Overview
The Batch Payments feature allows you to streamline your payment process by paying multiple bills to a single vendor in one transaction, rather than handling each bill separately. This is particularly useful for businesses managing a large volume of invoices, helping you and your vendors save time and simplify reconciliation.
Please note, payments are batched on a per vendor basis. Ramp cannot batch a payment across multiple vendors (e.g. a single debit and multiple credits).
The following payment methods can be batched: ACH, Check, SWIFT, and International and Domestic Wires. We do not currently support batching card payments, or payments marked as "paid outside of Ramp."
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How to batch pay bills
Step 1: Select bills to batch together
Customers can begin batching their payments from the “For payment” tab in Bill Pay. Simply select all the desired bills that you would like to initiate payment for and click the “Review payments” button. Note that only Admins have access to this functionality.
Bills must be in an "Unscheduled" “Scheduled” or “Ready for Payment” status in order for batching to be available. Initiated bills cannot be batched.
Step 2: Review and send batch payment
After clicking the “Review payments” button, you will be brought to a screen where you can review all the batches grouped by the following:
- Vendor
- Source bank account
- Destination bank account
- Payment method
- And business entity
You can choose to either initiate payments now, or batch bills in advance by changing the payment date for the group of bills included in the review drawer.
Step 3: Checking status of a batch payment
To review a batch payment for given vendor, click on one of the bills from the batch and click the “Batched with # other bills” hyperlink. You will be able to view the list of bills associated with the batch, the total amount being sent, and the estimated arrival date for the payment.
If a batch payment is scheduled, it can be un-batched by cancelling the scheduled payment via the Batch Payment drawer.
How payers and vendors reconcile batch payments
Emails
Once the batch payment is initiated, the bill creator and the default vendor contact will be notified of payment initiation via email. Once the payment is delivered, the bill creator and default vendor contact will be notified again.
Both the initiated and delivery emails will contain a list of invoices included in the batch payment, including invoice numbers, as well as tracking information to locate payment in the recipient's account (e.g. bank trace IDs for ACH payments or check number for check payments).
| Email to the bill creator on payment initiation | Email to the vendor payment initiation |
Payment ID
We generate a unique ID called a Payment ID for every bill payment, including one Payment ID per batch payment. The emails to both bill creator and vendor contact contain this unique Payment ID. This Payment ID can be used to reconcile against all bills included in the payment, if needed.
Payers can find the Payment ID at the top of the batch payment drawer (accessible by clicking the "Batched with # other bills” hyperlink that can be found on any bill that's been batched.) We are also adding in the functionality to search by Payment ID in the bill's table, which should be available by end of February 2025 at the latest.
ACH and Check Memos
For ACH payments, we will include the following message in your and your vendor's bank feeds. We do not include invoice #s due to the 80 character limit.
- Your bank feed: {Payment ID} {Vendor name} Payment for X bills
- Your vendor's bank feed: {Payment ID} {Your business name} Payment for X bills
For check payments, we will include the following message on the check memo to the vendor. We will list as many invoice numbers as possible up to the 400 character limit. Note that if you've populated individual check memos on each bill, this will get over-written by the check memo we generate on the batch payment.
- {Payment ID} {Your business name} Payment for X bills / Invoice Numbers
Batch payment accounting
Once we've initiated a debit for the batch payment, we'll sync the batch payment to your accounting system and each bill included in the batch will be updated to Paid.
Below is a screenshot of an example of how a batch payment will be represented in Xero. In the example, 2 bills to the vendor "Xero Vendor" of $55 and $100 were paid with a single batch payment of $155.