Vendor custom groups

Overview

Early Access. Vendor custom groups is available to businesses enrolled in Feature Previews. Admins and users with vendor management permissions can create and manage vendor custom groups.

Vendor custom groups let you organize vendors into reusable sets based on criteria you define. Use groups to segment vendors by department, spend level, payment type, approval status, or other attributes, then reference those groups in approval workflows, procurement intake forms, and vendor table filters.

Vendors can belong to multiple groups simultaneously. Group membership updates automatically when vendor data changes or when you edit the group's rules.

Creating a vendor custom group

Go to Vendors > ⋯ (more options) > Manage groups, then click New vendor group.

When creating a group, you define:

1. Group name — a descriptive name for the group. Names must be unique across your business.
2. Rules — filter criteria that automatically determine which vendors belong to the group.
3. Manual overrides — optionally include or exclude specific vendors regardless of whether they match the rules.

Click Create to save the group. Ramp evaluates the rules and populates the membership automatically.

Adding vendors to a group

Using rules

Rules automatically add vendors to the group based on criteria you define. Click Add rule in the Overview tab to add a filter condition. Each filter type can only be used once per group. When multiple rules are defined, a vendor must match all rules to be included.

Available filter types:

• Status — active or inactive
• Category — vendor spend category
• Department — assigned department
• Approval status — vendor approval state
• Payment type — Bill Pay or Card
• Default payment method — the vendor's default payment method
• Stored payment method — whether the vendor has payment details on file
• Creation source — how the vendor was created (such as manual entry or bulk import)
• Has vendor owner — whether a vendor owner is assigned
• Vendor owner — specific vendor owner(s)
• Has active contract — whether the vendor has an active contract
• 30-day spend — total vendor spend in the last 30 days
• 365-day spend — total vendor spend in the last 365 days

Each rule uses an Is or Is not condition to include or exclude matching vendors.

Using manual overrides

Manual overrides let you add or remove specific vendors regardless of whether they match the rules.

• Always include — vendors in this list are always part of the group, even if they do not match the rules.
• Always exclude — vendors in this list are never part of the group, even if they match the rules.

To add an override, search for a vendor in the Included or Excluded tab of the Manual overrides section.

From the vendor table

You can also manage group memberships from the Vendors table. Click Edit vendor groups on any vendor row to open a modal where you can select which groups the vendor belongs to.

From the vendor form

When creating or editing a vendor, use the Vendor group field to assign the vendor to one or more groups.

Managing group members

Open a group from Vendors > Groups to open the group detail drawer. The drawer has three tabs:

• Overview — edit the group name, manage rules and manual overrides, and see a live preview of all current group members. Use the search bar to find specific vendors, or hover over any vendor and click Exclude to remove them from the group. The Danger zone section at the bottom lets you delete the group.
• Visibility — control who can see and edit the group and its vendors. See Sharing and visibility .
• Custom fields — scope vendor custom record fields to this group. See Scoping custom fields to a group .

When does membership update?

Membership updates roughly every 4 hours on a schedule. It also updates when you open the group details or edit the group's rules. New vendors are evaluated against all active groups at the time of creation. If a vendor's data was recently updated but they are not yet showing in the expected group, open the group to trigger a refresh.

Sharing and visibility

The Visibility tab on a group controls who can see and edit the group and its vendors.

General access

• Open (default) — everyone with vendor management permissions can see this group and its vendors.
• Private — only the people listed in the access list, plus Owners, Admins, and Vendor Owners, can access the vendors in this group. Users without access will not see these vendors in the vendor table or search results.

People with access

You can grant access to specific people and groups. Each grantee receives one of two permission levels:

• Full access — read and edit the group and its members.
• View only — view the group and its members, but cannot make changes.

Access can be granted to:

• Individual users
• User roles
• User groups (dynamic employee groups)
• Departments
• Locations

To add access, search in the Add people or user groups field and click Add.

Use vendor custom groups in approval workflows

Add Vendor group as a condition in your approval policies to route approvals based on which groups a vendor belongs to. The condition checks whether the vendor belongs to any of the selected groups. Vendor group conditions are available in:

• Bill Pay approval policies — route bill approvals based on the vendor's group membership.
• Vendor create approval policies — require additional approval when a new vendor that matches a specific group is created.
• Vendor edit approval policies — require additional approval when a vendor in a specific group is modified.

Restricting vendors in Spend Programs

You can restrict the vendor picker on a Spend Program's request form so that only vendors from a specific vendor custom group are available. This is supported for Purchase Order and Approval Only Spend Programs.

Configure vendor restrictions

When creating or editing a Spend Program, open the Vendor question configuration and toggle Restrict available vendors. Select the vendor group that requestors should be able to choose from. Vendors outside the selected group will not be available in the vendor selector for that program.

If no vendor groups exist yet, click Create vendor group to create one from within the Spend Program configuration.

Allow adding new vendors to group

When vendor restrictions are enabled, requestors cannot create new vendors from the request form by default. To let requestors add new vendors, toggle Allow adding new vendors to group within the same vendor question configuration. When enabled, requestors can create a new vendor from the vendor picker, and the new vendor is automatically added to the Spend Program's linked vendor group. The new vendor still follows your business's vendor approval and onboarding flow before it is fully approved.

Filtering vendors by group

When at least one vendor custom group exists, a Vendor groups filter appears in the Vendors table toolbar. Use it to narrow the vendor list to members of one or more groups.

The Vendor groups column on the vendor table shows which groups each vendor belongs to.

Scoping custom fields to a group

In the Custom fields tab on a group, you can assign vendor custom fields to the group. Scoped fields only appear on vendor profiles for vendors that belong to the group. Fields that are not scoped to any group appear on all vendor profiles regardless of group membership.

Note: A custom record field cannot be scoped to a vendor group if it is currently used as a condition in an approval workflow. Remove it from workflows first.

Deleting a group

To delete a group, open the group detail drawer and select Delete from the Danger zone section in the Overview tab. Deleting a group permanently removes the group and its membership data. Vendors themselves are not affected. If the group was used in approval workflows or Spend Program vendor restrictions, update those settings to remove the reference.

Permissions

Employees without vendor management permissions cannot view or manage vendor custom groups. If you need access, ask your Ramp Admin.

Frequently asked questions

Can a vendor belong to multiple groups?

Yes. Vendors can belong to any number of groups simultaneously. Group memberships are independent of each other.

Are vendor custom groups the same as employee groups?

No. Vendor custom groups organize vendors (external payees). Groups organize employees (internal users) for approvals, Spend Programs, and policies. They are separate features.

Related articles

• Vendor management on Ramp
• Get started with Procurement
• Groups (employee groups for approvals and policies)