Cardholders may find other articles in the Expense policy and receipts section to be more applicable.
Overview
Whenever an admin/manager issues spend or an employee requests spend from their “My Ramp” dashboard, Ramp provides businesses control and visibility over the requested spend and automatically routes the request for approvals.
Jump to:
- Where to set up spend request approvals
- How to set up spend request approvals
- Separation of duties
- Approval notifications
Where to set up spend request approvals
Those with admin permissions can access spend request approval setup through their company settings page, within the Expense Policy tab
Within the spend request approver drawer, you will see a preview of your existing approval flow.
How to set up spend request approvals
To edit and configure your spend request approvals, click the paper and pencil icon within the approval preview. You will be redirected to the approvals workflow builder, where you can configure complex and flexible approvals chains via a series of conditions and outcomes.
Clicking any “Add” button will pull up a drop-down of the following options to begin configuring your approval chain:
- Require approval: Specify a specific role type or individual to be added to the approval chain
- Notify: Specify a specific role type or individual to be notified about the bill
- Approve card: Terminal action that will end the workflow early if added to the chain
- Set conditions: Add conditions to check various spend request fields (e.g., amount, user role, user department, etc.) that assist in determining the correct approver
Within the approval workflow builder, you have the ability to layer and nest these options to create your ideal approval routing.
Setting conditions 
There are multiple spend request fields by which you can route your approvals. While amount and user role-based routing is available to all customers, the additional conditions in the list below are only available to customers on Ramp Plus.
- Amount
- User role
- Business entity
- Ramp department
- Ramp location
Once a condition has been selected, you can select which options to check for (e.g. if the condition is user role, you would select the role type to check for)
After selecting your desired conditions and options, you will be prompted to add your desired approvers. Learn more about adding approvers in the next section.
Please note, for the amount condition, the dollar amount that is entered is based on annual spend. An example is if the threshold you set is $1,200 and the spend program you are issuing has a monthly limit of $100 then it will fail within that approval layer.
Adding approvers
When adding approvers you have the option to select either predetermined roles/groups or specific individuals at your company.
- Any admin: The group of individuals that have admin permissions within Ramp
- Manager: The requestor’s manager.
- Manger’s manager: The manager of the requestor’s manager.
- Department owner: Ramp will determine the department of the requestor and identify the configured department owner. Learn more about configuring department owners here
- Location owner - Ramp will determine the location of the requestor and identify the configured location owner. Learn more about configuring location owners here
- Any custom approval groups: Custom approval groups can be configured within the people tab. Learn more about custom approval groups here
- Any specific employee: Add any employee within Ramp to the approval flow
Require all vs. require any
If there are multiple approvers within a step, you must specify how Ramp should handle their approvals before moving to the next step.
- Require all - require each individual’s approval before proceeding to the next approval step. This translates to “Person X AND Person Y”
- Require any - only 1 person from the group is required to approve before proceeding to the next approval step. This translates to “Person X OR Person Y”
Separation of duties
If your business requires that the individual that creates the spend object (e.g. the requestor) cannot approve their own spend, you can enable the Separation of Duties toggle within the Spend Request 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 and admins can toggle this setting on and off.
Approval notifications
Spend Requests have a series of notifications and communications to keep your bills from being stuck in 'needs approval'.
Email:
- A spend request needs your approval
- A reminder 2 days after you were assigned an approval step
- You completed your approval step and either rejected or accepted a request
- A request has been fully approved
Slack (DM or business alerts channel):
- A spend request is created and approval process began: Business alerts channel
- A spend request needs your approval: DM
- A reminder 2 days after you were assigned an approval step: DM
- A reminder 3 days after you were assigned an approval step: DM
- A spend request has been fully approved: Business alerts channel
- A spend request has been rejected : DMs and Business alerts channel
Ramp app:
In-app alerts appear for Admins and AP Clerks until the bill is canceled or the requested approver approves the bill. Additionally, Admins, Business Owners, and AP Clerks can see all bills that need approval on the Approvals page.