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Automatically Lock Cards

Overview

Ramp makes it easy to notify employees when receipts are required and to submit receipts via SMS or email. The same is true for other pieces of information that the finance team needs, such as memos and tracking categories (e.g. class, department, projects, billable, etc.). Unfortunately, no matter how easy we make it, there will always be a few stragglers. 

Our Auto-Locking Cards feature allows finance teams to automatically lock cards if an employee fails to submit the required receipt or items after a set period of time. We've found that, with this feature, employees are significantly more timely with their submission, and finance teams end up spending a lot less time chasing them down!

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How to Setup

How to enable Auto-Lock:

  1. From your Ramp Dashboard, go to:  "Settings" -> "Expense Policy"
  2. To update an existing policy, click on the "Edit" button next to the policy 
  3. To create a new policy, click on the "Create New Policy" button
  4. From your policy settings, scroll to the "Review & Enforcement" section
  5. Select the number of days that your cardholders have to submit missing items
  6. Auto-Lock is enabled! 

You can choose from 3, 7, 14, 30, or 60 days for cardholders to submit missing items. If the card with this submission policy is missing items after the allotted time period, the card will automatically lock.

How This Works

Example with Multiple Missing Items

For example, let's say that a cardholder has transactions with their General Expenses card on May 10 and May 15, both missing receipts. The card is on a policy that auto-locks cards with missing policy items after 7 days, and receipts are required.

On May 17, the card will lock because it has been 7 days since the oldest transaction with missing items occurred. If the cardholder submits a receipt for the May 10 transaction, their card will unlock immediately. However, if they do not submit a receipt for the May 15th transaction, the card will lock again on the 22nd.

If on the other hand, the cardholder does not submit any receipts, then on May 20 submits their May 15 receipt, the card will stay locked because the May 10 transaction is still missing a required policy item.

Lock Timing

When the auto-lock for missing items is set up via the Expense Policy, cards will lock that number of days from the swipe (authorization), up to the nearest Noon ET.

For example, if the policy is for 3 days and the cardholder swiped at 10am on 2/1, the card will lock at 12pm on 2/4. If the cardholder swiped at 2pm on 2/1, the card will lock at 12pm on 2/5.

Note: For "Lodging" or "Fuel and Gas" categories, the time to submit starts from when the transaction clears. This is because often the charges are temporary holds and/or the receipt is not available until clearing time.

Grace Periods

If a card is moved to a policy with enforcement, cardholders will have a grace period to submit missing items on old expenses. The grace period is equal to the number of days allowed on the policy.

In other words, if a cardholder is missing an item from a purchase made 7 days ago, and their card is moved to a policy with an enforcement with a time limit of 3 days, that card will not be instantly locked. The cardholder will have 3 days to submit the missing items before their card is locked.

Cardholder Experience

There are several ways that cardholders will be notified and have ample opportunity to submit the required items: 

  • When a policy is set. When the policy is changed, users will see it in an email stating that their card will lock after X days.
  • Before locking. 24 hours before the card is locked, the user will receive an email warning them and showing their missing items. From the Ramp dashboard, users will see a warning icon on cards that will be locked, along with the date the lock will occur.
  • At lock. At the time the card is locked, the cardholder will receive an email stating the card is locked and showing their missing items. The cardholder's manager (or admin if user has no manager) will receive a notification that the card was locked. 
  • At declined swipe. If a cardholder tries to make a transaction with a locked card, they will get an SMS informing them that they need to submit missing items.
  • At unlock. When the card is unlocked, the cardholder receives an email notifying them.

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Unlocking Auto-Locked Cards

To unlock a card, the cardholder simply has to submit the necessary information. If the necessary information is a receipt and the cardholder has lost the receipt, the cardholder can request an exception which will also unlock the card. Admins can also require exceptions.

Another way to unlock the card is to edit the policy settings on that card (e.g. either the auto-locking policy, or the required items that leads to the card being locked)

Exempting Specific Merchants

Cards will only lock if items are missing. You can exclude specific merchants from requiring any items to be submitted - for example, you might not need receipts for every Facebook transaction. To do this, navigate to "Expense Policy" in Settings and scroll down to the "Excluded Merchants" section. Merchants on this list will be exempt from policy requirements. Therefore, transactions for these merchants won't lead to locked cards despite the submission policy settings.

More information here: Excluding Merchants from Receipt & Memo Requirements