Overview

Ramp Bill Pay is designed for speed, precision, and security. With our innovative approval and permissions features, you can automate payment workflows, enhance control, and ensure every dollar goes to the right vendor. Here's why you'll love it:

• Swift approvals: Say goodbye to bottlenecks with our streamlined approval processes—quickly route bills through customizable approval chains to keep your operations moving swiftly.
• Complete control: Empower your team with permissions that match your organizational structure. Assign roles that precisely dictate who can approve, pay, and manage bills.
• Enhanced security: Protect your transactions with multi-layered approval requirements. Ensure that every payment is vetted and authorized, reducing the risk of errors or fraud.
• Detailed tracking: Track every step in the approval process. With comprehensive audit trails, you can monitor who approved what and when.

Jump to:

• How to configure bill approval policy
  
  • Setting conditions
  • Adding approvers
    • Require all vs. Require any
  • Approval templates
• Separation of duties
• Reviewing and Approving bills
  • Approval notifications
  • Where to find items for your approval
• FAQ

How to configure bill approval policy 

Where to set up Bill Pay approvals

Those with admin permissions can access bill pay approval setup through the Expense Policy tab within Global Settings.

Within the Bill Pay Approver drawer, you will see a preview of your existing approval flow.

Click the paper and pencil icon within the approval preview to edit and configure your bill pay approvals. You will be redirected to the approvals workflow builder, where you can configure complex and flexible approval chains via conditions and outcomes.

Clicking any “Add” button will pull up a drop-down of the following options to begin configuring your approval chain:

• Require approval: specify a specific role type or individual to be added to the approval chain
• Notify: specify a specific role type or individual to be notified about the bill
• Approve bill: terminal action that will end the workflow early if added in the chain
• Set conditions: add conditions to check various bill fields (e.g. amount, vendor name, GL category, etc.) that assist in determining the correct approver

Within the approval workflow builder, you have the ability to layer and nest these options to create your ideal approval routing.

Setting conditions

There are multiple bill fields on which you can route your approvals. While amount-based routing is available to all customers, the additional conditions in the list below are only available to customers on Ramp Plus.

• Amount
• Business Entity
• Direct Ramp Manager
• Submitters Department
• Ramp Department
• Ramp Location
• Matched to Purchase Order
• Vendor Name
• Payment Type
• GL Fields

Once a condition has been selected, you can select which options to check for (e.g. if the condition is vendor, you would select the vendor names to check for)

After you've selected your desired conditions and options, you'll be prompted to add your desired approvers. You can learn more about adding approvers in the next section.

Adding approvers

When adding approvers, you can select either predetermined roles/groups or specific individuals at your company. 

Approval roles / groups

• Any admin: a group of individuals that have admin permissions within Ramp
• Vendor owner: each vendor on Ramp has a designated vendor owner. The vendor owner is a designated employee who manages the vendor relationship. Learn more about vendor owners here
• Vendor owner manager: the manager for the designated vendor owner. Learn more about vendor owners here
• Department owner: for bill pay approvals, Ramp will determine the correct department owner by identifying the department of the assigned vendor owner. Learn more about configuring department owners here
• Location owner: for bill pay approvals, Ramp will determine the correct location owner by identifying the location of the assigned vendor owner. Learn more about configuring location owners here
• PO owner: the owner of the Ramp purchase order matched to the bill
• Any custom approval groups: custom approval groups can be configured within the people tab. Learn more about custom approval groups here

Specific individuals 

• Any specific employee - you can add any employee within Ramp to the approval flow

Require all vs. Require any

If multiple approvers are within a step, you will need to specify how Ramp should handle their approvals before moving to the next step. 

• Require all: each individual is required to get approval before proceeding to the next approval step. This translates to “Person X AND Person Y”
• Require any: only 1 person from the group is required to approve before proceeding to the next approval step. This translates to “Person X OR Person Y”

Approval templates

If you need help getting started with bill pay approvals - you can take advantage of our pre-configured approval templates based on common approval flows. At this time, we offer the following two templates: 

• Bill Pay Vendor owner and Department owner approval - this template is available to all Ramp customers. Allows you to require the vendor owner, the department owner, and then an amount trigger that will require an admin to approve
  
  
• Bill Pay approvals by department : This template is only available to Ramp Plus customers, as it routes approvals using the Ramp Department condition.

Note the template will not be applied to your approvals until you click “Use this Template.”

Separation of duties

Toggle the Separation of Duties setting in Bill Pay Approval if bill creators should not approve their own bills.

• When enabled: Bill creators in the approval chain are replaced by admin approvers.
• When disabled: Bill creators in the approval chain must approve their own bills.
• Note: Only business owners and admins can toggle this setting.

Reviewing and Approving Bills

Approval notifications:

Ramp Bill Pay ensures your bills never get stuck waiting for approval with a series of notifications. Please be mindful however that each user has options to configure their personal notification preferences.

Email:

• Approval needed: Sent to the designated vendor owner, designated approver, and admin approver.
• Approval outcome: The bill was sent to the designated vendor owner and designated approver, indicating whether it was rejected or accepted (the bill creator is also notified if it is rejected).
• Fully approved or rejected: Sent to the designated vendor owner and designated approver.

Please note: Bill Pay approvers can view the bill's accounting coding in the email sent notifying them of approvals.

Slack:

• Bill created/approval process started: Posted in the business alerts channel.
• Approval needed: Sent via DM to the designated vendor owner, designated approver, and admin approver.
• 2-day reminder: DM sent to the designated vendor owner and designated approver if no action has been taken.
• 2-day reminder (unactioned bill): If they are the bill creators, AP clerks and admins will receive a direct message.
• 3-day reminder: DM sent to the designated vendor owner and designated approver if no action has been taken.
• Fully approved: Posted in the business alerts channel.
• Bill rejected: DMs and business alerts channel notifications sent to all approvers or bill creators.

Reminders:

Auto-reminders for bill approvals are sent every day based on these criteria (Reminders are sent only Monday through Friday):

1. 1. Initial reminder + 1 day
   2. The second reminder two days later
   3. The next reminder three days later

Where to find items for your approval

Items that require your approval can be found both in the Bill Pay and Inbox tabs. 

Bill Pay

Navigate to the "For Approval" tab and add the filter "Next approver" for yourself to view all bills that require your approval

Inbox

Navigate to the Bills tab within the Inbox view to see all bills that require your approval. This inbox view is also accessible via the Ramp mobile app. 

Note: Admins, Business Owners, and AP Clerks can see all bills that need approval on the Approvals page.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How do I view a bill's approval history?
   • Every bill has an approval history, regardless of the number of steps it went through. You can view a bill’s approval history by navigating to the bill and clicking on the activity tab.
2. What happens if you change an approval process after a bill is paid?
   • The bill remains paid, and the approval history will show the previous approval process.
3. How does the amount-based routing work for international bills in local currency?
   • For approvals, the bill amount will be converted to USD.
4. What changes will restart the approval chain?
   • Customers can configure what type of changes will restart the approval chain by navigating to approval settings. Customer can toggle if the following fields restart bill approvals:
     • Vendor - if the associated vendor on bill is changed
     • Payment amount - if the total amount on bill is changed
     • Payment details - if the payment method, the source account, or the destination account is changed
     • Payment schedule - if the payment date is changed

1. Can I approve bills in the mobile app?
   • Yes! Ramp supports reviewing and approve bills right from your phone. Any bills that are currently pending your approval will appear in the mobile inbox manager (supported on iOS and Android).