Importing bills from your accounting provider

Overview

Ramp gives customers the ability to pull bills directly from their accounting provider and pay them on Ramp Bill Pay. This feature is supported for accounting provider integrations with Sage, Quickbooks, Netsuite, Xero, Quickbooks Desktop, Acumatica and Zoho Books. 

Jump to:

• How to set up bill import
• How to pay imported bills
• Imported bill status defaults
• How Ramp syncs bill payments for imported bills
• How to troubleshoot bills not importing
• Impact on imported bills if you update bills in your accounting provider

How to set up bill import from accounting provider

To begin importing bill from your accounting provider, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Bill Pay
2. Select Settings from the three-dot menu in the upper right corner
3. Click the Importing tab
4. Toggle the Import bills option ON. Note that we will only import bills less than 1 year old in your accounting system. 
5. If you don't already have vendor importing turned on, we will ask you to enable it here. Select if you would like Ramp to automatically import vendors from your accounting software. Learn more about importing vendors here.
   • We recommend selecting the importing vendors with bills option, which will only import vendors associated with AP in your accounting system, rather than all your vendors.
   • We do not support automated vendor importing for users on Acumatica, QBD and Zoho Books. If you are on this integration, you can bulk upload your vendors via CSV in Vendor Settings. Bills will not import unless the vendor exists in Ramp.
6. If there are vendors that you do not intend to pay bills for in Ramp, you can add them to an exclusion list. In Settings under Importing, click Configure and then add the vendors to the list you do not want bills to import for. 
7. The initial vendor and bill import may take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to populate, depending on the volume of vendors and bills. However, they should begin to populate after that time in your Vendor table and Bills table.
8. Moving forward, any updates from your accounting provider will take ~10 minutes to refresh in Ramp. Learn more about how Ramp syncs with your accounting provider below. 

How to pay imported bills on Ramp

Once the bills have been imported into Ramp they will appear in the For payment tab with the status Payment info needed or Unscheduled. If you have Payment Release approvals on, they could also have the status Ready for Release.  Bills imported from the accounting provider are considered pre-approved and will bypass the configured approval policy for the business. 

Ramp will be able to pull the following information from your accounting software into Ramp to create the bill:

• Vendor
• Bill amount
• Bill currency (only USD supported at the moment)
• Invoice number
• Invoice date
• Bill due date
• Subsidiary (if multi-entity customer)

Click into a specific bill to begin adding the necessary payment details such as payment method, pay from account, pay to account, and the schedule date. Click Review payment to take a final look at the bill details and schedule it for payment.

If the vendor has already been set up in Ramp with payment details, or you've already paid this vendor before on Ramp, then we'll default to that vendor's payment details on the imported bills. In this case, the bill will import with the status of Unscheduled.

On the assigned scheduled date, Ramp will initiate the bill for payment and deliver funds to the associated vendor. 

Note, only payment details can be modified on imported bills. Bill details like the vendor, invoice amount, or due date must be updated within the accounting provider. 

Imported bill status defaults

When bills are imported into Ramp, they will either appear in the For payment or History tab depending on the status.

We will default the payment method on imported bills according to the same logic we use for setting payment method for bills created on Ramp:

• If the vendor has been paid before on Ramp, we will default to the payment method and payment details used on the last bill paid
• If the vendor has not been paid before on Ramp, but has payment details stored on them in Ramp, then we will default to that corresponding payment method and payment details (e.g. if a bank account has been saved to the vendor, we will default to ACH and that bank account)
• Learn more about bill creation defaults here: Bill creation defaults

Depending on if payment method is automatically set on the imported bills, this will result in an imported bill having a variety of statuses:

• Payment info needed: Payment method was not automatically set, as the vendor has not been paid before on Ramp or vendor is missing payment info
• Ready for payment: Payment method has been automatically set to "pay outside of Ramp" according to Bill creation defaults
• Unscheduled: Payment method has been automatically set to ACH, Check, or International Wire according to Bill creation defaults. If you are using the Payment Step Approvals feature, this will show up as a status of Ready for release instead
• Archived: The imported bill was deleted in the accounting system
• Paid: The imported bill was updated to Paid in the accounting system

How Ramp syncs bills and payments for imported bills

Syncing bills into Ramp

We will refresh the importing sync automatically every 24 hours. In addition, we will initiate another sync refresh every time you log into Ramp.

If you need to refresh the sync, you can do so manually by clicking "Refresh" in the banner above your bills table. We also provide the date and time of the latest sync refresh in that same banner.

After a sync is initiated, it typically takes 2-5 minutes for new bills to load into Ramp, or imported bills to update with changes made in your accounting system. The date and time of your latest sync should update in the banner, once the sync task has completed.

Syncing payments from Ramp

We sync payments for imported bills, the same way we sync payments for bills created on Ramp. On the schedule date, Ramp will initiate a debit from the selected source account on the bill. At the same time, Ramp will sync over an associated bill payment object to the open bill in your accounting provider and mark it as paid. 

Learn more about how Ramp syncs bill payments to the accounting system here. 

How to troubleshoot bills not importing

If USD bills are not importing, we'll surface a banner at the top of the top of the Bills table letting you know. Bear in mind that we do not support importing non-USD bills at this time, which will not be surfaced as an error. 

If you click into the banner, you'll see a screen with a list of bills that could not import along with the reason they could not import. We will hyperlink the invoice in this screen so you can click into it in your accounting provider. 

Below are the reasons included, along with troubleshooting steps for each reason.

• Invoice number already exists: We won't import a bill if a bill already exists in Ramp with the same vendor and invoice number, to prevent duplicates.
  • If this is not actually a duplicate, to resolve, update the invoice number on either one of the bills in your accounting system. The additional bill should import within 2-5 minutes after the change.
  • If this is a duplicate, then delete one of the bills in your accounting system. 
• Missing Ramp vendor: If the vendor is missing, it’s likely that we haven’t finished importing them. We recommend checking again in 30-60 minutes.
  • If you are on an integration that doesn't support automated vendor imported (QBD, Acumatica, and Zoho Books), you will need to manually create the vendors on Ramp. This can either be done via bulk upload CSV in Vendor settings, or individually creating them. 
  • Otherwise, if the vendor still hasn’t imported, then you can create the vendor on Ramp, and then link it to the corresponding accounting vendor. The bill(s) for that vendor should import within 2-5 minutes minutes.
  • However, if you have a high volume of vendors not importing, we recommend reaching out to our support team to resolve. 
• Missing business entity mapping: This means that an entity you have in your accounting system linked to that bill, is missing in Ramp. To resolve, you would need to create an entity on Ramp that maps to the entity in your accounting system listed for that bill or bill(s). Learn more about Multi-Entity here.
• Unknown reason: In this case, we recommend reaching out to our support team to resolve.

Impact on imported bills if you update bills in your accounting provider

If you update a bill in your accounting provider that has already been imported into Ramp, the bill in Ramp will update according to the state of the bill (pre- or in-flight) as well as the type of update you made.

• If the payment has not yet been initiated in Ramp (pre-flight), and the bill has been:
  • Deleted: The Ramp bill will get automatically archived
  • Marked as paid: The Ramp bill will get updated to Paid
  • Amount or vendor changed: The Ramp bill will automatically update with the new amount or vendor and we will send an email to let you know of the change.
• If the payment has been initiated in Ramp (in-flight), and the bill is updated in any way (deleted, marked as paid, vendor or amount changed), then nothing will happen to the imported bill.
  • However, we will surface a warning banner on the impacted bill to let you know
  • We will also send you an email
  • After the bill has been paid, you will likely get a sync error on these bill. To resolve, you will have to update the bill in your accounting system to align with the imported bill in Ramp and then retry the sync, or you can mark the bill payment as resolved manually in Ramp.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

• Which payment methods are supported for imported bills?
  • All payment methods are supported: ACH, check, credit card, domestic and international wire in local currency and Swift USD.
• Can I apply approvals to imported bills?
  • If you turn on Payment Release Approvals (Plus only), then this will apply to imported bills.
  • However, regular bill approvals will not apply to imported bills, as we only import bills with a status of "approved" - so we assume they have already been fully approved once they hit Ramp. 
• Are vendor credits and/or payment discounts supported on imported bills?
  • No, vendor credits and/or payment discounts are not supported on imported bills at this time. However, if you apply a vendor credit to the bill in your accounting system, the imported bill amount should update. 
• Can you import the invoice image?
  • No, importing the invoice image is not supported at this time. However, you can easily click into the bill in your accounting provider to view the invoice image, through the link at the top of the imported bill.
• Do you support importing non USD bills?
  • No, importing non USD bills is not supported at this time.
• How do I archive an imported bill?
  • If you truly want to delete the bill, you can void or delete the bill in your accounting system. The bill will get automatically archived in Ramp.
  • However, if you just don't want to pay an imported bill on Ramp you can mark the imported bill with a payment method of "Pay outside of Ramp." Then you can mark the bill as paid in Ramp. Both of these actions can be used in bulk (e.g. bulk select 10 bills and mark as payment method of "paid outside of Ramp", and then bulk mark as "Paid")

• When importing bills for a vendor, how are payment details handled?

  • The payment details associated with the vendor are only relevant for the first bill that is imported. For subsequent imports, the system will default to using the payment method from the last imported bill.

• What happens to bills that I imported if I turn this feature off?
  • We'll keep the imported bills in Ramp unless you manually reject/archive them