Set up your expense policy

Overview

Ramp enables your business to implement its expense policy right into the platform. This enables businesses to properly control spend across the company. Here are the different components of your expense policy and how to set them up. You can manage any of the below using the Expense policy tab in the settings bar in your Ramp dashboard. 

1. Upload your expense policy document - requirements to sign an expense policy document.
2. Define approval workflows - approvals for card issuance, reimbursements, bills, and transaction reviews.
3. Define your spend guidelines - alerts that will trigger if employees spend on the wrong thing.
4. Define submission requirements - rules for submitting receipts, memos, and other info.
5. Employee handbook - view policies and procedures

Jump to: 

• Overview
• How to set up your expense policy
  1. Upload your policy document
  2. Define approval workflows
  3. Define spend guidelines
  4. Define submission requirements
  5. Use the employee handbook

How to set up your expense policy

1. Upload your policy document

Ramp enables you to upload your company's expense policy straight to the Ramp platform and ask your employees to sign the expense policy when they join the company. This ensures that employees are aware of all the requirements when spending on behalf of the company. Upload your company policy document by going here.

2. Define approval workflows

Approval policies on Ramp govern the steps required to approve card issuance, card edits, reimbursements, and bill payments. You can define who needs to approve what and when, as well as keep certain people informed via notifications - by going to expense policy settings. For companies that require managers to review their teams' transactions, Ramp enables you to set this up and customize this workflow. 

Admin self-issuing cards and self-reviewing transactions are automatically enabled and can be toggled off under their respective tabs. If an admin has a manager and self-issuing in the settings is disabled, the manager will review the admin's cards, reimbursements, and transactions. If self-issuing is enabled, admins will be able to approve their own spend regardless of whether they have a manager.

Ramp makes it easy to customize approval workflows so admins can define the right set of people to approve expenses based on the amount. Read more on approval policies and transaction review.

Approval policies cover:

1. New card requests (and card edits)
2. Reimbursements
3. Bill payments
4. Transaction review

3. Define spend guidelines

See: Spend guidelines

Spend guidelines are rules that admins can implement to define what is allowed to be purchased on Ramp Cards. Policy flags can be set here.. These rules are triggered automatically after the transaction happens. There are two types of rules:

1. Flags (for policy enforcement) - these are identified transactions that are out of policy. When a transaction gets flagged, an email will be sent to the cardholder and finance team to have a conversation and remediate.
2. Alerts (for visibility)- these are alerts that can be sent to a specific person to increase visibility on the spend on the Ramp platform. For example, maybe your Head of IT wants to know whenever a Software purchase over $1,000 is charged.

When it comes to Policies, there are two types of Policies on Ramp:

1. Travel policy: This governs what is allowed to be purchased when it comes to travel, including per diem, hotel nightly rates, advanced booking requirements, etc. For more information on implementing a Travel Policy, check out: Travel Policy
2. General spend policy - this governs general spend on Ramp. Rules can be defined across any dimension including amount, category, merchants, departments, etc.

For preventative spend controls (e.g. controls that decline transactions), please visit this document that outlines card level controls: controlling spend with Ramp cards.

4. Define submission requirements

See: Submission policies

Submission requirements, or required fields, are the rules that employees must follow to properly submit receipts, memos, and other items after spending on Ramp.

Ramp makes it easy to implement these rules and for employees to submit the necessary information. After an employee transacts on a Ramp card, Ramp will automatically notify the user when they need to submit receipts or memos for their card transactions. Different rules can be set for card spend and reimbursement requests.

5. Use the employee handbook

With Ramp, finance teams have unparalleled control over their company spend. Employees have access to the necessary information to understand the policies and procedures within the employee handbook. 

Sections include:

1. Policy document
2. Travel policy
3. Submission requirements
4. Approval structure