Bill.Com Expands the Power of QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online

by

Vendor Corner

QuickBooks® (QB) and QuickBooks® Online (QBO) are powerful accounting applications for running small and midsize businesses. They record transactions and begin the process of preparing an accurate depiction of your business finances. The integration of Bill.com with either of these applications brings the added capabilities of routing bills for approval, moving funds from your clients’ banks to the receivers’ bank, and storing the payment information and supporting documentation in an accessible from anywhere environment.

Bill.com will gives any business using QuickBooks® or QuickBooks® Online the following benefits:

  • Maintain internal controls: You or your clients can route bills for approval according to internal policies of the business
  • Save time with one-click payments: Your client can get rid of check printing and envelope stuffing equipment, and eliminate ACH file uploads to their banks
  • Business-class payments capabilities: Bill.com fulfills the payment needs of businesses. It eliminates payment limits and guarantees imposed on the paying organizations. In addition, it delivers full remittance information to vendors -- including for ACH. Furthermore, Bill.com fully eliminates payment fraud
  • Manage payment exceptions with ease: When payment exceptions arise, Bill.com lets you and your clients manage them proactively, minimizing the work to resolve them
  • No-hassle file storage and retrieval: Bill.com automatically stores all relevant payment information together, including the original invoice and the cleared check image. Therefore, when payment questions arise, finding the answers is simple
  • No double data entry: Because Bill.com syncs with QB and QBO, you or your clients can update the accounting system with one click

With Bill.com, QB and QBO clients get unique controls and efficiencies unmatched by the bank services or other payment solutions they would typically use with their accounting systems. The figure below illustrates the typical workflow associated with Bill.com.

So with this brief overview behind us, let's look at these benefits in a little greater detail.

Maintain Internal Controls

Bill.com automates the routing of bills to designated reviewers to approve. Requestors no longer spend time chasing down approvals, expediting the turnaround time for payments. And because payment approval requests are sent to the appropriate individuals to review, the documents are more secure. They are less likely to be emailed inadvertently to individuals with whom the documents should not be shared or languish on someone’s desk for passers-by to read.

In addition, the Bill.com workflow engine and payment audit trails demonstrate the establishment of internal controls by your client and the integrity of their financial statements.

Save Time with One-Click Payments

With Bill.com, you or your clients can pay via check or ACH. Pay bills without printing and mailing checks, or uploading ACH files to your banks’ systems — Bill.com does all of that for you. In addition, you can select when the payment should be delivered and from which bank account the payment should be made.

Business Class Payments Capabilities

Because Bill.com was built for businesses, it delivers payment capabilities needed by businesses:

  • Supports business payments and delivers full remittance: Bill.com eliminates payment limits and guarantees typically required of consumers.  When a user makes a payment via Bill.com, the vendor will receive an email notification, remittance number, the invoice numbers paid, and the process date. If the payment is via ACH, we also include the date the payment will be delivered to the vendor’s bank. The full remittance information on a Bill.com payment is a significant advantage over the ACH services from banks and other payment providers which usually limit remittance information to a few character spaces, making reconciliation of payments challenging.

Payments made via check will include full remittance information, the business’ contact information, any vendors credits that were applied, and an image of the first page of the bill (if only one bill is being paid). If multiple bills are paid with one check, we include a table referencing each bill, by invoice number, on the check stub.

  • Eliminates payment fraud: Bill.com eliminates payment fraud in two ways. First, checks are cut on our bank account. Your clients’ bank account information is never printed on checks. Second, vendors do not have to provide bank account information to customers in order to accept electronic payments. This contrasts with other ACH payment services that require vendors to share account information with customers to set up ACH payments. 
  • Boosts vendor acceptance of ACH: The processing costs of ACH are much lower than those for checks. Yet vendors often resist ACH because of limited remittance information and security concerns from sharing bank account information with customers. Bill.com resolves both issues, spurring vendor adoption.

Manage Payment Exceptions with Ease

Bill.com provides unprecedented support for all payments until they are delivered to the recipient. You or your clients can leverage our customer support to mitigate payment issues, including voided payments, reissued payments, and credits.

No Hassle File Storage and Retrieval

When you and your clients pay a bill, Bill.com automatically stores the payment information with the original invoice, payment audit trail, and any supporting documents. When the payment clears, Bill.com also stores the cleared check image.

With this advanced storage capabilities, looking for answers to payment questions will no longer disrupt your workday. The answers are easy to find and collated together.

No Double Data Entry

Bill.com syncs with QB and QBO, so you and your clients never have to re-enter vendor and payment data into the accounting system, or upload ACH files to banks. What’s more, the first sync is often accomplished within an hour. After the first sync, integration between the two applications is done in seconds, and can be set up to run automatically every 24 hours.

Summary

Its clear to see that Bill.com complements the accounts payable process whether you are using QuickBooks or QuickBooks Online by providing:

  • Full-service check and ACH payments
  • Automated payment approval workflows
  • Integrated document management
  • Fully detailed payment audit trails
  • Accounting sync which eliminates double data entry

Bill.com in conjunction with with QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online delivers capabilities, efficiencies, and controls that can transform any businesses back-end operation. If you haven't explored Bill.com for either your own practice or for one of your clients, you should give it a thorough look, you can learn more at Bill.com, or better yet sign-up for a free 30-day trial; heck you don't even need a credit-card until your trial is over.

Editor's Note: Thanks to J'aime Davis, Director of Sales Enablement at Bill.com for taking 30-minutes of time away from her busy schedule during the Cloud Summit 2014 in order to give me the interview, information and graphics from which this article was prepared.