Overview
Ramp makes it easy to upload, draft, and review bills on Bill Pay. Customers have streamlined ways to add invoices into Ramp, manage their bill attachments, and even automate their bill data entry with OCR technology.
Jump to:
- Uploading invoices
- Managing bill attachments and documents
- Scanning and parsing invoices via OCR
- Editing and reviewing bill details
Uploading invoices
Bill Pay offers customers multiple ways to add and upload invoices within Ramp.
- AP forwarding
- CSV / Spreadsheet upload
- Drag-and-drop invoices
Read more about uploading invoices here.
Managing bill attachments and documents
Any bill attachments forwarded via AP forwarding or uploaded via drag and drop will appear on the left side of the bill once you click on it. For each bill you'll be able to upload the following documents:
- Invoice - one PDF file that represents the bill invoice.
- Email - if the invoice was sent via AP forwarding, Ramp will pull in the email to provide additional context when drafting a bill
- Files - any additional supporting documents can be added to the bill
Actions on bill attachments
Ramp also allows you to easily perform simple actions on your bill documents:
- Download - download the current document you are viewing
-
Set as invoice - set a document in the files tab as the bill invoice
- Note that this will be the document that's synced over to your ERP (QBO and Sage Intacct customers only). Read more below
-
Create New
- Bill - create a new bill from the selected document
- Vendor Credit - create a new vendor credit from the selected document
- Attach to bill - add the selected document to another bill in drafts. Note you cannot attach to bills that are beyond the draft stage (e.g. bills in the approvals or payments tab)
- Delete - remove the selected document from the bill
Syncing attachments to ERPs
Customers with direct integrations to QuickBooks Online and Sage Intacct will have the invoice PDF synced over to their ERP. If the invoice document is changed or updated, Ramp will re-sync the attachment to the ERP and overwrite the previous document.
Note that while Ramp will sync URL links back to the invoice in Ramp for NetSuite and Xero customers, syncing the PDF attachment is not yet supported for these ERPs.
Scanning and parsing invoices via OCR
Ramp takes advantage of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to scan and parse invoices, allowing for the extraction of key invoice details and automatic data entry into bills in Ramp.
Once a PDF document is added to drafts - either via AP forwarding or via drag & drop, Ramp will begin scanning the document to pull relevant fields found on the invoice. Specifically, Ramp can extra the following fields if present on the invoice:
- Invoice details
- Invoice number
- Invoice receive date
- Invoice due date
- Invoice total
- Invoice line items + description
- Purchase Order number
- Vendor details
- Vendor name
- Vendor contact info (email, phone, address)
- Payment details
- ACH routing numbers / account numbers
- Mailing address
- International wire details
OCR typically takes 30–60 seconds. We recommend waiting until OCR is complete before editing the bill in Ramp since once you edit the bill, Ramp’s OCR will end.
Note that Ramp will only OCR the document that's set as the “Invoice” document for the bill. Ramp won't run the OCR on the additional attachments — i.e. the email or the additional files. Also, Ramp won't re-run the OCR if a file is changed and set as the invoice as OCR is only run once per bill.
Editing and reviewing bill details
Before sending the bill off for approval, Ramp allows you to review and edit bills easily in drafts. Customers typically review the default accounting codings added to the bill, verify the selected payment method and payment dates, and make sure the bill is in a proper accounting period.
Bill creation defaults
Ramp can further streamline bill creation by leveraging default vendor codings and remembering previously used payment methods on a bill.
If default payment terms are present on the vendor profile, we will automatically set the due date on the bill according to the formula: Invoice date + vendor payment terms = due date. For example, if the invoice date is 1/1 and the payment terms are 30 days, then we would set the due date to 1/30.
This due date will always take precedence over / override the OCR due date in the case of a discrepancy.
Vendor default accounting codings
You can set default codings for a given vendor in their vendor profile within the Vendors tab in Ramp. Learn more about default vendor codings here.
Vendor default payment method
Ramp will remember the payment method used on the last bill paid to the vendor and set it as the default for the next bill. For example, if you paid via card on your previous bill to Vendor ABC, your next bill to Vendor ABC will default to the card.
If no bills have been paid yet to the vendor, we will default the payment method and destination using the following logic:
- If ACH or wire details are available for the vendor, we will default to that payment method and your default Bill Pay account (see Bill Pay setup guide for more on this)
- If only check routing information has been added to the vendor, we default to the check payment method and use the vendor's mailing address
- If both ACH or wire details AND check details have been added to the vendor, we default to ACH/wire
- If there are no bank or check details added to the vendor, we default to ACH
After final review, you can simply click create a bill, which will trigger the approval policy you have in place and begin routing the bill to its appropriate approvers. Learn more about Bill Pay approvals here.
Vendor default entity (Ramp for Multi-Entity customers only)
Ramp will automatically set the entity of a new bill to match the entity that was used on your most recent bill for that vendor.
If there are no prior bills for us to reference for a vendor, then we will simply match the entity of the most recent bill you created.