Setting up expense review policies for transactions and reimbursements

Note: This article primarily applies to Ramp Administrators. Cardholders may find other articles in the Expense policy and receiptssection to be more applicable.

Overview

As an Admin, you can set up the Expense Approval Policy by navigating to the Expense Requirements and Expense Reviews found under the Policy tab for Transactions and Reimbursements. The workflow builder allows you to configure complex and flexible approval chains based on different conditions.

For example, you'll now be able to route approvals based on accounting coding.

How to set up expense approvals

1. Navigate to Policy > Expense requirements or Expense reviews
2. You can edit your default policy or click "Add approval workflow."
3. You'll then be redirected to the approvals workflow builder.
4. Clicking any “Add” button will pull up a drop-down of the following options to begin configuring your approval chain:

• Spend type — Specify whether you would like the approval chain to apply to only transaction review, only reimbursement approvals, or both. Note that the "reimbursements" option under Expense type applies policies to both out-of-pocket and mileage reimbursements. Reimbursement type allows you to configure requirements for out-of-pocket and mileage reimbursements separately.
• Require approval — Specify a specific role type, individual, department/location, or custom group to be added to the approval chain. Please note that approval will be required from the individual(s), but you must add an “Approve” statement to conclude the approval flow.
• Notify — specify a specific role type or individual to be notified about the transaction or reimbursement.
• Approve — terminal action that'll end the workflow early if added to the chain.
• Set conditions — add conditions to check various transaction and reimbursement fields (e.g., accounting coding, amount, user role, user department, etc.) that assist in determining the correct approver

You can layer and nest these options within the approval workflow builder to create your ideal approval routing.

Setting conditions

You can route your approvals through multiple transaction and reimbursement fields. While amount and user role-based routing is available to all customers, the additional conditions in the list below are only available to customers on Ramp Plus.

• Spend type (transaction or reimbursement)
• Reimbursement type (out-of-pocket or mileage)
• Amount
• User role
• Business entity (Plus)
• Direct Ramp manager (Plus)
• Employee (Plus)
• Merchant (Plus)
• Merchant category (Plus)
• Ramp department (Plus)
• Ramp location (Plus)
• Accounting codes (Plus)
  • For accounting coding, we currently display all NetSuite Customers and Jobs in one list, which means selecting a Customer doesn't automatically connect a transaction code to a Customer job. Approval chains will need to be updated for each new job, or if your transactions are coded by the Customer, use the customer field instead.
  • If a transaction is split between multiple accounting codes with different approval flows, all approvers in the different chains will be added.

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

After selecting your desired conditions and options, you will be prompted to add your desired approvers. 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.

• Any Admin - group of individuals that have admin permissions within Ramp
• Manager- The requestor’s manager can be added to the chain
• Manger’s manager - The manager of the requestor’s manager can be added to the chain
• Department owner - Ramp will determine the requestor's department and identify the configured department owner. Learn more about configuring department owners here .
• Location owner - Ramp will determine the requestor's location and identify the configured location owner. Learn more about configuring location owners here .
• Custom approval groups can be configured from People > Groups > Create group .
• You can add any specific employee within Ramp to the approval flow.

require all vs. require any

If multiple approvers are within a step, you must 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." (Note that if Any admin is added to the step, all admins will have to approve).
• Require any - only one person from the group is required to approve before proceeding to the next approval step. This translates to “person X or person Y.”

Employee exception requests will follow your customized approval flow for review.

After building your approval policies, any future transaction meeting your selected criteria will follow that approval chain. Existing or pending transactions will not be affected. If you have set transactions to auto-approve, the transactions won't show up in your team's reviewer queues but can still be found in the Transactions tab in your navigation pane.

Separation of duties

If your business requires that the individual who spends using a Ramp card or submits a reimbursement cannot approve or review their own spend, you can enable the Separation of duties toggle within approval workflow.

If the toggle is on, when an individual submits a reimbursement or spends on a Ramp card and is within the approval chain, they will be removed from the chain and replaced with admin approvers.

If the toggle is off, when an individual submits a reimbursement or spends on a Ramp card and is within the approval chain, they will still be required to approve or review their own spend.

Only business owners can toggle this setting on and off.

Frequently asked questions

Can I export or print an expense approval workflow?

No. Ramp does not currently support exporting, downloading, printing, or sharing expense approval workflows from the workflow builder. Review and update them in Policy > Expense requirements or Expense reviews.

Can I duplicate an entire expense approval workflow?

No. Ramp does not currently support duplicating a full expense approval workflow. In the workflow builder, duplicate actions apply only to individual nodes or branches, not to the entire workflow.