Bill lifecycle

Overview

Ramp Bill Pay is made with speed and process controls in mind to move your bill from an invoice to paid as efficiently as possible. Use this guide to understand how we make it happen.

Jump to:

• Uploading an invoice
• Bill drafts
• Approve a bill
• Pay a bill
• View your paid bills
• Cancel a bill
• Editing a bill
• Archive a bill

Uploading an invoice

The first step toward paying most bills is to add an invoice from your vendor to Bill Pay. We provide several options to get started!

Email your invoice:

Most invoices end up in your email inbox, so we've created a specific AP email address for you to forward these invoices to! There are a few requirements, but if done correctly, Ramp will automatically create a draft bill for you based on the invoice you've sent over:

1. Make sure you forward invoices from a company email address (e.g. for Ramp, the email would be forwarded from an "@ramp.com" email), or from an address associated with any user profile on your account. Emails sent from non-company address (e.g. emails sent directly from vendors) will not be processed.
2. We require invoices to be sent in PDF format

The inbox we create for you is, by default, {{your company name with no spaces}}@ap.ramp.com. For example, a company named Fast Stuff Inc would have an AP email of faststuffinc@ap.ramp.com (to customize your AP email, contact our Support team!)

You can also view the email address in your Bill Pay Settings. 

Note that this method will result in one of the following email notifications:

• Successful upload
  • If we can create a bill from the forwarded email, we will let the sender know that the invoice was successful received and is being processed. 
• Unsuccessful upload
  • If we weren't able to create a bill from a forwarded email, we will let the sender know that an invoice in Ramp could not be created and the necessary steps to remediate. 
• Unrecognized company address
  • Emails and invoices sent directly to the Ramp AP inbox from a non-company address will not be processed and an auto reply will be sent with instructions to send to a company address instead.  

Review advanced configurations here: AP Forwarding 

Manually create a bill

You can add any invoice file into the Bills Drafts page by clicking New bill in the upper right section of Bill Pay. Drag and drop invoices, or select the specific invoice in your file browser.

Currently, we support invoice uploads in PDF, PNG, or JPG format.

Bulk upload invoices:

Ramp also allows you to upload bills in bulk using the import via spreadsheet option:

Bill drafts

Once an invoice has been submitted, we use OCR (computer vision) to extract the invoice number, vendor name, contact information, payment details, and line items for the bill. This information pre-fills into the bill fields lightning fast!

After uploading the invoice and letting OCR work its magic, you can select the drafted bill in the Bills Draft page and verify we gathered the right information. Once you've confirmed the information is accurate, select your preferred payment method and then click Continue. More information about Bill payment methods here: Bill payment methods.

Note that you can also optionally add a vendor memo to your bill at this stage. This will be communicated by email notifications we send to your vendor.

Bill approvals

Bills waiting for approval live in the For approval section. You can see who is the next approver, send them a reminder once a day, approve bills that require your own review, and if you're an Admin or a Business Owner, skip approvals and pay now.

Bills can also be rejected at this stage.

Find more information about approvals here: Bill Pay: Approvals and AP Clerks

Bill payments

Once a bill is approved, it will move to the For payment section where you can see its current status, when it is due, and when the payment will be released. Actions you'll need to take here vary by payment method, but for scheduled bills, you're all set at this stage.

Find information about bill payment methods here: Bill payment methods

Viewing your paid bills:

All your paid bills are available in the History section. Search them, download them in a .csv, view an invoice, or review details as needed.

With a few easy steps bills move from invoiced to paid!

For info about how to set up recurring bills, please check out this article.

Cancel a bill

Only users with Admin access can stop a bill from processing after it has been initiated. (Note: Bookkeepers and AP Clerks do not have this option).

• From the For payment section of Bill Pay, click the three vertical dots (in the Actions column) on the Bill for which you want to cancel the payment.
• Click Cancel payment

You will be able to cancel your bill up until it lands in a vendor's account. After we have processed a payment to your vendor, you will no longer be able to cancel the bill.

Editing Bills

You can edit a bill at any point by selecting the bill, then clicking Edit bill.

If you edit a bill after it has been approved and synced to your accounting provider, we will update the tracking categories within your accounting provider as long as the month is still open in your accounting provider. If your month has been closed, we cannot update the accounting fields.

Archiving bills

At this time, bills that you wish to delete will be stored in the History section of Bill Pay with the Archived status.

Archiving will remove a bill from your accounting provider, but Ramp preserves these bills for any record keeping you may need these for in the future. We do not support deleting bills entirely at this time.

To archive a bill, any Admin user or AP Clerk can click the three-dot menu to the right of the bill and click Archive bill.

Bills cannot be archived if:

1. The bill payment is processing or has been complete (in-flight payments and paid bills cannot be archived)
2. The bill was paid manually
3. The bill has a pending approval