How WayUp put expense reports on auto-pilot by switching to Ramp
“What I like about Ramp compared to any other solution is the fact that we can automate manual workflows for every employee. The more we can automate, the better, and that's the power of Ramp.”
Co-Founder, WayUp
WayUp's expense process had a timing problem. Employees spent when they needed to — and submitted receipts when they remembered to, sometimes two months later. For Staff Accountant Jose Ramon-Batista, that gap between transaction and record was where accuracy went sideways and hours disappeared every month. Fixing it took less than a day.
Two months of lag, zero visibility into spend
WayUp's expense process had a timing problem before it had anything else. Employees would submit expense reports weeks — sometimes two months — after the fact, leaving Staff Accountant Jose Ramon-Batista with a backlog of receipts to track down, match, and manually reconcile every month. By the time the numbers were in, the month was long over.
The consequences were predictable: financial reporting that lagged reality, hours lost to administrative follow-up, and a finance team with little ability to act on what employees were actually spending. Co-founder JJ Fliegelman had limited visibility into how teams were pacing against budgets in real time. The team knew the money was moving — they just couldn't see where until it was too late to adjust.
"Employees wouldn't submit their expense reports until two months later. That wasn't great for the accuracy of our financial reporting."
— Jose Ramon-Batista, Staff Accountant, WayUp
The problem wasn't just an inconvenience. It was structural: a system built on manual submissions and human follow-through, in an organization that needed its finance function to keep pace with the business.
Automated rules that work without anyone watching
WayUp rolled out Ramp in under a day. What changed immediately was the relationship between spending and recording: the two happened at the same time, automatically, instead of weeks apart.
The core shift was automation at the transaction level. Rather than issuing general-purpose cards and waiting for employees to submit expenses after the fact, WayUp used Ramp's rules engine to configure vendor-specific automations and category-level policies — creating a system where the right coding, categorization, and controls are applied the moment a transaction occurs. No chasing. No reconstruction at month-end.
For JJ, the ability to set those rules once by vendor and category and have them run automatically for every employee was what set Ramp apart. The more the system could handle on its own, the better.
Real-time visibility was the other half of the equation. With Ramp, JJ and his team can see exactly how each team is tracking against its budget at any moment — not in arrears, not after a reconciliation cycle, but live. That visibility is what lets them make adjustments that protect the business rather than simply document what already happened.
Expense management that runs itself
The numbers tell the story clearly. WayUp has maintained a 100% zero-touch transaction rate for over a year — every expense auto-coded, every policy requirement handled automatically, with no manual intervention required from the finance team. What once consumed more than six hours of Jose's month now takes under one.
"I used to spend more than six hours per month reviewing expense reports. After setting up Ramp, it takes me less than an hour."
— Jose Ramon-Batista, Staff Accountant, WayUp
Across the team, that adds up to 85 hours saved every month — time that no longer goes to chasing down receipts, reconciling mismatched submissions, or re-coding transactions that came in with the wrong category.
Beyond the time savings, Ramp has changed the culture around spending at WayUp. Employees know what they're allowed to spend and how to submit it, because the rules are built into the card itself. Managers can see how their teams are pacing in real time. The finance team spends its time on judgment and strategy, not administration — and for Jose, that shift in day-to-day experience is just as meaningful as the hours saved: "I love how much control and freedom Ramp gives us."
"Ramp helps keep things clean within the organization."
— JJ Fliegelman, Co-Founder, WayUp
WayUp has been on Ramp since March 2020. The platform that solved their expense problem in under a day has quietly become the infrastructure their finance team runs on — and it still runs itself.
