The Accounting Technology Lab Podcast – Review of Ramp – Nov. 2023

Transcript (Note: There may be typos due to automated transcription errors.)

SPEAKERS

Randy Johnston, Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA.

Randy Johnston 

Welcome to Technology Lab. I’m Randy Johnston with my co host, Brian Tankersley. And we want to talk today about a product offering from ramp. Now, right? RAMP is a spend management program now don’t hang up just because I’ve said spend management. Because we believe that Ramp’s strategy in the US and Canada, that includes workflows and changing from expense management to spend management is a winning strategy.

Now, the product has been around for about four years, I had reviewed it in the past and wasn’t quite willing to put my reputation on the line at that point in time. But some of the changes that they’ve made here as of late, seem to have changed the the trajectory of the product. Now let me frame just one more thing of for you. We believe that this year where many of my columns were about client accounting services cast tool stacks, before, you know, the editorial staff asked me to convert to artificial intelligence AI, Brian and I have been on this rant of simplifying cast tools, decks for a year or more.

In fact, it’s way over a year now that I think about it, Brian, and we think fewer cast tools is better. And it looks like to me, that ramp can handle accounts payable and expense management in a single platform. It integrates with, you know, key products out there, including QuickBooks Online, and Xero, and a few others. And again, they list a lot of integrations on their websites. But they also have connected to a lot of banks natively as well. So you know, they’re coming along well. And only recently, they added automation for payroll integrations with ADP and gussto, and a few others, and that’s in the higher end of the product. But, you know, you heard, I’ve gone off on a much longer rant, where normally I’d ask Brian, you know, what does he think you need to know about ramp, I’m looking at ramp compared to other spin to management, product categories. We’ve talked about spin management in other technology labs, but I can tell you that all of a sudden, I can see a whole different way for you to run your CASP practice this way. And you can use it in your firm. So I’m just going to close my rant here with, you know, I used to say, you can eat your own dog food and you should. But now today, as I usually say you should drink your own champagne, but I’m looking for a non alcoholic recommendation. So Brian, I know you’ve used ice cream and some other things there. But you know, bottom line here is I went on a long rant, and Brian, what do our you listeners need to know about ramp?

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 

Well, you know, first off, they’ve gotten serious about an accounting program they’ve hired to serious zero that the product is available in both the US and Canada. Many of the other product in videos and management tools we’ve talked about, don’t have the Canadian connections for for our friends in the great white north. And so what I would suggest to you here is that, you know, certainly they’d like you to, they have a they have a ramp partner directory, they have a newsletter, they will actually do a podcast that they lead. They can do at higher levels, they can do webinars and CO branded and campaigns. They have an advisor console, so you can look at it on how things are going as well as as well as ramp setup for your firm. And at the high levels. They even will do some revenue sharing with you you know, the they in all levels, they include co branded collateral, white glove support and firm wide training for the accountant program. So, you know there I think, you know, the people again, the people they hired came from came from zero there. They’re sharp folks they’ve done they seem to have done a great program, great job of designing this program. And you know, I think it’s I think they they have the right kind of vision to help you be successful. Randy

Randy Johnston 

Yep. So you know, Brian, with that said then they do have a corporate cards and you know, we’ve been watching the developments here have fed now and how that will work in these AP and expense management products. But this vendor provides unlimited virtual cards that work globally, actually, in addition to the US and Canada, but they also will gather, you know, receipts from an expense perspective. But the most important things on spin management is you can set the controls before the spend occurs. So there are integrations then to Xero and QuickBooks and NetSuite and many other products that you might use and Kaz or your industry users might be using, I think you can actually solve a lot of those type of problems. And so, you know, the pricing, of course, there are tools out there that I just look at and say, Now, that’s the deal. Because, you know, if all you’re after is the spin management, they basically have a program that’s $0 per user per month with unlimited cards, and you still get the Smart Controls, they do the automated expense processing, and they do the vendor management and accounts payable and synchronize with accounting software. So for some of your smaller clients, this could be an immediate way for you to get multiple clients on automated systems, you know, a way I would look at this. And Brian, you’re the one that taught me this is the person that the firm that’s doing the clan accounting services and payroll, they have insights before anybody else does. Well, if you’re trying to do expense processing 3045 days after the fact you’re trying to do payables 1520 days late, how can you possibly be running the business in closer to real time is my view of the world and I’ve had that, you know, real time ish view for a long time. So, you know, if you step up, Brian, I think there’s more in the paid for products. What do you remember from that?

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 

I will tell you that, when we start looking into the paid for products, we have international cards, and we can set up limits. So the idea there is that you could set up a credit, you could set up a virtual credit card to pay even one specific expense or two or three specific expenses, you know, maybe you have some some of those auto payments, and you could set a limit on them so that they can’t get too far out of control. And so it gives you a way of kind of cutting things off and using the denial of those expenses as a as a tool. You’ve also got AP automation with unlimited invoice extraction, you can pay by cheque ACH and ACH or internationally. You Have you have you have purchase order management, HRIS integrations, direct accounting integrations for QuickBooks zero, NetSuite sage, on the high end, they even go as far up is Oracle, Mike Oracle, NetSuite, Microsoft and workday, which is, which is pretty amazing to me, because, you know, those are, you know, those are tier two products. And, you know, again, so it gives you gives you a lot of options here. Even if your clients are bigger than the, you know, then just Kaz Kaz level clients, and if you’re doing more of a business process outsourcing thing, you can do that. They also offer,

Randy Johnston 

if I could step in there, and I want you to hold your thought on that. But you know, when you were doing the earlier pieces, I was letting you go. But on the AP, they actually do an unlimited invoice, extraction, OCR, and you know, that used to be a very sophisticated deal. And that’s in the free program. Now, for clarity. Remember, the product is offered in three levels, ramp, ramp plus and ramp enterprise. And the ramp plus is $15 a per user per month, and the enterprise is a negotiated pricing. But you the free version gets you QuickBooks and Xero integrations. That’s why I interrupted you, Brian. And the ramp plus gets you the NetSuite and sage integrations. And then for enterprise, that’s where you get the Microsoft Dynamics 365 in the workday in Oracle, but you correctly observed very few of these products, integrate with so many platforms. And then if you can’t get the integrations done, there’s some additional pieces, but they also have a very interesting secure login feature, which I think you were just going to mention.

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 

Yeah, they offer. They actually go through an offer single sign on with single sign on SAML and IDP. They have real time spin reporting. They also have advanced user roles and permissions. So you can you can determine who’s an approver, who’s a guest who’s an IT admin, and even the enterprise version, they even have Sox compliance reporting. Now you might look at this and say, Well, you know, I’m not doing a lot I work with public companies. Okay. But if you think about your highly regulated businesses, that Sox compliance reporting can help you with your regulatory compliance. So I’m thinking, you know, people that have heavy duty governmental grants like large nonprofits, you know, my, my son, my son’s godmother is actually in works in the institutional compliance departments at the University of Tennessee. And they actually have been following Sarbanes Oxley, as their kind of their kind of control framework for over 20 years. And even though they’re, you know, of course of government, government agency, you know, in the in the State University. So as we’re, as we’re thinking about this, this is something that starts out at free, and scales up, I think, as far as you need to go. They also have priority support, and they have white glove service for the accounting program. And, again, I think, you know, I think this is really the way I looked at this as they appear to be a pretty good, pretty good partner for for handling the spend management and payables and expense. That should be in your list to evaluate as you’re thinking about those solutions.

Randy Johnston 

Still, Brian, I appreciate all those positions. Now, one other observation over the last 90 to 120 days, I’ve actually been surprised, but not surprised. I mean, how can you be two things at once. But that’s that’s the way it was. But by the number of firms who won’t consider a product that doesn’t offer single sign on, I guess that was a double negative, so surprised and not surprised. But you know, the bottom line is this secure login with single sign on offering SAML so forth, we want your users to have an easier experience, sign in once and go many places. And for another day, Brian, we probably need to revisit password lists and Single Sign On because what I’m quite sure about is that the days of security are changing. And I think this particular product is well positioned to handle all of those. So they do have all sorts of programs, including corporate cards, and as you identified expense and payables. But they also do procurement and vendor management. Now, I’m a little more sensitive to vendor management because of my banking board of directors of position. But overall, the automation in here is pretty stunning. And I think they really can fit every size business, from startup through small business to mid market up to enterprise along the way. So any final parting thoughts, Brian, for this particular platform,

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 

you know, even if you decide, you know, they’ve got some really interesting growth tools on their website is another thing I wanted to call out. So even if you’re not going to buy from them, I would have you go look at their accounting tools. In there, they have an expense classifier, they have earned rate calculators, dental practice valuation, calculators, they go through, and they have database resources, and all kinds of things for startups. So I wouldn’t, including a VC investor database that lists out top VCs and Angel investors across different different phases. So, you know, even if you’re, you know, even if you’re committed to another program, I would encourage you to go look at their, at their business growth tools, its ramp.com/free-tools. And, and have a look at that, you know, I think there’s a I think it’s an interesting platform. And I think that it seems like something that set up to handle the sophistication that modern startups need when they take venture funding. But it will also it also can be operated simply and then you can scale up as big as you know, NetSuite and, and workday and dynamics 365. And, you know, you know, if you go there, you know, that’s that’s a long way.

Randy Johnston 

So, you know, Brian, I appreciate you calling out those tools, because I had seen those and actually did not recall them for our discussion today. Because you’re absolutely right. Hey, as accounting professionals, do we need an IRS Form finder? Probably not, but it’s there. But for example, the dental practice valuation calculator, you know, there’s been specific software tools to do those types of works in the past. And you’re absolutely right. There’s just a nice collection of very interesting tools that are worth the look, but just as important. Go ahead.

Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 

Think about the dental evaluation, by the way is when somebody asks you what your business is worth. If you get that wrong, then there’s some potential liability for you there if they sell at a price point lower than they should have. So but so with this, you can just send a dentist to that site and they can figure it out on their own. And then you’re out the loop on that. You know, I think there’s, you know, there’s there’s a lot of reasons you want to know about this page. So you can go forward. Sorry, Randy.

Randy Johnston 

No, no, no worries. So you know, I think then the net here is ramp is trying to change the culture, from expense management, expense reporting to spin management, they have an AP tool, they got a lot of things in a single platform. And we think fewer tools are better. Further, the I have a pretty strong belief that their accountant program and accountant strategy is wise. So if you haven’t looked at ramp, we think it’s worth a look. See. We appreciate you listen to us on today’s lab, and we’ll talk to you again very soon. All the best good day