How to choose the right AP automation software as a controller

Controllers oversee financial accuracy, enforce controls, ensure compliance, and close the books each month. It's a role that requires both precision and speed.

But when it comes to accounts payable, too many controllers still rely on fragmented, manual processes. Email-based approvals, paper check runs, disconnected systems, and error-prone data entry all contribute to month-end delays, audit risk, and reporting headaches.

Ramp Bill Pay is AP software built for finance teams who need to process invoices faster without sacrificing control. You can route approvals automatically, pay vendors through multiple methods, and see exactly where every dollar is going. Controllers can strengthen internal controls, reduce manual data entry, and close the books in less time.

This guide walks through how Ramp Bill Pay helps controllers automate AP without losing control.

Where AP workflows start to break down for controllers

As a controller, you're responsible for the integrity of your AP function. That means accurate vendor payments, enforced approval policies, maintained compliance, and complete financial records. But most AP workflows still introduce unnecessary risk and overhead.

Here are the three problems that show up most often:

• Manual invoice processing ties up your team with data entry and creates errors you'll need to fix later
• Approval workflows turn into email chains and desk drop-offs, leaving you without visibility into what's approved and what's stuck
• Reconciliation processes require matching documents across multiple systems, often by hand

These inefficiencies are more than operational annoyances. They make it harder to detect spend anomalies, enforce policies, or deliver timely reports to leadership.

Even most AP software falls short for controllers. It might handle basic processing, but it lacks the flexibility, controls, and audit trail visibility you need for proper accounting oversight. What works better is an AP solution that automates the routine work while giving you actual financial control and visibility into what's happening.

How Ramp Bill Pay automates AP for controllers

Ramp Bill Pay is accounts payable software that automates the full invoice-to-payment workflow while preserving the control and accountability controllers need. Every step of the process—from data extraction to reconciliation—takes place within a centralized platform that connects directly to your accounting system.

Here's how it works:

1. Intelligent invoice capture. Extracts data from invoices using OCR, eliminating manual entry.
2. Customizable approval workflows. Routes invoices to the right approvers based on amount, department, vendor, or other rules you set.
3. Automated payments. Executes payments via ACH, check, card, or wire once approved.
4. Automatic syncing. Sends all transaction data to your accounting system without duplicate entry.

Throughout the process, you have real-time visibility into every invoice’s status—what’s pending, what’s been scheduled, and what’s already paid. And behind the scenes, Ramp Bill pay creates a fully documented audit trail with timestamps, user actions, and supporting files, so you always have a clear record of activity.

Ramp Bill Pay also connects directly with your ERP system, accounting software, and other financial tools. This eliminates the reconciliation headaches that come from disconnected systems and helps you close your books faster each month.

Ramp Bill Pay features

Ramp Bill Pay addresses common AP challenges that directly affect controller performance—accuracy, compliance, time-to-close, and financial visibility. Here’s a breakdown of its AP features that controllers need:

1. Approval workflows designed for internal controls

As a controller, you need assurance that every payment has been reviewed and approved appropriately. Ramp’s AP software gives you full control over how invoices are routed—allowing you to design multi-level approvals that reflect your policies without slowing the process down.

Approvals can be triggered by criteria such as invoice amount, vendor, department, category, and more. This means higher-risk or higher-value invoices can be escalated automatically, while routine payments follow a lighter-weight path. You can also assign alternate workflows for new vendors or transactions that exceed spend thresholds.

Ramp Bill Pay also keeps approvals on track. If a reviewer hasn't responded, the system sends automatic reminders and flags the delay in your dashboard. You'll always know exactly where an invoice is in the approval chain and if it's at risk of holding up payment or reconciliation.

Every step is logged, giving you a defensible audit trail of who approved what and when. This supports regulatory compliance and gives your team clarity and accountability across departments.

2. See every invoice and payment as it happens

Controllers need more than batch reports. You need continuous visibility into what's happening right now.

Ramp provides a unified platform showing all AP activity in flight: invoices waiting on approvals, payments scheduled, and transactions already completed. Because Ramp also integrates card and expense data, you can view total company spend from one place, instead of stitching together fragmented data from multiple tools.

Analytics features give you deeper insight into trends. You can review spend by vendor, department, or category, spot budget overruns in real time, and detect patterns that may warrant investigation.

3. ERP integration made for accounting teams

Ramp Bill Pay is built to fit into your accounting ecosystem, not work around it. Ramp includes over 200 direct integrations, including connections with leading ERP systems to ensure that transactions initiated in Ramp—invoice data, transactions, bill payments, vendor payments, and more—are synced automatically to your accounting platform with bi-directional syncing.

Ramp’s direct integrations include NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, Sage Intacct, Xero, Acumatica, and more.

This means you won’t need to manually re-enter data or chase discrepancies between systems. Vendor details, accounting details, and coding structures remain consistent across your stack. This not only saves time, but reduces the risk of reconciliation errors that delay close. Ramp also supports more complex needs like multi-entity structures, international vendors, and foreign currency payments.

4. A faster, cleaner close: All spend data in one system

For controllers, month-end close hinges on more than just expense reconciliation. Incomplete or delayed accounts payable activity can derail your timeline just as easily.

This includes outstanding invoice approvals, missing documentation, or uncoded bills. Ramp Bill Pay addresses this by ensuring your AP data is clean, current, and fully integrated with your accounting system throughout the month.

Invoices are ingested, coded, and approved using structured workflows, so there's no end-of-month backlog to catch up on. Payments are automatically matched to invoices and synced to your ERP, which reduces the need for manual reconciliation and data entry.

Because everything is processed within one system, you also eliminate the need to collect PDFs, match paper vouchers, or chase down approvers before close.

Ramp also handles your card transactions and reimbursements alongside AP. All non-payroll spend flows through one platform, making it easier to maintain consistency in accounting fields, categorization, and timing.

This unified structure gives you confidence that all spend is captured and recorded, so your team can move faster and with fewer errors when it's time to close the books.

5. AI agents for accounts payable

Ramp is also introducing AI agents for AP—autonomous systems built into Ramp that go beyond workflow automation. These agents understand invoice context and take action on behalf of your team. They code line items based on historical data, flag potential fraud, suggest the appropriate approver, and submit card payments when applicable.

How controllers are already saving their company time and money by using Ramp Bill Pay

Controllers across several industries are using Ramp Bill Pay to handle invoice intake and approvals automatically. They're saving hours each week and catching fewer errors.

Here's how one controller is using it:

How The Second City saved $40K annually with Ramp Bill Pay

Frank Byers, Controller at The Second City had an AP automation tool that promised OCR and coding—but didn’t deliver. Bills had to be scanned, reviewed, and manually coded line by line in NetSuite, often with errors and missing data. The process was slow, unreliable, and expensive—costing the team $40,000 annually for software that didn’t work.

Using Ramp Bill Pay gave the team a real solution. With accurate OCR, line-item recognition, and automatic coding based on accounting rules, invoice entry became seamless. Vendor data was captured correctly, accounting rules were applied automatically, and payments flowed through without manual touchpoints.

This helped The Second City not only cut their bill processing time in half, but also help them save $40K annually by consolidating systems. For a lean team focused on reporting and analytics, the impact wasn’t just faster processing—it was time back to focus on higher-value work.

“Switching to Ramp for Bill Pay saved us not only time but also a significant amount of money. Our previous AP automation tool cost us around $40,000 per year, and it wasn’t even working properly. Ramp is far more functional, and we’re getting the benefits at a fraction of the cost,” says Frank Byers, Controller at The Second City.

Why controllers choose Ramp Bill Pay to automate AP

Ramp Bill Pay is an AP system built for finance teams who need accuracy, compliance, and operational control. For controllers, that translates to fewer errors, faster closes, and clearer visibility into spend.

By automating tedious tasks and centralizing documentation, Ramp Bill Pay lets you focus more on oversight and analysis—and less on chasing down approvals or fixing broken workflows. It gives your team the structure they need, and gives you the confidence that every dollar is reviewed, recorded, and reported accurately.

Ramp helps controllers build a more efficient, more resilient, and more accountable finance operation—starting with AP.

Try Ramp Bill Pay.