Bill.com Blog

Employee Spotlight - Making the Climb

2012-05-29T14:04:48-07:00

Whew, it’s been almost four months since I joined the amazing Bill.com team. It’s been a whirlwind of excitement since then. Bill.com is a dynamic and fast-moving team completely dedicated to improving the lives of small- and mid-sized businesses through an innovative service. My new role as senior product manager means I spend my days working through a myriad of potential features and improvements we could make and choosing the “right” ones to build next. Then, I work with our awesome engineering team to bring those features or improvements to life inside Bill.com. It’s an exciting combination of artistic creativity and technical know-how — I love it.

When I’m not totally immersed in my work at Bill.com, my passion is focused at home. In 2003, I met my son Owen. He was only two days old and 4.5 lbs. He was the tiniest human being I had ever seen. I fell in love with him immediately and I finalized the adoption just a few months later. Time has flown by since then and many times I’ve felt like both he and I were climbing a mountain so high neither of us could see the top. In the nine years since we first met, he has been given dozens of diagnoses, which has currently been narrowed to three: autism spectrum disorder, visual processing disorder and executive functioning disorder. I won’t go into how that impacts our daily lives or the enormous number of specialists or therapists, or the amount of legal and medical help we have received over the last nine years, but I will tell you one thing you might not expect. Without a doubt, I’ve become a better person because of these challenges. Owen has single-handedly taught me patience, organization, the comfort of routine, joy in the little things, and courage to take on any challenge.

With all of these new skills at my ready, I have taken on new challenges myself. Through the challenge of advocating for his best interests, I was inspired to share what I’ve learned to empower and educate other parents with children like my son. These are people who really need support and courage to fight for the best possible education for their children. I primarily accomplish this through a parent support group I’ve organized and lead at my son’s small school in Palo Alto.

In 2010, Children’s Health Council in Palo Alto opened a new school specifically for children with needs similar to my son called Sand Hill School. The school’s mission is to provide a joyful and personalized learning environment for young, bright children with learning and attention challenges. Owen and I were accepted as one of the first six families for the first partial school year. The experience attending this school has dramatically changed life for both of us and I felt an urgent need to give back to the program that made such a huge impact in our lives.

The next school year, the school grew from six students to over 20 students. It became clear through conversations with fellow parents that we needed to leverage the immense skills and abilities we each possess to offer support, education and encouragement to others. That need drove my creation of our Sand Hill Families Group, whose goal is to support both the students and staff at the school as well as enhance the experience of the classroom by hosting and planning events and meetings which foster communication and learning for the entire family. The group works closely with the school staff and parents to offer a variety of programs and activities such as school pictures, staff appreciation celebrations, parent training, support groups, and fun, social outings.

As expected, taking on this role has been a challenge. I learned quickly that parents are a tough group to satisfy and it takes serious compromising and communication skills to navigate the issues that arise. Most recently, there was a significant uproar around the timing of the “End of the Year” Open House. Some parents wanted it during the daytime and some are working parents that need it to be in the evening. Finding a solution that works for everyone and working with the staff of the school to advocate for the best solution is my new challenge. It may sound tough but now I can sleep at night knowing my son is in the absolute best school possible and getting superior education from a staff that genuinely cares about his well-being. This leaves me plenty of mental and emotional fortitude to take on these – and other worthwhile challenges -- happily.

Sandra Edwards
Senior Product Manager
Bill.com

Answers.Bill.com: Top Tip - International Payments

2012-05-25T08:44:13-07:00

How do I make payments to International Vendors?

Our support team needs to enable international vendor payments for you and you can request this via Ask a Question or Live Chat. However, there are some things you should know:

Checks only - We pay international vendors by check with US dollars. We do not offer e-payments.
$10,000 limit - The regulatory limit is $10,000 in payments per day for each vendor.
$1.99 each - We charge you $1.99 for each of these payments (to cover the additional processing and mailing).
Allow 2-3 weeks - International payments take longer to reach the recipient than US payments. Allow 2-3 weeks of mailing time
Select Country - Select the vendor's country by editing the vendor's information and choosing it from the drop down menu. In certain cases, your vendors may have defaulted to US as a country, so it is worth checking to make sure the correct country is selected.

4 Questions for Andrew Cogen of Stepping Stone Tutors

2012-05-24T10:53:28-07:00

Q1. How did you get into your line of work?
My dad was a small business owner and even though I left for college with the mind set that I would return to my hometown of Albuquerque, NM to teach high school history, I believe it was always in my blood to follow in my dad’s footsteps and become a small business owner too. I always loved how my dad was in charge of his own schedule and didn’t have to answer to anyone other than himself.

After I graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder with a B.A. in European History, I worked a series of odd jobs that taught me new skillsets but weren’t very fulfilling. During the time I was learning new skills from my odd jobs, my wife presented me with an idea to start a new business called Stepping Stone Tutors. She was working as a tutor herself, but found it difficult to find customers and never felt too comfortable bringing up the subject of payment especially when people were past due. A few days later, I had a basic six page website and was setting up interviews with tutors at a local coffee shop in San Diego. I ran the company solo for about five years from our one bedroom apartment in Pacific Beach.

Q2. What have you learned through the school of hard knocks?
Try everything once, but don’t make the same mistake twice. When you are just starting your business there are people out there that want to “make your life easier” and spend your hard earned money towards that goal, whether or not it is in your best interest. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is, especially when it comes to advertising. I threw a lot of cash into small print publications in the early years (high school newspapers for example) and rarely, if ever, saw a return on my investment. Online advertising (for most things) is the way to go.

Q3. What keeps you up at night?
Everything! Will I have a good month or a bad month? Will that really good customer we have had for four years finally decide to move on? And if so we need to find another customer like him/her as a replacement? After sending out a bunch of invoices to our customers, will people be happy with us or not so much? Social media — we better get move on.

Q4. How has Bill.com helped your business grow?
We used to spend a lot of time dealing with payroll issues, especially mysterious missing checks in the mail. Many of the people that work for us move a lot and they don’t always let their employers know, so now with Bill.com, vendors can easily update this information on their own or I can do myself in about 30 seconds. Better yet, if I update a vendor in QuickBooks, it automatically updates in Bill.com the next time I perform sync.

In the old days, I used to manually write out checks, sign them, stick them in an envelope, address them, put a stamp on, and then drive to the post office. Bill.com has made all of this a thing of the past. Once I run the payroll I can set it and forget it. If someone has an issue, I just log into my account and can take a screen shot of the payment (when they should receive it and how much to expect) and email it to my vendor. The ACH transfers are great and if vendors don’t want to set that up, Bill.com will send them a paper check.

If a check gets “lost” now, I don’t need to call the bank, track down the check, put a stop/hold on it for $35 then go through the whole process of issuing a new check all over again. I swear my mailman had it out for me when I was getting Stepping Stone Tutors up and running, but I’ll never really know...

Join Stepping Stone Tutors on Facebook and Twitter.

Note: 4 Questions is a regular feature on the Bill.com blog where we ask the same 4 questions of a different Bill.com customer. Given the tremendous passion and can-do attitude of small and mid-sized businesses, we believe these same 4 Questions will result not in repeat answers, but in interesting insight into many different journeys. Want to be profiled? Tweet @billcom or email us and let us know!

Case Study: Dental Professionals of Texas

2012-05-22T07:52:36-07:00

Dental Professionals of Texas - Saving over 670 hours in processing more than 2,276 bills a month

Keeping track of different methods of payments. Paying bills every which way. Trying to remember due dates. It’s easy to get out of control when you’re managing the financials for multiple dental practices.That is, until you’re managing their back office with one easy to use tool: Bill.com.

Dental Professionals of Texas is a dental management and practice development firm located in Irving, Texas. The company provides knowledge; guidance and personalized systems to over 50 independently owned and operated dental offices in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.

Needed More than a Bi-annual Cleaning
Dr. Tang & Dr. Villanueva, Owners of Dental Professionals of Texas, describes the state of accounts payable before they implemented Bill.com: “Bills were being paid every way you can imagine. Some were on auto draft, some were being paid by credit card—it was a mess!” The Texas-based firm easily handles the day-to-day office tasks—including financial management—for multiple practices all from one location.

“Each office functions individually,” explains VP of Finance, Mary Pu, “They have different owners, and in many cases, different vendors. Items like their rent and vendor bills all have varying due dates. With a lot of information to keep track of and no organized system in place, we reached a point where it was clear we needed to take control,” recalls Mary. “We learned about Bill.com through our CPA, who had been using Bill.com’s services and thoughtthat they would be a perfect fit for us.”

The doctors asked their accounting team to find a financial solution that would not only integrate with QuickBooks, but also allow for future growth of their business. After coming across Bill.com, they found its integration with QuickBooks was the key to managing the offices’ accounting functions seamlessly, without any disruption to their existing processes. One can imagine the amount of data passed between QuickBooks and Bill.com every day—and appreciate the importance of accuracy.

“Bill.com synchronizes with QuickBooks beautifully. Everything is very neat and clean!” raves Mary, who adds, “the reconciliation process is exact, and I can easily see how it all works, how everything fits together.” Like a fine-tuned machine, the interplay between the two systems keeps the back offices running—and payments flowing to the large number of vendors awaiting them each month.

Bill.com Polished Our Finances
Dental Professionals of Texas initially implemented Bill.com across 20 offices. Now, nine months later,” says Mary, “we have over 52 offices—that means we’re managing over 52 Bill.com accounts! To be able to use this solution to streamline everything and remind us what’s due is much more efficient and we can save on hiring bookkeeper to do all the functionally that Bill.com has in their program! Bill.com has given us control over our workflow—which is the workflow of about 2,276 bills a month across more than 52 back offices.”

Mary depends on Bill.com to help her staff manage Accounts Payable, which would otherwise be unwieldy.“Each practice has different vendors, and each vendor receives payments in different ways—most through Bill.com ePayments or a Bill.com check, but others through automatic draft,” she says. “With a Bill.com ACH ePayment, we’ll just send the vendor an email to have them sign up to receive payment. It’s very efficient. And we still post payments for automatic drafts that are paid outside of Bill.com because they synchronize with QuickBooks and we have an image of the invoice in Bill.com to back up the payment.”

With respect to the security of bills paid through Bill.com, Mary finds peace of mind. “I feel very safe with Bill.com,” she relates. “The verification process Bill.com puts in is pretty intensive, with each user required to verify information and the audit trail is very helpful. Bill.com tracks who is making that transaction, so I do feel very safe.”

Bill.com has enhanced the way the entire accounting staff share information about vendors. “I love the way we notate everything electronically in Bill.com,” says Mary. “Everything is organized by vendor so if someone access the same account after me, they can figure out what is going on for that specific vendor. It’s easy to follow with the notation. It’s perfect! We try to put as much information as we can into Bill.com.”

The notations are especially handy when it comes to vendor credits. “Bill.com helps us track and use vendor credits,” says Mary, who explains that when vendors send an invoice with a credit amount, we are able to apply it to future invoices and then balance the account. Additionally, Bill.com stores vendor documents and makes them available at their fingertips. “It’s great that we can save documents in Bill.com per vendors,” Mary attests. “We’ll add contracts and any other related paperwork into each vendor’s folder for future reference. And by making our contract and records management more efficient by storing them in Bill.com, we have dramatically reduced operational and off site Iron Mountain storage costs”

Mary and her team also make great use of Bill.com’s automated reminders, which help them keep track of recurring bills—their vendors, due dates, and even what day the bill should be created. “I’m always referring to the ‘Manage recurring’ tab,” Mary says.“When you have so many bills coming in and out, you don’t know what you did two seconds ago,” she continues.“Before Bill.com, payments were going from everywhere. Now I schedule them in Bill.com. Once scheduled and streamlined, a lot of time is saved.”

Another benefit of Bill.com’s reminders involves the all-important cash flow. Mary’s senior accountant depends on Bill.com to help her manage it. “We have the cash projections on an Excel spreadsheet and use the CashView Transactions in Bill.com to update it.”

Now Everyone is Smiling
By using Bill.com Mary and her team save over 670 hours in processing more than 2,276 bills a month. “All in all, I find Bill.com extremely easy to use. I’d absolutely recommend Bill.com to other businesses, especially if they’re like us, and managing many clients or accounts. It’s perfect for that.” As for the future, Mary reports, “our team is very satisfied with Bill.com and we’re looking forward to putting it to greater use. We are looking to use their Accounts Receivables features in the future.”

Bill.com enables Dental Professionals of Texas to manage a growing number of dental practices. It has given finance greater control over vendor management, bill payment, and other daily accounting tasks. By providing a central command and control center to manage each office’s individual financials, Bill.com has allowed Mary to streamline processes and stay organized—allowing them to provide better, faster, and more accurate service to their growing business.

Download the complete case study here

Answers.Bill.com: Top Tip - Bill.com System Security

2012-05-18T14:43:42-07:00

How do I know Bill.com is secure?

At Bill.com, your security and privacy is our top priority. We take a number of steps to ensure your documents and data are kept private and always available to you:

256-bit Encryption: we use the same encryption that the banks use so that your data is protected when you connect to our site. Our encryption runs at up to 256 bits, based on your browser’s settings.
Firewalls and intrusion-detection devices prevent unauthorized electronic access to servers.
Database encryption: we encrypt any sensitive information when it is stored in our database.
Redundant back up: your data and documents are stored on redundant servers so that we immediately make two copies of everything. We back up the data to separate media and regularly move a copy of the backups to a second secure facility which enables Bill.com to recover from a potential disaster quickly.
Completed a SOC 1, Type 2 Audit (formerly known as a SAS 70, Type 2) by a leading national CPA Firm.
Verisign Secured.
Funds FDIC insured.
Controlled access: our servers are in high-security locked facility with biometric access controls.. We have guards and video surveillance 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. To enter the facility, employees must have an ID card, a PIN, and a full hand scan on file. All Bill.com employees go through a background check.
Privacy: we have worked with TRUSTe to make sure that we also provide industry-leading privacy for your data.

File Attachments:

Bill.com Integrates with NetSuite to Deliver Seamless Cloud-Based Financial Management

2012-05-15T07:59:00-07:00

NetSuite customers now have integrated access to Bill.com’s best-in-class bill payment, approval and processing solution

PALO ALTO, CALIF. — May 15, 2012 – Bill.com, the leader in integrated bill payment, online invoicing and cash flow management solutions for businesses, today announced seamless integration with NetSuite’s (NYSE: N) cloud computing platform. NetSuite is the industry’s leading provider of cloud-based financials/ERP software suites.

Bill.com’s award-winning Cash Flow Command and Control™ System provides NetSuite’s users with a new and easy way to automate their bill pay and workflow online. The ability to pay bills, eliminate redundant data entry, collaborate with vendors, simplify paper management and sync the entire bill payment process with NetSuite enables them to save time and get back to what matters most – their business, not their bills.

“Prior to Bill.com, we were preparing paper-based check runs and dealing with delays as we waited on CEOs for their signatures,” said Mairtini Ni Dhomhnaill, senior vice president, National Business Outsourcing Solutions of Accretive Solutions. “We have since integrated Bill.com with more than 65 of our clients who are currently using NetSuite. Apart from the advantage of a paperless vendor payment process, the Bill.com Sync for NetSuite is more efficient, highly intuitive, extremely easy to use and very effective in helping us process our clients’ bills faster than before. Bill.com also enables us to be more nimble and focus on providing higher value services to our clients. The solution has allowed us to engage with more clients, serve existing clients better and make our practice more competitive.”

Key Benefits of the Bill.com Sync for NetSuite include:

Reduction in payables time and expense of at least 50 percent
The elimination of manual check printing and mailing
The ability to pay anyone electronically: billers, smaller vendors and even employees
End-to-end, document-centric payables workflow that ensures consistency and quality across all financial processes and reporting
Elimination of check fraud: checks are written on Bill.com’s account; not the customers’ account
No preset payment limits
Super easy setup: get started in hours
Elimination of double-data entry: all payables information is automatically synched including bills, payments, vendors, GL accounts, departments and locations
Unlimited digital storage and end-to-end paper management for every transaction, leaving a complete audit trail
Anywhere, anytime access to all documents, vendor bills, and payment processing from the office or in a mobile environment
Comprehensive insight of cash flow forecasting and ability to take immediate action with Bill.com’s Cash Flow Command and Control™ System, the only solution that connects your banks, your books and your business

Bill.com’s two-way synchronization accelerates NetSuite’s robust business solution, which already provides support for financial documents, accounting, inventory, and e-commerce. The new financial transaction functionality offered by Bill.com has made manual check and lengthy payment approval processes a relic of the past. Bill.com eliminates the burdensome manual check-writing process by facilitating electronic payments to any vendor, or if needed, writing checks for them. It also maps to internal approval processes allowing for a seamless collaboration within the organization. And, with the click of a button on any mobile device or Web browser, users can sync data between Bill.com and NetSuite, efficiently streamlining business functions in real time.

“We are excited to bring new, extended capabilities to the NetSuite cloud computing platform that help customers eliminate hassles and simplify their entire bill payment and approval process,” said René Lacerte, CEO and Founder of Bill.com. “Now all NetSuite customers can benefit from Bill.com’s best-in-class solution.”

Pricing and Availability:
The Bill.com NetSuite Sync is available immediately with pricing starting at $89.99/month. To learn more, prospective and existing customers should visit: http://www.bill.com/pricing/index.php.

About Bill.com
Bill.com is a cash flow command and control system that manages accounts payables and receivables for businesses of all sizes. Offering online bill pay, custom invoicing services, unlimited document storage, collaboration tools, and mobile access, Bill.com's services easily syncs to customers' accounting software programs and online bank accounts to better control company financials. Bill.com guards against errors and employs enterprise-class fraud protections that current methods cannot match. More than 100,000 companies are now getting paid and paying millions of bills worth billions of dollars using Bill.com. Financial institutions can now offer these benefits to their business customers by integrating Bill.com with their banking platform.

###

Contact
Allison Yochim
Finn Partners for Bill.com
415-348-2724
Allison@finnpartners.com

Answer.Bill.com: Top Tip - Review Billing Detail

2012-05-11T08:00:00-07:00

Where can I go in my account to review my billing detail?

If you are being billed directly:
1. Hover over the
2. Click Settings > Overview.
3. Click Statements in the Your Account With Us box and click the appropriate date link to drill down.

If you are being billed by your accountant or other professional services firm:
1. Contact your accountant or service provider about your bill.

If you are an accountant or professional services firm who is billed for your client accounts:
1. From your dashboard, click the name of your Console on the left and click Manage
    Console. Or from any account in your list click the, click View All, the name of your
    console on the left, then Click Manage Console.
2. From the Console, click Billing > Statements
3. Click on the appropriate date link to drill down to the statement level of detail.
4. You can then click on each client name to drill further into that client's billing details.

Bill.com Wins Barlow Research Client Conference Innovation Showcase Award

2012-05-07T07:07:47-07:00

Forty Leading Financial Institutions and Service Providers Vote Bill.com as “Best in Show” at Annual Conference Focused on Business Banking

PALO ALTO, CALIF. — May 7, 2012 —Bill.com, the leader in integrated bill payment, online invoicing and cash flow management solutions for businesses, today proudly announced that the company received the “Best in Show” award at the ninth annual Barlow Research Client Conference, held April 24-25 in Atlanta. Representatives from more than 40 financial institutions were present to vote Bill.com as the award winner.

Bill.com brought home top honors by delivering an entertaining yet highly informative demonstration of its new cash flow management platform, which for the first time enables banks to deliver powerful AP, AR and cash flow management capabilities to their business customers all in one easy-to-use solution. The Bill.com platform takes all the off-line activities of managing cash flow and moves it to the bank, allowing banks to monetize the full cash management process while solving a significant pain point for their business customers.

"It’s a tremendous honor to receive the Barlow Research Innovation Showcase Award, especially as it is voted on by actual bankers who can benefit considerably from the new Bill.com platform,” said Bill.com CEO and Founder René Lacerte. “We view the award as a testament to the new opportunities we are creating in helping banks create deeper relationships with their most valuable business customers, generate new revenue opportunities and make the bank the core of their customers’ business. With this award and our first bank already launched, we are experiencing remarkable momentum at the outset.”

The 2012 Annual Barlow Client Conference focused on “The Future of Business Banking” and brought together professionals involved in marketing financial services to small business and middle market customers. Attendees had the opportunity to examine business processes, new services, marketing methods, business strategies and technologies that impact today’s and tomorrow’s business banking world. Two years ago, Bill.com was also one of the recipients of Barlow’s 2010 Monarch Innovation Award, given annually to financial institutions and industry partners that provide the most innovative banking products for business customers.

“The Innovation Showcase allows our bank clients to view the latest and most exciting technology offered by leading solutions providers,” said Barlow Research Associates President John Barlow. “The Best in Show Award represents the top honor according to financial institutions and service providers. Bill.com’s product innovation and focus on client service resonates with today’s business banking community and we’re pleased to honor them with the award for Best in Show.”

###

Contacts:
Johanna Wojciak
415-348-2734
Johanna@finnpartners.com

Allison Yochim
415-348-2724
Allison@finnpartners.com

Answer.Bill.com: Top Tip - Approving & Denying a Bill

2012-05-04T08:50:39-07:00

How do I approve or deny a bill?
It’s easy to approve a bill and advance the workflow or schedule a bill for payment. You can also deny a payment, or even remove yourself from the Bill.com approval process for a particular bill.

To Approve a Bill
1. Click the Payables tab.
2. Click My Bills. By default, you will see the bills you have not yet approved.
3. In the Not yet Approved table, under the Review column, click the review icon next to the Invoice Number of the bill you wish to approve. An image of this bill now displays on its own page, along with an Approve Bill box.
4. Click Approve. If you had selected Show next bill, the next bill to be approved will display. Otherwise, the My Bills page now displays again.

Note: You can also quickly approve one or more bills directly from the My Bills page by selecting the bills and clicking on Approve button.  

To Deny a Bill
1. Click the Payables tab.
2. Click My Bills.
3. In the Not yet Approved table, under the Review column, click the review icon next to the Invoice Number of the bill you wish to approve. An image of this bill now displays on its own page, along with an Approve Bill box.
4. Click Deny. If you had selected Show next bill, the next bill to be approved will display. Otherwise, the My Bills page now displays again.

Don't Miss Our Upcoming Webinar with Doug Sleeter: "Paradigm Shifts in Finance & Accounting Technology"

2012-05-03T09:58:21-07:00

There is increasing pressure on businesses and accounting firms of all sizes to
find solutions in the cloud. But the world of accounting technology is in flux. It can be difficult to understand the fundamental shifts that are happening and how they will change the way we do business and collaborate as finance and accounting professionals.

Join me at our exciting webinar on May 10th featuring accounting industry thought leader Doug Sleeter. Doug will talk about the latest paradigm shifts in accounting technology and what you need to know to fully leverage these changes. You’ll learn about “chunkification” of business processes and critical new skills that are needed to collaborate effectively in a “zero data entry” world.

Don’t miss this exciting webinar. Register now.

Christy Ross
Vice President of Strategic Partners
Bill.com