Reimbursements set up
Note: This article primarily applies to Ramp Administrators. Cardholders may find other articles in the Reimbursements section to be more applicable.
Overview
Ramp's Reimbursement feature allows businesses to reimburse domestic and international employees for business-related charges made on non-Ramp cards.
Enable reimbursements for your business
Reimbursements are turned off by default. Navigate to Expenses -> Reimbursements and click Setup reimbursements to get started!
Payment
To select the reimbursement payment methods and batching available to your employees, navigate to Expenses > Reimbursements > Settings (upper right-hand corner) > Payment.
ACH / international transfers payments
If you'd like to pay your employees directly through Ramp, turn on ACH payments by clicking the slider next to ACH / International Transfers Disabled and configure a company bank account.
For multi-entity businesses on Ramp, please note that every Ramp account needs to have a bank account to spend from for payments to work.
Payments outside of Ramp
Toggle on "Allow payments outside of Ramp" if you'd like to have the option to pay your employees off Ramp, for example, via check, payroll, etc. These types of payments aren't supported directly within the platform.
Batch reimbursement payments
Toggle on "Batch reimbursement payments" if you'd like each employee's approved reimbursements to be batched into a single daily, weekly, or monthly debit instead of an individual debit for each reimbursement. When this option is enabled, domestic and international reimbursements will be batched at the following times:
- Daily: Payments are initiated at 8:30pm ET if approved in the past 24 hours
- (Plus) Weekly: Payments are initiated at 8:30pm ET on Fridays if approved in the past 7 days
- (Plus) Biweekly: Payments are initiated at 8:30pm ET every other Friday after configuring biweekly payments
- (Plus) Monthly: Payments are initiated at 8:30pm ET on the first of the month if approved within the past month
The accounting date is synced by default. To sync the approval date instead, clear the accounting date.
GSA / per diem reimbursements
Admins can set per diem rates for reimbursements. To configure per diem settings, go to Expenses > Reimbursements > overflow menu (3 dots) > Settings > Per Diem tab.
Toggle on Enable per diem reimbursements, then choose a rate type:
- GSA Standard — uses U.S. General Services Administration per diem rates based on the travel destination. You can optionally enable:
- Apply meal deductions — reduces per diems by the set M&IE rate when meals are provided to employees
- Use reduced rates for travel days — reimburses departure and return days at 75% of the daily rate
- Custom Rate — set a flat daily rate in any currency. You can optionally configure per-meal deduction amounts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and set a custom reduced-rate percentage for travel days.
International per diem rates
Ramp supports country-specific statutory per diem rates for international employees. When enabled for your business, the system automatically applies your employee's home country's government-mandated per diem rules, including time-based rate tiers and meal deductions.
How it works:
- When an employee submits a per diem reimbursement, Ramp determines their country of residence and applies that country's statutory rules automatically.
- The daily rate may vary based on the total hours traveled. For example, in Germany, trips under 8 hours receive no per diem, 8 to 24 hours receive 50% of the daily rate, and trips over 24 hours receive the full daily rate.
- When an employee travels to a different country, the destination determines the rate from their home country's international rate table.
- When meals are provided by the employer, the per diem is reduced by government-mandated percentages that vary by country and meal type.
- Rates are updated annually. Historical trips use the rate that was in effect at the time of travel.
Note: International per diem rates are configured for your business by Ramp. Contact your Account Manager or Ramp Support to enable country-specific rates.
Supported countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Note: Lodging is not included in per diem reimbursements. Lodging expenses should be submitted as separate out-of-pocket reimbursements.
Entity-level reimbursement settings
In the same payment tab, you may configure the following settings for each entity by clicking on the dropdown next to the name of your entity:
- Different reimbursement payment bank accounts for each entity
- Different payment methods (Payments on Ramp or off Ramp)
Mileage reimbursement settings
If you'd like your employees to submit mileage reimbursements, you can turn this on by going to your Expenses > Reimbursementstab > Settings (upper right-hand corner) > Mileage. In this tab, you can do the following:
- Set one or multiple mileage rates (Note: multiple mileage rates are only available to Plus customers)
- You can use the IRS rate, which Ramp automatically updates each year
- Or you can use a custom rate based on department, place of residence, or individual employees
- Set the ability for your employees to deduct their commute.Employees will then have the option to set their home and office addresses and whether they want to deduct one-way or round-trip.
Business settings
Reimbursement accounting
Configure your accounting setup. Currently, we sync approved reimbursements as Bills to your accounting provider. If you've enabled/used ACH payments, we'll also sync a Bill Payment (manual payments outside of Ramp will not sync a payment).
Choose your A/P account and/or Cash Account, and keep in mind that:
- If you're using Sage or Xero, we'll select the default A/P account that's provided from your accounting provider.
- If you're using Xero, you can only select Cash Accounts that have account codes. You'll need to configure this in Xero and select it in Ramp. You can do so here .
Reimbursement expense policy (required fields)
By default, employees will be required to submit receipts and memos depending on your company's expense policy. The funds field will show on your reimbursement forms by default to increase policy adherence. You can also default this field to “None” in your policy settings by navigating to Policy > Expense Requirements > Reimbursements and toggling on the "Default to None" option.
You can set up optional fields, such as Accounting Category, for your employees to fill out on the same Policy > Expense Requirements page.
Turn reimbursements off at the company level
By clicking Disable reimbursements under the Business Settings tab, reimbursements will be disabled for your entire company. Employees will no longer be able to submit reimbursement requests. No workflow or policy changes are needed if this toggle is used.
Employee bank account setup
When your employee submits a reimbursement, and you have payments enabled, they'll also need to connect their bank account so they can receive those payments from Ramp for the reimbursement. While the bank account is highly recommended to be verified before the reviewer initiates payment, the employee bank account doesn't need to be verified for the payment to go through.
Feel free to direct them to our Help Center article on adding a personal bank account.