Spend programs creation and management
Overview
Ramp’s Spend Programs remove the manual work from issuing recurring funds by letting you set your rules — amount, frequency, controls, and automations — once and reuse them anytime with a single click.
Spend Programs are ideal for common use cases like meals, wellness stipends, commuter benefits, travel, or company events. Each time you issue funds, the same guardrails automatically apply — making spend management faster, more consistent, and easier to scale.
Key benefits
- Bulk Issuance - Streamline the process to issue/request funds at scale with pre-configured controls and automations. No more configuring funds one at a time.
- Management - Route requests to the right teams and employees, with faster and more flexible approvals for funds.
- Reporting - No more fund by fund management. Clear reporting and auditing of cards and funds on a program level (Travel, Meals, Marketing Ads, etc).
Creating a Spend Program
1. Create program directly from your Ramp account
Manage Spend → Programs → Create program
2. Set amount and controls
Configure a fixed amount or a custom amount and additional controls.
- Select a currency and frequency (e.g., one-time, monthly, yearly).
- Enable linking to a physical card and/or allow reimbursements.
- Add controls such as merchant or category restrictions.
- Enable a hidden buffer to allow transactions that slightly exceed the fund limit to still go through. When toggled on, set a percentage (0–100%) of the fund amount. The buffer applies to all new and existing funds in the program, except funds that already have a buffer set manually. A dollar-amount preview shows the buffer value based on the program's amount and currency.
3. Configure how funds are issued
Choose whether funds can be requested by employees or issued only by Admins.
4. Specify who should get funds
Specify who can receive these funds or select “All employees”.
5. Set accounting rules
Configure accounting coding to map to transactions on this Program to save your Finance team time to close the books.
6. Specify the submission policy
After the purchase, specify what employees are required to submit (e.g. memo and receipt), and who should review these expenses.
7. Review your program
Once configured, you can issue funds from your Spend Program with one click. All rules and automations automatically apply, saving time for Admins and employees.
Manage your Spend Programs
Manage and monitor all your Spend Programs from the Programs tab under Manage Spend.
Key actions you can take:
Bulk actions across multiple funds in a program
- Change owner
- Lock or Unlock or Terminate fund availability
- Add existing funds to a Program or bulk issue funds via CSV
Edit program: Click edit program and modify the desired fields. Admins can choose to apply changes to all existing funds, or only to new funds going forward.
Duplicate program: Copy active programs in one click. Edit what you want to change (name, amount, dates) and save as “Draft” or Publish.
Delete program - Delete a program and choose to:
- Terminate or Lock funds
- Reassign to another program OR unlink from this program with no reassignment
Program management table
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| Intake | Request-only programs — employees can request funds, but they aren’t automatically issued. |
| Issued | Non-requestable programs — Admins manually issue funds. |
| Drafts | Unpublished programs. |
| Terminated | Deleted programs that are no longer available to request or issue from. |
Frequently asked questions
Can I link or detach existing funds to or from a Spend Program?
Yes! Just head to the funds you want to spend from, click the edit icon, and scroll down to where it says add to program . Similarly, you can select detach from program if the funds are currently spent from. Please note that funds can only be linked to an Expenses & Benefits program, not a Procurement program.
Can cardholders request edits to their funds, if the funds are part of a Spend Program?
Yes, cardholders can request edits to their funds if they are part of a Spend Program. However, only an admin or card manager can edit these funds, which they can do directly in the Funds section of their Ramp account.
What happens to the limit balance when I change the limit reset frequency?
If a program's frequency is changed from quarterly to monthly and there were transactions in the most recent month (starting at the top of the month), those transactions will still count against the limit. If there were no transactions in the most recent month, the new balance will be $0.
Who can request a Spend Program?
Any cardholder can request from any Spend Program in their list when they go through the request spend flow. Admin, manager, and Accounting roles can request from a Spend Program on behalf of another user.
Do we notify users when updating a Spend Program?
No, we do not.
Can I use a Spend Program for commuter benefits such as transit or parking?
Yes. To set up a commuter benefits program, create a Spend Program and add category restrictions to limit spending to transit and parking merchants. You can set a recurring amount and frequency that matches your company's commuter benefit policy. Ramp does not have a dedicated pre-tax commuter benefits integration, but Spend Programs give you the controls to manage commuter spending. If your company reimburses commuter expenses instead of issuing card-based funds, see Reimbursement-only Spend Programs .