in Ramp can be assigned as a delegate approver. This includes standard roles such as Employee, Manager, Accounting, Accounts Payable, Admin, Finance Admin, IT Admin, Owner, and View-Only Admin. Guest users and groups cannot be assigned. The original approver will continue to get notifications and be able to see their approvals queue.

Upon assignment and unassignment, both the delegate approver and original approver get an email confirmation that another Ramp user has added or removed them as a backup approver.

Who can assign a delegate approver? How is this assigned?

Self-delegation (setting your own delegate)

Any user who has approvals can set their own delegate approver:

1. Go to Profile (top right) > My settings > Delegation tab
2. Select Delegate approver and start typing the name of your delegate
3. Select the user you want to assign as your delegate and click Enable to save

Delegating for others (Admins setting delegates for other users)

Admins can assign delegate approvers to other users:

1. Go to Company > People
2. Select the user who needs a delegate approver assigned to them, then click Edit Profile
3. Select Delegate approver and start typing the name of the delegate
4. Select the user you want to assign as their delegate and click Enable
5. Click Save

What happens to approval chains and the activity tab?

Both the original approver and delegate approver will see pending requests and have the ability to approve them. The approval chains will be updated to reflect the delegate approver's name. Hovering over the double-person icon will show who the original approver is. The same will be reflected in the Activity tab to show the delegate approver's name acting on behalf of the original.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between a delegate approver and an assistant?

• Delegate approver: A temporary backup who receives and can act on approval requests on your behalf. Both the delegate and the original approver can see and approve items. Use this when someone is out of office.
• Assistant: An ongoing permission added to a user's existing role, allowing them to manage another user's Ramp account, including submitting expenses, managing cards, and viewing transactions. Assistants do not receive approval notifications. Use this for executive assistants or similar ongoing arrangements.

For more on the Assistant role, see User role deep-dive: Assistant.