A finance manager, controller, or CFO at a company of 20–300 people who adopted
Ramp to eliminate the expense report process that everyone hated and nobody trusted.
They issue cards. They set limits. They receive receipts automatically from employees
who forward a text message or take a photo. They close the books faster. They've
calculated how many hours per month expense reports used to consume and they
don't miss a single one of them. They are the person at the company who is most
enthusiastic about Ramp.
Intention
What are they trying to do? —
Outcome
What do they produce? —
Goals
→Close the books faster by eliminating the expense report chase
→Control spend proactively with card limits rather than reactively with reimbursements
→Give leadership real-time spend visibility instead of last month's actuals
Frustrations
—Employees who use personal cards for expenses that should go on Ramp —
—the system only works if everyone uses it
—Receipt matching that's almost automatic and occasionally wrong in ways
—that require manual correction at month close
—Vendor contract management that's adjacent to spend management but not fully integrated
—International spend on cards that incurs fees Ramp's domestic infrastructure
—wasn't designed to eliminate
Worldview
An expense report is a system for cleaning up a problem that should have been prevented
Real-time spend data is more valuable than last-month spend data for every decision
that matters
Card limits are the budget discussion that has already happened — they reflect
the decision made in advance, not the negotiation after
Scenario
It's the 2nd of the month. Month close started yesterday. The accounting team
needs to reconcile 847 transactions from last month. In the old system, this
involved chasing receipts from 60 people across three Slack reminders. In Ramp,
740 of those transactions have receipts attached — automatically, via text or
the Ramp app. The finance manager is reviewing the remaining 107. They will
be done by noon. They have never said this before about month close.
Context
Issues physical and virtual Ramp cards to 20–200 employees. Sets per-card and
per-merchant-category spending limits. Reviews flagged transactions daily.
Exports accounting data to QuickBooks or NetSuite monthly. Uses Ramp's vendor
management for SaaS subscription tracking. Has a Ramp admin who manages card
issuance. Reviews Ramp's spending insights dashboard weekly for department-level
visibility. Has calculated that Ramp saves 12 hours per month in their finance
team's time.
Impact
→Employee compliance incentives that make Ramp card use the default for
→any purchase (seamless receipt capture, zero reimbursement delay) reduce the
→personal card fallback that undermines spend visibility
→Receipt matching confidence indicators that flag uncertain automatch for human
→review remove the silent mismatches that emerge at month close
→International card support with competitive FX rates extends the spend consolidation
→benefit to companies with global teams
→Vendor spend analysis that surfaces renewal dates, usage, and duplicate tools
→gives finance the data for SaaS rationalization decisions
Composability Notes
Pairs with `quickbooks-primary-user` for the spend capture-to-books accounting workflow.
Contrast with `brex-primary-user` for the corporate spend management tool philosophy differences.
Use with `gusto-primary-user` for the full people + spend HR-finance stack at small companies.