Bill.com Blog

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

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.

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

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

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

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.”

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 using Bill.com as its business-banking platform.

 

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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

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"

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

Bringing the Rest of the Business World to the Cloud

Over the past 15 years the business software industry made a dramatic shift to the software as a service model (SaaS). Innovators like Salesforce.com and NetSuite pioneered this shift. Now many companies no longer host their own data — SaaS companies provide a web-based UI (User Interface) for users to capture data. That data is then stored in the “cloud” and retrieved in some meaningful way - often in the form of a UI, a reminder, a report, or an API call.  These companies basically provided a database on the World Wide Web for data storage and retrieval.  

Bill.com is among a group of SaaS companies that goes beyond the typical data-in/data-out model. Instead of just being a place to store your data, we actually do something with it; i.e., integrate data from your accounting package, bank accounts, vendors, and customers, and put that data to work for you.

For example, when you create an invoice in your accounting software, it is automatically synced to Bill.com, where it gets sent to your customer and offers them easy payment options that sync back to your accounting software and bank account, via Bill.com.

For bill management, Bill.com eliminates hours of paperwork by automatically syncing a bill into your accounting software and moving money from your bank account to your vendor. Our CashView feature helps to predict and control your day-to-day cash flow, projecting your future inflows, outflows, and balances, all in one line graph, with a more powerful and useable cash management tool than any spreadsheet can offer.

Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable = Cash Management – that’s what Bill.com does! We don’t just live online — we impact traditional business by integrating your accounting systems and banks, connecting your vendors, customers, and employees to you by bridging the digital and analog world. Money gets moved, checks and invoices get sent out, and paper documents become digitized — all via the Bill.com Cash Flow Command and Control™ Center.

Eric Chan
CTO
Bill.com

Answer.Bill.com: Top Tip - Inviting a Vendor to be Paid Electronically

How do I invite a vendor to join Bill.com (for free) and accept ePayments?   

1. Click Payables > Vendors and the Setup ePayments button.
2. Click the Invite Vendors button.
3. Select the vendors you'd like to invite and click Next.
4. Enter any missing email addresses (so we can send the invitation) and if you'd like, the phone number (optional).
5. Customize the invitation on the following page.
6. Optional: Click the checkbox to require a unique code for additional security (which you will have to give the vendor     verbally).
7. Click Send Invite.
 
When your vendor clicks the email link to establish a free account and enters their bank account and routing number, we'll switch their payment method to ePayment and send you an email to let you know.

Bill.com April 2012 Release

Clearer picture of cash flow - CashView
Haven’t yet checked your CashView? We start with your bank balance, subtract the bills you’re scheduled to pay, and add the payments you’re scheduled to receive. Have some bills outside of Bill.com? Or some non-bill activity, like payroll? No problem, we bring it all into focus.  

Already seen your CashView? We’ve got more to show you! Pinpoint where you need to take action by reviewing the enhanced CashView chart. See anything unexpected or out of the ordinary? Check the transaction details immediately below the chart for answers. And if you sync with QuickBooks for Windows or Intacct, we automatically keep your CashView bank balance up-to-date.

If you’ve been wrestling with a spreadsheet to decipher your cash flow, the wrestling match is over. Picture your future, take action today.

Tighter bond with vendors - ePayment
You want to pay vendors electronically, because it makes life easier for you. You don’t want to annoy them with a confusing invitation to do so, or something full of marketing lingo. You want it to be simple for vendors to accept your electronic payments, and you want them to know it’s free and convenient to them.

Got it. We’ve made it easier for you to invite vendors to receive electronic payments, and easier for them to accept. Invite vendors using your language (not ours) and your logo. Use the same message for all your vendors, or tailor the messages individually. When vendors accept your invitation, we’ve reduced and simplified the steps they need to take. Making life easier, for everyone. 

Better details - Payables Export Reports
Want more from the Accrual, Cash, or Unpaid Accrual Reports? We now include fields for Bill (and line level) descriptions, as well as for Department, Class, Location, and Customer/Job. Pull more details out of Bill.com for your accounting system, your clients, or wherever you need them


Easier sync setup - QuickBooks for Windows
Haven’t yet set up to sync the details of your payables or receivables from QuickBooks for Windows? Maybe you’ve been too busy. Or confused. Or a little intimidated?

That’s what we thought, so we’ve simplified things a bit. We step you through easy-to-answer questions, and we ask only what’s absolutely necessary.

After you set up, you’re ready to sync your Chart of Accounts, vendors, customers, items, invoices, and classes from QuickBooks for Windows. With all those details synced into Bill.com, you’re free to focus on paying bills and invoicing customers.

Faster learning - Video Tutorials
Get the most out of Bill.com, as quickly as possible. We’ve gathered and organized videos that cover the essentials onto one page. Each video typically runs for just a minute, so you learn what you need, then get back to business.

Want to learn more?
View the April 2012 Release Highlights Webcast download the April 2012 Release Slide Deck or visit answers.bill.com

Employee Spotlight - Giving Back With The Carters

I recently joined Bill.com as the Director of Training, and am really excited about helping to transform the world of financial services with our unique cloud-based cash management platform. One of the reasons I joined Bill.com was because of a meeting I had with our CEO René Lacerte. He expressed to me Bill.com’s vision of creating a culture where each of us can not only contribute to the bottom line, but also contribute to making the world a better place. It was important to him that we have a shared value system that put not only our customers first, but our communities as well. That message resonated with me, and as a person who has made a career helping others improve their performance and their lives, it’s vitally important to me that the work I do give back to the community and the world. I’d like to take a minute today to share with you an organization I’m affiliated with that really is trying to make a positive change in the world: The Carter Center.

The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn and is in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide. A non-governmental organization, the Center has helped to improve life for people in more than 70 countries by resolving conflicts, advancing democracy and human rights, preventing diseases, improving mental health care, and teaching farmers to increase crop production.

My involvement with The Carter Center began in 2007, when I met with a couple of volunteers who were local to the Bay Area, and were asking me questions about social media and how they could get started with a Facebook page. I dug a bit deeper, and decided to get more involved with the work they do. I joined the Ambassador’s Circle, which is a group of Carter Center volunteers who help guide and direct specific aspects of the Center’s work.

If you step back and look at some of the accomplishments the Carter Center has made, you’d quickly realize how much impact the organization has had throughout the world:   
       
● Observing 90 elections in 36 countries to help establish and strengthen democracies.
● Teaching techniques that have helped more than 8 million small-scale farmers in 15 African nations to double or triple grain production.   
● Furthering avenues to peace in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Liberia, Sudan, Uganda, the Korean Peninsula, Haiti, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Middle East.       
● Strengthening international standards for human rights and the voices of individuals defending those rights in their communities worldwide.               
● Advancing efforts to improve mental health care and diminish stigma against people with mental illnesses.

Since my involvement with the Carter Center began, I have had the pleasure of traveling to the Atlanta offices several times to meet with organizers and donors and help to explain and discuss the Center’s peace programs with visitors. I’ve been fortunate to meet with Mr. and Mrs. Carter as well, and even became friends with Mr. Carter’s Navy bunkmate! I find the work I do with the Carter Center to be rewarding and fulfilling because it exposes me to a wide cross-section of local, national, and international issues facing people all over the world.

One program that I try to be as involved with as I can is the Center’s Americas Peace Program. In 2011, the Americas Program held a Dialogue Forum with influential citizens from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and the United States. Over the course of several meetings, the group was able to recommend ways to improve cooperation and provide a report on drug policy in the Andean region.

Although all the programs supported by the Center are important, I find the Health Programs to have the most direct and positive impact on the people the programs serve. The Center leads campaigns to halt diseases like the Guinea worm. The Guinea worm disease is a painful and debilitating condition caused by a waterborne parasite. Through use of simple tools like health education and fine mesh filter cloths to strain infective larvae from drinking water, cases of Guinea worm disease have been reduced more than 99.9 percent since 1986, from 3.5 million to fewer than 1,100 in 2011. We are also working on eliminating river blindness, blinding trachoma, and lymphatic filariasis.
               
The Carter Center helps families around the world fulfill their potential and lead healthier lives. I’m proud to be involved in the great work the Center is doing. I’m also proud that all of us at Bill.com find it important to give back to our communities, and the world in which we live!

Brandon Carson
Director of Training
Bill.com

Mercantile Bank of Michigan Becomes First Financial Institution to Partner with Bill.com

Bill.com’s first of its kind banking platform provides Mercantile’s customers seamless access to AP, AR and cash flow management capabilities

PALO ALTO, CALIF. – April 23, 2012 – Bill.com, the leader in integrated bill payment, online invoicing and cash flow management solutions for businesses, today announced that Mercantile Bank of Michigan (NASDAQ: MBWM) has standardized its online business banking services on the award-winning Bill.com platform. Mercantile Bank of Michigan is the first financial institution to utilize Bill.com’s platform and provide its customers with seamless access to robust AP, AR and cash flow management capabilities all in one easy-to-use solution.

By partnering with Bill.com, Mercantile Bank of Michigan is providing a game-changing toolset that enables deeper relationships with its most valuable customers and positions the bank at the core of its customers’ business. Mercantile Bank of Michigan is also streamlining its business banking services and improving efficiencies due to the holistic and unified financial services offering. 

“At Mercantile Bank of Michigan, we are always looking for innovative and secure ways to help our customers manage their businesses more effectively,” said John Schulte, senior vice president/CIO, Mercantile Bank of Michigan. “By partnering with Bill.com, we are able to provide our business customers with long-term added value by giving them authenticated access to Bill.com’s suite of banking services in a centralized hub.”

The Bill.com platform provides Mercantile Bank of Michigan business customers a solution that automates manual processes and makes it seamless to send and receive payments through multiple payment channels. It also helps businesses manage cash more effectively by providing a comprehensive view into their cash flow position for better decision making. Mercantile Bank of Michigan customers benefit from an integrated experience that includes single sign-on (SSO); one click setup of their company, users and bank accounts; and the ability to pay and get paid immediately after setup.

In addition, Mercantile Bank of Michigan’s customers gain the ability to collaborate with their vendor and customer networks, while a powerful and comprehensive cash flow dashboard offers fast and reliable control over all of their critical cash flow information. The Bill.com platform also replaces static and unwieldy spreadsheet-based accounting processes, positioning online banking as the core cash flow management tool.

Unlike most online banking systems for business that are infrequently visited by banking customers, customers using the Bill.com platform login on average two times per day to follow up on a receivable, review and approve a bill, make a payment, or perform other financial tasks. Furthermore, given the comprehensive nature of the Bill.com platform, many more people from the business login in regularly – from the CFO keeping an eye on cash to a line manager approving a bill. In addition, Mercantile Bank of Michigan customers using the Bill.com platform will be automatically introducing their network of customers and vendors to these powerful new services.

“The vast capabilities the Bill.com platform offers has created tremendous efficiency for our business,” said Cliff Walkington, a Mercantile Bank of Michigan customer from Hammond Farms  in the greater Michigan area. “We no longer have to rely on manual processes, view separate cash flow pages or waste time looking for information when doing our business banking. By logging onto Mercantile Bank of Michigan’s website, we can focus on what we do best as a landscaping materials supplier, which is to service our customers rather than spend countless hours on cash management.”

In addition to SSO, bank branding and seamless on-boarding capabilities, Bill.com is extending its platform to offer banks many options for integrating their current online banking environment to the Bill.com solution. The platform now offers even more branding customization options to support financial institutions’ desire for brand consistency.

“Our partnership with Mercantile Bank of Michigan reiterates the importance of providing their customers with a single platform to seamlessly manage all financial transactions within one system,” said René Lacerte, CEO and founder of Bill.com. “We are confident there is no other platform in the market that is more complete or is as easy to use as ours, and we encourage other financial institutions to take a closer look at what Mercantile Bank of Michigan is doing to benefit their customers.”

For more information about the Bill.com financial platform for banks, please contact Bill.com at banks@hq.bill.com.

About Mercantile Bank Corporation
Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Mercantile Bank Corporation is the bank holding company for Mercantile Bank of Michigan. Founded in 1997 to provide banking services to businesses, individuals and governmental units, the Bank differentiates itself on the basis of service quality and the expertise of its banking staff. Mercantile has seven full-service banking offices in Grand Rapids, Holland and Lansing, Michigan. Mercantile Bank Corporation’s common stock is listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “MBWM.”

 

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 the benefits of Bill.com to its business customers by using Bill.com as its business-banking platform.