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 submissions, and finance teams end up spending a lot less time chasing them down! Please note that turning this feature on will apply to all transactions retroactively, and cardholders with missing items based on the enforcement policy will receive a notice the following day.
Jump to:
- Overview
- How to setup
- How to enable auto-lock
- How this works
- Card locking when a transaction is disputed
- Grace periods
- Cardholder experience
- Unlocking auto-locked cards
- Exempting specific merchants
How to setup
How to enable auto-lock
- From your Ramp Dashboard, go to: Settings > Expense Policy
- To update an existing policy, click on the "Edit" icon next to the policy
- To create a new policy, click on the "New Submission Policy" button
- From your policy settings, scroll to the "Review & Enforcement" section
- Select the number of days that your cardholders have to submit missing items
- 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.
- Auto-lock is enabled!
How this works
Example with multiple missing items
For example, let's say that a cardholder had transactions with their General Expenses card on May 10 and May 15, both of which were missing receipts. The card is on a policy that auto-locks cards with missing policy items after seven days, and receipts are required.
On May 17, the card will lock because it has been seven 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 and then submits their May 15 receipt on May 20, 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 when the transaction clears up to the nearest Noon ET.
For example, if the policy is for three days and the transaction cleared at 10 a.m. on 2/1, the card will lock at 12 p.m. on 2/4. If the transaction cleared at 2 p.m. on 2/1, the card will lock at 12 p.m. on 2/5.
Note: For "Lodging" or "Fuel and Gas" categories, the time to submit also 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.
Card locking when a transaction is disputed
If a transaction is disputed, the missing items will be dismissed. When the locking deadline passes, nothing will happen. However, if the dispute is canceled and the deadline has passed, the card-locking timeline will be reinstated, and the card will lock the same day or the next day, depending on when the dispute is canceled.
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 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.
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.
Please note, that if a policy exception request was made before the card's auto-lock date and is not granted on the auto-lock date, the card will still lock.
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 lead 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 "Spend Controls" in Settings and scroll down to the "Advanced Rules" 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