Walk into most charter operators and ask how expenses work. You'll get some version of the same answer: a shared Amex, a folder of receipts, and a bookkeeper who spends the last week of every month typing numbers off PDFs (Portable Document Format files) into the accounting system.
We're not exaggerating. That's the live setup at operations flying multi-million-dollar aircraft.
ForIT joined Ramp's partner program to connect those expenses to the books. Ramp waived the usual eligibility requirements for us.
The spend side and the books side never talk
Pilots and crew put fuel, catering, and hotel charges on a card. Somebody back at the office re-keys all of it into the general ledger (GL) by hand. Every receipt gets touched at least twice, and month-end turns into a scramble.
Ramp fixes the spend side: real card controls, receipt capture at the point of sale, no expense-report ritual. On its own, though, it's just a nicer card.
We connect Ramp to the accounting system each operator uses to close its books.
Two ledgers, one finance stack
There are two worlds in the shops ForIT works with, and we're wired into both.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is where we run our own books, and where Pivot Airlines and Great North close theirs. Ramp spend flows straight into Business Central, coded against the right accounts, and lands in the GL without anyone re-typing it.
Plenty of operators, XcelJet among them, run their finances in QuickBooks instead of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Ramp connects there too. WM Aviation's books moved onto QuickBooks earlier this year, and the same spend-to-books wiring applies.
ForIT works across Business Central, Ramp, and QuickBooks to connect expenses to the books, whichever ledger you use.
Benjamin Thomas
ForIT Team
