Ramp vs Procurify for Apparel Brands Funding Factory Deposits

The deposit paid to secure a production slot, commonly a portion of the order value upfront with the balance due on shipment, is the point where a brand commits real cash to a specific design, quantity, and delivery date, often before final sell-in numbers from wholesale buyers are even confirmed. Procurify's requisition model fits this moment well: the purchase order can capture the design, the quantity, the deposit and balance terms, and who approved committing to them, creating a record the brand can check against both the factory's invoice and its own sell-through once the collection ships. A card isn't well suited to this kind of commitment, both because deposit and balance payments to overseas factories often move by wire rather than card, and because the decision deserves more documented scrutiny than a routine card swipe implies.

Sample development, fabric swatches, trim sourcing, sample garment production, is smaller, faster-moving, and less risky than a full production commitment, and it fits Ramp's card model well: quick purchases a designer can make without waiting on a formal approval chain. Keep this category on cards specifically so the design team isn't slowed down chasing purchase order approvals for a fabric swatch, while reserving the heavier requisition process for the production commitment that follows once a design is actually going into a collection.

Specialty retail and apparel businesses typically pay their own vendors in around 38.7 days¹, and for a brand that also sells wholesale to boutiques and stores rather than purely direct-to-consumer, the wait to collect on those wholesale invoices runs close to the broader small business average of 28.8 days². Neither figure captures the real risk in this industry, which is the months-long gap between the factory deposit and the first dollar of sell-through, but both are useful reference points for how tightly to manage the operating cash around that bigger seasonal commitment.

Import duties and customs costs on a production run should be estimated and documented alongside the purchase order itself, not discovered as a surprise line item when the shipment clears customs. Whichever tool handles the purchase order, build a field or a standard note for expected duty costs so the true landed cost per unit, not just the factory's invoice price, is what the brand is actually pricing and forecasting against.

A brand running one or two collections a year, with a small number of production commitments to track, can manage reasonably well on disciplined manual tracking paired with Ramp for everyday sample and operating spend. A brand running several collections in parallel, at different stages of the deposit-to-delivery cycle simultaneously, gets real value from Procurify's ability to track each commitment's terms and status without relying on memory. See Procurify vs Coupa vs Ramp for a third option to weigh.

Match each stage of the collection cycle to a control with these rules:

• Route factory deposits and production commitments through a purchase order that captures the design, quantity, delivery date and approver.
• Keep sample development, fabric swatches and trim sourcing on cards so designers are not slowed down by approval chains.
• Document an expected duty estimate on the purchase order so landed cost is known before the shipment clears customs.
• Track wholesale invoices to boutiques and stores separately from faster direct-to-consumer collections.
• Require a purchase order even for rush production slots, so rush fees and faster shipping stay on the record.

Say a buyer at a wholesale account asks for an unusually large reorder with a tight delivery window, and the brand's production team, eager to keep the account happy, calls the factory directly and confirms a rush production slot without routing it through the usual purchase order process first. The factory delivers on time, but the rush fee, a faster shipping method, and a slightly different fabric substitution to hit the deadline all show up on the final invoice with no record of who approved paying more to hit that date. Nobody did anything wrong exactly, but nobody can say afterward whether the account was worth the premium paid to serve it, since there's no documented decision to check against the outcome. The fix isn't slowing down every rush order with a full approval chain, since sometimes speed genuinely matters more than process. It's making sure even a fast, informal decision leaves a short written record: what changed, who approved paying more for it, and why. That record turns a one-off judgment call into information the brand can actually learn from the next time a similar request comes in.