Blog

By Lisa Lang, SVP Marketing

They’re texting now instead of sending email. SnapChatting instead of tweeting or posting on Facebook. Some of them have never owned a CD or DVD. Many have never addressed an envelope or written a check – and never will. And by the way, there are 76 million of them in the U.S. alone, with $200 billion in spending power. What does all this mean for your business? 

Demographers call them the Millennials, or Generation-Y (as in “y r u still writing checks?”). Planet-wide, there are about a billion of them. The oldest of them turned 30 just last year. Soon they’ll be running everything. 

They’re wired 24/7 (wirelessly, of course). And one of their greatest impacts on business of all kinds is their continuing, unstoppable shift away from paper-based, manual processes, to the most recent digital technology.

“Remember how impatient you felt the last time you were forced to wait in line while someone ahead of you took forever writing a check?” asked one young finance manager recently. “That’s how we feel when you bog us down at the office with paperwork or send us a form we can’t fill out online.”

No wonder the Federal Reserve Bank reports that check use is steadily declining. Over the last decade, the average daily volume of commercial checks fell from 67.0 million in 2000 to just 26.4 million in 2012 – a drop of 60.5%.

Of course, Generation-Y is just one reason for the rapid demise of the check in favor of electronic payments. Business owners of all ages benefit from an automated cash flow system that allows the business to pay and get paid electronically – all from a mobile device.

Companies that convert to paperless, cloud-based systems such as Bill.com experience streamlined internal processes and substantial cost savings. Management gets mobile access to documents and data from anywhere at any time, enabling more immediate insight into business performance and better decision making. Executives gain more time to focus on strategic priorities.

And going digital isn’t just for payments. While you’re at it, why not digitize all your documents from now on, and store them in the cloud? Eliminate the time spent filing paper (and the time spent searching for misfiled paper) with one-click access from wherever you need to be. Employ the space now taken up by filing cabinets more usefully. Employ your employees more productively. More and more companies are updating their processes in all these ways now.

For all these reasons, going paperless would be a smart decision in any case. But now there’s an added incentive: As more and more of these mobile, digitally active young people become your customers, vendors and peers, their world view is becoming the dominant paradigm. It’s just good business to fit in. 

   By Christina Del Villar, Senior Director Marketing

CourseSmart, LLC is doing very well today – even though CFO Patti Randall’s dog loves eating books. “When we first launched in 2007, we were a bit concerned,” she says. However, her dog’s strange appetite was the least of the founders’ worries back then.

The iPhone was brand new, Twitter was only a year old, and no one yet foresaw how established processes and revenue models in virtually every business were about to be slammed by the rapidly oncoming shift away from paper-based, manual processes to the new digital and mobile technologies.

For many traditional publishers, the impact has been devastating, but for CourseSmart the shift has meant a rapid rise to the top. Now the world’s largest provider of digital course materials for college students, CourseSmart offers nearly 40,000 titles from more than 50 publishers, selling over 90% of the top-selling textbooks – at up to 60% off the paper version prices.

“Our real concern back then was that adoption might be slow,” says Randall. “We thought it might take longer for students’ behavior to change. But as it turns out, eTextbooks are the fastest growing part of the textbook industry, growing at five times the rate of print textbooks. College students today work, think and operate in a digital world. They even read their textbooks on their smartphones.”

Despite the company’s vision to transition textbooks from print to pixels, ironically, CourseSmart’s own offices were awash in cash flow management paperwork at first, until Bill.com came to the rescue. 

"Bill.com has done for us what we do for our customers – eliminated the paper."  Patti Randall, CFO of CourseSmart

 “I used to dread coming in on the days when a two-inch thick blue folder would be waiting on my desk, full of checks to sign.  I had to go through each one, make sure the back-up was there and match the check, sign the checks, and then, because we were small, I’d pass the folder on to our CEO, who also had to go through and sign them all.

“It probably took me eight to 12 hours a month, and that’s just for my own time. Now that we do it all online, it’s down to a half-hour per week, if that.

“Bill.com has done for us what we do for our customers – eliminated the paper. No shuffling paperwork or making copies, no printing out emails, no filing, no filing cabinets. We have only two printers for 40 people, and we don’t have a copier at all. 

“The mobile aspect is exciting because of our travel schedules. We like to pay our bills on time, and that used to be challenging if the CEO or a department head was out of the office. Now we can do everything from our smartphones.

“But what stands out the most for me is the time savings. I’ve had time to put in a whole new budgeting package, more time to work on strategic issues, talent acquisition, and all of the high-level decisions that keep us competitive in a rapidly-changing marketplace. In a fast-growing company like CourseSmart, there are so many opportunities to change entire industries and “put a dent in the Universe,” as Steve Jobs said – but that’s only possible if you create efficiencies, and increase productivity – so you have more time for the big ideas.”  As for her book-loving pet, Randall laughs, “That’s just one more reason CourseSmart is the ideal solution.”

Interested in going paperless? We’re presenting a free webinar on the topic with Patti Randall as the featured speaker, April 17^th. Click here to sign-up.

Get your stuff into Bill.com faster

Drag and drop bills, invoices, and other documents directly into your account. One at a time, or several together. No more choosing/searching/uploading. Just hit the bull’s eye!

Payables - Make it a policy to require approvers

Require approvers for any bill or vendor credit, based on the dollar amount. Require a minimum number of approvers, specific approvers, or both. If the person entering a bill or vendor credit fails to assign the required approvers, we stop them and show your approval policy.

Payables - Did any other approvers change something?

Are you one link in a chain of people who approves bills and vendor credits? Do you ever wonder if any of those people changed something before you see it? Wonder no longer. When a bill or vendor credit reaches you for approval, just click a link to see “who” has changed “what”.

Payables & NetSuite - Categorize the bills you pay with your NetSuite classes

Use NetSuite for accounting? You're about to get greater insight into your bill payments: we now support NetSuite classes for payables. Enter, categorize, and pay your bills in Bill.com. Sync the transactions to NetSuite, then run reports and analyze your spending.

Receivables - Show/hide the payment link on invoices

Most times, you want customers to pay you through Bill.com. Sometimes you don’t. And sometimes customers prefer to pay by check.

For those times when customers won’t be paying you through Bill.com, create an invoice template that hides our payment website. Your invoices look cleaner, customers aren’t distracted, and the Amount Due and Due Date stand out more prominently!

Receivables - Lock in a customer’s commitment

A customer has given you permission to directly charge their bank account or credit card. You enter all the details. You invoice them. You wait for payment. And wait. And wait. What’s up? They deleted the bank account or credit card from their Bill.com account, without telling you.

But not anymore. Choose to lock in their commitment, so that they must contact you before they make any changes.

Receivables - Privacy when one customer is several people

Have any situations where you invoice one customer, but get paid by several different people? For example, you might be a landlord who collects rent from several roommates. Each pays from their own bank account or credit card, but they don’t want their roommates to see or use their finances.

Our solution: when they sign up to pay you through Bill.com, each roommate marks their finances as Private. Then, only each individual roommate sees their respective bank account or credit card.

Receivables - Export details anywhere

We work with most of the popular accounting software, but not all (yet). To export your receivables transactions to software or a system we don’t yet support, use our new Invoice Details Report. You get everything, including line item details, accounts, and departments, in a convenient comma-separated value (CSV) file.

By René Lacerte, Founder & CEO

As I’ve said many times, the reason I started Bill.com was to solve my biggest challenge managing the back office at my first company.  As a CEO and entrepreneur there was simply too much paperwork moving through too many people’s hands to ever have an easy way to manage payables and receivables.  As a result it was pretty hard to have any kind of grasp on cash flow. At Bill.com, we’ve finally solved this age-old problem through our powerful, Cloud-based solution. And now we’re teaming up with like-minded companies to help bring the paperless revolution beyond our rapidly-growing network and out to every consumer in the nation. We have taken the Paperless Pledge and joined the Paperless 2013 movement.

Paperless 2013 is a coalition of companies that are helping consumers and businesses go paperless. Member companies include HelloFax, Google Drive, Fujitsu Scansnap, Expensify, Manilla, HelloSign, Xero, Eventbrite, Lemon, Nitro, Shoeboxed and, of course, Bill.com. The coalition notes that according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the average U.S. office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year. In 2010, the amount of paper recovered for recycling averaged 334 pounds for each person living in the US, according to the American Forest & Paper Association. Pretty amazing numbers. And it’s even more amazing that by making some simple changes we can not only make the earth a better place, but we can make our businesses more successful.

Because being paperless is not just about saving trees. It is about increasing efficiency, enhancing collaboration, and bringing visibility where it never was before. It is about empowering that new generation of CEOs and finance leaders, the “No Check” CEOs we often talk about, to throw off the shackles of paperwork and replace time-consuming paper processes with fast, efficient cloud-based systems everywhere in their businesses.  Goodbye file cabinets, hello data at your fingertips.
There are a million good reasons to join this movement-- and not a single reason to wait. Please join us and take the paperless pledge at http://www.Paperless2013.org. Once you do, you will receive an email with links to a set of web services that, used together, can remove the need for ‘paper’ from paperwork.  For more information, you can also follow the paperless 2013 campaign on Twitter using #Paperless2013.

But don’t delay. Help us save trees, better our earth and better our businesses by finally freeing ourselves from all that paper. I’ve done it and it feels great. Join me and let’s make our world a better place.

By René Lacerte, Founder & CEO

These are exciting times at Bill.com. Our solution continues to be embraced at a record pace. In fact, I have the pleasure of telling you today that Bill.com is the fastest growing business payments network in the nation, enabling more than 175,000 businesses to pay and get paid. Bill.com manages more than five million bills per year, worth $10 billion-plus, by combining payments, workflow, document management, and integrating accounting solutions in a way never before done.

I firmly believe that the reason the Bill.com Business Payments Network is growing so rapidly is because companies recognize the need for a more efficient and effective way of not just making business transactions but encouraging business collaboration. By bringing together people, systems and documents, we are redefining what business payments networks are. It is no longer enough to use a credit card—to do business today you need to build a community where more happens than just one-off transactions. Businesses need to collaborate any time, anywhere. This is what the Bill.com Business Payments Network is all about.

And it’s gratifying, as always, to get industry validation that what we are doing is making a big difference. To that end, I am thrilled to let you know that Bill.com was recognized as the Best Innovation via ACH at the 2013 PYMNTS.com Innovation Awards last week, which were held as part of the Innovation Project conference at Harvard University.

Ironically, the emcee of the event was none other than B.J. Novak of “The Office”. It was great to meet such a talented and funny guy, but  the irony of the moment can’t be understated. What’s funnier than Bill.com, the vanquisher of unnecessary documents, getting an award from a staff member of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company!

Thanks to all of you for helping us achieve this important milestone and industry recognition. We’ll keep you posted as our network grows and our innovations continue.

Webinar Features Results from an Exclusive New Survey of CEOs and Finance Leaders
Now Using Mobile Devices For Financial Transactions

PALO ALTO, CALIF.— March 21, 2013 — Bill.com, the leader in integrated bill payment, invoicing and cash flow management solutions for businesses, today announced that it will discuss why CEOs and CFOs are increasingly running their cloud-based businesses via their tablets and smart phones in a free webinar, “Top Seven Reasons to Be a ‘Remote Control’ CEO,” on Monday, March 25th, at 1 p.m. PT. Registration is available now at http://cashflow.bill.com/MobileSurveyResults_032513.html.  

The webinar will feature Michael Hsu, CEO of DeepSky, which offers outsourced accounting services for entrepreneurs in the services industries. Hsu himself has built his entire business around his virtual, paperless team of accountants. He has never written a paper check for his business. Hsu and other “No Check” CEOs represent a new generation of leaders who are using game-changing technology to replace time-consuming paper processes with fast, efficient cloud-based systems everywhere in their businesses. These “No Check” CEOs aren’t tied to their offices, but free to manage their companies from wherever they need to be, with instant, real-time access to their business and financial data from anywhere, 24 hours a day.

Moderated by Bill.com Founder and CEO René Lacerte, the webinar will explore:

• results from an exclusive new survey of 336 CEOs and finance leaders now using mobile devices for financial transactions;
• how to “lose the paper” and make huge productivity gains;
• why the rapid shift to remote control keeps accelerating;
• how to dramatically reduce overhead and operating costs;
• how pioneering “Remote Control” CEOs and finance leaders plan to use mobile in the future; and
• what happens to businesses that don’t make the shift.

“As more and more businesses move to the ‘No Check’ CEO paradigm, having the ability to effectively manage all aspects of cash flow from anywhere at any time will be increasingly important,” said René Lacerte, Bill.com Founder and CEO. “Bill.com was created to make this movement a reality, and we look forward to helping finance leaders unchain themselves from their desks through this informative webinar.”

Bill.com delivers a complete web-based financial solution for businesses and accountants that provides the tools, information, and collaboration required to better manage their financial tasks and optimize cash flow. Bill.com's game-changing technology allows users to access online bill payments, e-invoicing, document management, and automated workflow through one easy system. In addition to seamlessly integrating with businesses' existing accounting software programs, Bill.com provides financial leaders with a comprehensive view of their cash forecast - making it the only solution that connects a user's banks, bookkeeping, and business. 

About Bill.com
Bill.com is a cash flow command and control system that manages accounts payable and receivable 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 sync to users' 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 users 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. 

We’ve talked a lot lately about “No Check" CEOs. As a refresher, “No Check” CEOs are a new generation using game-changing technology to replace time-consuming paper processes with fast, efficient cloud-based systems everywhere in their businesses. These “No Check” CEOs aren’t tied to their offices, but free to manage their companies from wherever they need to be, with instant, real-time access to their business and financial data from anywhere, 24 hours a day.
Many never use paper checks, because they send electronic payments instead. Their staffs never waste time printing invoices or stuffing envelopes, or spending money on supplies and postage because they invoice and process bills electronically. And because they also get paid electronically, you never see a pile of checks sitting in an office waiting to be deposited – customer payments go straight into their accounts.

I truly believe in the No Check CEO paradigm. It’s one I try to live myself. And nowhere has the momentum for this new mindset been more apparent than our recent survey of more than 500 CFOs/finance managers about the importance of mobility.

Our survey discovered that a majority of financial professionals are moving to conducting business via the Cloud and mobile devices. 44 percent of respondents said that the ability to process mobile transactions is a business requirement. When asked what percentage of financial transactions were being conducted via their mobile devices, 30 percent of mobile users are processing more than 25 percent of their transactions on mobile devices while 11 percent are processing more than 50 percent of transactions on their mobile devices.  And in contrast to past conceptions of mobility, 70 percent of respondents felt that the reliability of mobile financial transactions is good or excellent. In addition, 83 percent found mobility to be secure.

Due to this increased confidence in the security and reliability of mobile computing, almost half of the respondents said that they wanted to expand the use of their mobile devices beyond approving transactions to sending reminders, adding notes to documents stored on the cloud and, most importantly, managing their cash flow. 43 percent already see managing cash flow from their mobile device as important and, as we increasingly move into an economy run by “No Check” CEOs, the comfort level and need for comprehensive financial solutions on mobile devices will become more and more critical.

As this survey has shown, the move to mobility represented by this new generation of leaders is already underway. It can be seen in financial professionals’ desire to move not just transactions but account payables, receivables and cash flow management to their mobile devices. We look forward to helping usher in this more efficient and effective way to conduct business.

René Lacerte, Founder and CEO

Bill.com Survey Finds Finance Industry Moving to the Cloud, Embracing Mobile Cash Flow Management

66 Percent of Respondents Are Processing Transactions From Mobile Devices

PALO ALTO, CALIF.— March 7, 2013 — Bill.com, the leader in integrated bill payment, invoicing and cash management solutions for businesses, today revealed that a recent study of financial industry leaders showed a growing trend towards mobile financial management, with more than 66 percent of respondents now processing transactions from their devices.

In January 2013, Bill.com surveyed 510 CFOs and finance managers across multiple industries who have automated their payables and receivables process in order to better understand their usage of mobile technology for business financial transactions. 46 percent of respondents were CFOs, 36 percent were controllers and 18 percent were other financial managers. The study discovered that a majority of financial professionals are moving to conducting business via the Cloud and mobile devices. While many respondents only used devices to process transactions while still clinging to manual processes for cash flow management, those who had embraced the Cloud wholeheartedly and moved to mobile financial management have found themselves to be more efficient, effective and competitive.

Read more here.

Franchise Industry Guru David Ostrowe To Explain How to Achieve Extreme Operational Efficiency

PALO ALTO, CALIF.— March 4, 2013 — Bill.com, the leader in integrated bill payment, invoicing and cash management solutions for businesses, today announced that it will reveal how franchises can achieve extreme operational efficiency through a better understanding of their P&Ls in a free webinar, “Franchise Growth Secrets Hidden in Your P&L,” on Tuesday, March 5, at 11 a.m. PT. Registration is available now at http://cashflow.bill.com/PLOptimization_030513.html.

Many business owners think of accounting as a necessary evil – something necessary to prepare taxes. But to a trained eye, P&Ls reveal critical, actionable business insights, insights which remain invisible to those focused only on the details of day-to-day operations. In this webinar, industry guru David Ostrowe, president of O&M Restaurant Group and the owner of 25 Burger King restaurants, will teach franchise owners how to recognize and act upon the growth keys hidden in their P&Ls, helping them achieve unprecedented success.
Moderated by Bill.com founder and CEO René Lacerte, the webinar will be packed with actionable data and useful insights including how franchise owners can:

• Quickly identify their greatest strengths and weaknesses;
• Zero in on opportunities they may be missing;
• Improve profits and increase cash flow; and
• Make better decisions for the future.

“We have long said that financial data, when properly used, can be a true action hero, and this webinar is proving our point perfectly,” said René Lacerte, founder and CEO of Bill.com. “We look forward to unlocking the power of the P&L with David, a true innovator in the franchise industry.”

Bill.com delivers a complete web-based financial solution for businesses and accountants that provides the tools, information, and collaboration required to better manage their financial tasks and optimize cash flow. Bill.com's game-changing technology digitizes a historically paper-based and time-consuming process, allowing users to access online bill payments, e-invoicing, document management, and automated workflow through one easy system. In addition to seamlessly integrating with businesses' existing accounting software programs, Bill.com provides financial leaders with a comprehensive view of their cash forecast - making it the only solution that connects a user's banks, bookkeeping, and business. 
About Bill.com
Bill.com is a cash flow command and control system that manages accounts payable and receivable 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 sync to users' 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 users 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. 

By Lisa Lang, SVP Marketing

Did you know there’s a whole new generation of CEOs and CFOs who run paperless businesses and insist on electronic payments instead of paper checks? They have no patience for time-consuming, paper-based processes that drag down everyone’s productivity. They’ve been endowed by game-changing cloud-based technology with certain inalienable rights, such as:

• Freedom from their desks. “No Check” CEOs aren’t tied to their offices, but free to manage their companies from wherever they need to be, with instant, real-time access to their business and financial data from anywhere, 24 hours a day.
• Freedom from bill-payment hassles. They simply scan, fax or email bills and associated documents to a cloud-based service, manage the approval process online, and make payments electronically.
• Freedom from receivables worries. “No Check” businesses rake in their receivables 2-3 times faster, thanks to e-invoicing, automatic reminders, and online customer payments deposited directly into their bank accounts.
• Freedom from cash flow uncertainty. “No Check” CEOs and CFOs get precision control over cash flow, by projecting receivables, payables and balances up to three months out, revealing potential problems well in advance.
• Freedom from check fraud. Unlike checks, electronic payments can’t be intercepted or modified. And unlike paper documents, electronic data can be protected with enterprise-level security systems.
• Freedom from paperwork. Some “No Check” businesses don’t even have file cabinets, because everything is digitized and stored online for secure access from anywhere, any time – so no need to save and store paper receipts, purchase orders, contracts, check stock or paper invoices.
• Freedom to reduce operating costs. Eliminating paper not only reduces processing costs for payables and receivables, digital access enables better cost controls through improved visibility. Getting rid of time-consuming paper-based processes also increases productivity for everyone.

Ready to become a “No Check” CEO? It’s as simple as moving your business processes from the manual, paper-based world to the cloud, via services such as Bill.com.