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Importing Journal Entries from RAMP

Marie Scheurich

We just started using the RAMP credit cards and have not been able to import the journal entries. RAMP provided instructions for a Universal CSV import, but it seems that we will have to create mapping parameters to make this happen? Anyone else using RAMP?

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Comments

Stu Manewith

@Marie Scheurich Omatic Software has a data integration tool built specifically for importing journal entries into FE NXT – can be used for RAMP data as well as any other third-party transactional data that you may obtain from other systems and external sub-ledgers. Thanks and best wishes.

Andrew Cole

@Marie Scheurich
Hi Marie - we have been curious about Ramp and I have a question that doesn't necessarily help you solve your problem. Did you have the option to elect to import the Ramp transactions as a journal entry vs an invoice import? It's so much cleaner to view the reports if they get uploaded as invoice records vs a Journal Entry.

For your Journal Entry import - do you use the Excel Add-In that Blackbaud provides? In the marketplace it's called Journal Entry Batch Creator and once you connect it you are able to import directly from excel. I do think you have to have a relatively recent version of excel for the tool to work though.

Marie Scheurich

@Andrew Cole
Hi Andrew - The credit card transactions in RAMP have to be imported as journal entries into Blackbaud. We haven't used the Bill Pay feature or the Reimbursement feature yet, but my understanding is that those can be imported as invoices. We have someone in house working on the journal entries import issue. We import journal entries monthly now from our campus store software, so we are working on finding the best way. ~Marie

Marie Scheurich

@Stu Manewith
Hi Stu - Thank you for this info. I will share this with our Accounting Manager and hopefully get this resolved quickly!! ~Marie

Jill Knowland

@Marie Scheurich
We use RAMP and I have had no trouble importing the transactions as Journal Entries (I export from RAMP using the Journal Entry feature, and then cut out most columns to match my FE import template). I utilize the “notes” field to capture the receipt link from the ramp export so that if I need to look at the receipt in FE, it's easy to click on the link.

However, we don't use the payables portion of RAMP, and I'd love to be able to import the cc transactions, with vendor, into the AP vendor record so we capture all of the vendor activity through both AP and credit cards. I have not been successful writing this import because I cannot change the credit account on the invoice import.

Has anyone been successful importing RAMP credit card transactions as payments (or invoices and payments) into the vendor record of FE?

Marie Scheurich

@Jill Knowland
Thank you Jill. Our accounting manager has been overloaded lately with our annual audit, and has not had time to look into this. I will be meeting with her this week and will let her know that we just have to work on the JE template and I believe we will be set. We are not using the bill pay feature in RAMP either, and have been told by RAMP that credit card transactions can only come over via journal entry, and not as invoices. But for audit purposes, RAMP has all of the backup if needed, and the filters are easy to use.

Marla Anderson

@Marie Scheurich
We utilize RAMP Credit Cards and download from RAMP as a csv and upload all expenses as invoices to one AP Vendor that we named Ramp.com. There are so many other fields on AP Invoices that can be used to code expenses, unlike a Journal Entry. We utilize the Line Item Description field and include the actual name of the vendor for reference and include the Ramp Memo in the Notes area, along with the Ramp link to the receipt.

Patricia Nowak

@Marla Anderson
By handling your RAMP transactions as invoices can you search with FE NXT payables by a vendor name and get RAMP invoices as well as any direct invoices with the same vendor?

Marla Anderson

@Patricia Nowak
Unfortunately, no you can't search by vendor in FE NXT and get those that were paid with a Ramp card, as all expenses have been import onto 1 vendor “Ramp.com”. I made an AP Query with criteria that you can pick a specific vendor and then also include query criteria for the Invoice Line Item Description field, because we import the actual Ramp Merchant name in this field for the purchases.

In the beginning we were looking into the Ramp Custom Field option and were going to enter all of our Vendor ID's into Ramp on each Merchant. But this would require a lot of new FE NXT Vendors to be set up. A lot of our credit card expenses, we really do not care about the vendor/merchant name (ex: vehicle gas; meals; etc.

We use the FE NXT query option instead for any Vendor searches that are needed. On our Fund Activity Reports, when an AP invoice is then processed/posted it shows on the report as RAMP.com-(Inv #); then also includes the Line Item Description, which would be the Ramp Merchant and we include a very brief description (character limit is 50). Hopefully this makes sense.

Marie Scheurich

@Marla Anderson
Hi Marla, I understand you are importing the RAMP charges as invoices to one vendor called “Ramp.com”, so I guess that means if you have 100 charges in a month, you are importing 100 invoices, correct? Question: When you enter your payment in FENXT, how do you handle that?

Marla Anderson

@Marie Scheurich
Sorry for the delay getting back to you. We currently are unable to import as invoices in FE NXT, so we continue to use the DataBase view.

Tina O'Guinn

@Marie Scheurich We started using Ramp awhile back and I used their CSV feature to export the data. We use the import feature in Database view to import one invoice with multiple distribution lines. Those distribution lines represent all the purchases. Because each distribution line has to be mapped separately and the system is not smart enough to repeat for multiple distributions, I set up 66 import profiles each with the corresponding number of distributions so my staff doesn't have to map fields EVERY time they import. This has worked great but the looming force over to NXT has caused a problem. I created the imports so that no one could modify them (so they didn't get messed up) but on NXT you have to be able to save to run an import. And, they are recommending that all profiles be built again from scratch. I'm very disappointed in this news and very frustrated that there is not a better way to do this. We made it work in database view because we wanted the transactions in FE but we may have to go another way with NXT. I know this post is older so I'm curious what people are doing now with Ramp transactions? thank you!

Marie Scheurich

@Tina OGuinn
We export our monthly RAMP charges and then import them as a Journal Entry in Blackbaud FENXT. It's a smooth process. We are hoping that we will be able to import the charges as invoices in FENXT, but are unable to do so at the present time.

Wadih Pazos

@Marie Scheurich: Check out and Ramp For Financial Edge NXT on the Blackbaud Marketplace and on rampforfe.com. This is an integration that was purpose built to simplify the process of connecting Ramp and Financial Edge NXT.

Wadih Pazos

@Tina OGuinn: Check out and Ramp For Financial Edge NXT on the Blackbaud Marketplace and on rampforfe.com. This is an integration that was purpose built to simplify the process of connecting Ramp and Financial Edge NXT.

Tina O'Guinn

@Wadih Pazos Thank you. It appears that that integration makes credit card entries, JE's. We would prefer that they be AP transactions. (after all, we are paying Ramp). We lose payable details if we just put them in as JE's.

Wadih Pazos

@Tina OGuinn: Ramp for FE supports creating invoice transactions (and vendors automatically) in FE NXT when you are using Ramp cards to pay vendor bills using Ramp's Bill Pay feature. Feel free to direct message me or fill out the contact us form on rampforfe.com if you would like to explore how this works! We are happy to talk to you further about Ramp for FE.

Connie Firmin

@Tina OGuinn We import our credit cards in as invoices into a Vendor we named Ramp so they are all in one place, and we can enter one payment for all of the charges in a month. Much easier to research here than just entering as a Journal like they recommend.

Connie Firmin

@Marie Scheurich We use the Bill Pay feature and love it so far.

Maggie Dolan

@Marie Scheurich would you be willing to share the import template you created in FE? I am trying to create one but keep getting validation errors. Thanks!

Marie Scheurich

@Maggie Dolan
We use the Journal Entry Batch Creator for Financial Edge NXT for imports from RAMP and it works very well. This JE Batch Creator can be found on the Blackbaud Marketplace.

Maggie Dolan

@Marie Scheurich thanks for the reply! I found the add-in and just tested it, so much better than trying to import the old way.

Dawn Asbury

@Marie Scheurich Adding to the conversation for anyone new that comes along. We use different methods based on what we are doing. For the credit cards we import with a JE using the “Create Journal Entry Batch” in Excel from the add-ons. In each description line we concatenate the actual vendor name with a short description. When we run GL reports and queries we know where the money is being spent. For reimbursements we use the invoice import. Because the import does not have a good template for multiple GL lines on a single invoice, we use the invoice number and then “-01” “-02” “-03” to create multiple “invoices” for the same invoice. We load them as a bank draft. To pay them in NXT for bank recon purposes you can run them like checks, except choose draft and the payment date to batch a whole bunch together if needed. Our you can pay each one individually. We usually only pay expense reports once a month. We have not started using Bill Pay, but when we do, I plan to use invoice import for those those too. We use the Vendor ID as the link. In Ramp we will use the “-01” “-02” “-03” as an extension to the Vendor ID for vendor owner approval purposes and then remove the extension when importing into FENXT. It can be multiple vendors in ramp if several people use the same vendor and then one vendor in FENXT. Interested in seeing what other people are doing.