Bills 2.0

Exciting Award from CPA Technology Advisor!

We are pleased to announce that Bill.com was a recipient of a 2009 Tax and Accounting Innovation Award from CPA Technology Advisor. In their recent article honoring the winners, Darren Root, Executive Editor said:

“The CPA Technology Advisor's annual Tax & Accounting Technology Innovation Awards are the pinnacle of achievement for technology vendors serving the profession,” says M. Darren Root, CPA.CITP, executive editor. “This year’s winners and honorable mentions rose to the top of the nominations because they do more than just provide workable solutions. Through ingenuity and fresh approaches to providing solutions, they are front and center in helping accountants energize their deliverables through product, service and training.”

And, Scott Cytron wrote:

Bill.com — Bill.com (www.bill.com)
Bill.com is a paperless, collaborative bill management and payment service designed to digitize and file all client financial documents, allow collaboration with clients via a web-based interface that supports various accounting services, and manage client cash flow and payment timing more effectively.

“Bill.com is the only bill management solution that weaves accounts payables, document management, collaboration and payments together in a simple, affordable service,” says René Lacerte, CEO and founder. “We have a proprietary two-way synch with QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online and Intacct that complements the GL software and allows accountants to offer sophisticated services while giving clients a simple user interface.”

Using Bill.com, Lacerte says accountants and their clients can now pay bills quickly and easily, while performing other tasks such as tax preparation and write-up more efficiently, all through improved collaboration, better record keeping and better controls.
“Ultimately, we want to see bill presentment and payment for small and mid-size businesses go 100 percent paperless,” he says.

“To that end, we are working on developing a shared network of large and small vendors so that our customers will be able pay anyone electronically and improve communication between vendors and customers. Our ePayment capability was recently released, and very soon any business will be able to register on our payment network so they can more easily accept payment directly into a bank account, avoiding trips to the bank to deposit checks or paying credit card merchant fees.”

Bill.com is SAS-70 Type II Certified and is offered to the accounting profession in partnership with CPA2Biz, a subsidiary of the AICPA. Bill.com offers discounted pricing for accountant clients, centralized client billing, custom client-facing branding, and an accountant dash-board that provides a consolidated view of all clients’ activities.

Thanks to everyone in the accounting community that have given us so much feedback and support to continue to improve the service. We look forward to offering many more innovations to come!!!

Exciting new features available immediately!

Introducing Bill.com ePayments. Now pay anyone electronically!

Bill.com ePayments allow you to pay vendors electronically (via ACH) rather than with paper checks when you make a payment via Bill.com. Here is how it works:

• Simply match your vendors in Bill.com in a directory of over 4000 of the largest billers (financial institutions, utilities, government agencies, etc.) to enable all future payments to those vendors to be made electronically
• For your vendors who are not in our directory, you can add bank account and routing information to their contact information in Bill.com (this information is encrypted and safe)
• When Bill.com makes payments to any vendor that you set up for ePayments, we will pay them via ACH (electronic deposit). When we pay vendors in our directory the funds are automatically posted to your account with that vendor (you must enter an account number during setup to pay these vendors). For other vendors who are not in our directory we notify them of payments via email.

Advantages of using Bill.com ePayments include:

• Lower transaction fees. Each ePayment costs just 49¢. That's half the cost of paying via a Bill.com check!
• Faster payments. ePayments will be posted to your vendor's bank accounts faster than check payments, so you do not have to schedule as much lead time for processing
• Pay any vendor or individual electronically. Bill.com allows you to make ePayments to anyone electronically — large vendors, small vendors, employees, and other individuals — fully integrated with your bill workflow and accounting system and at low cost
• Guaranteed payment arrival date. Bill.com will display the date that each ePayment will appear in you vendor's bank account. Unlike check payments that can be affected by the mail system, these payments will post on or before the date listed
• Help save the environment. No paper, planes, or mail trucks will be used when making your payments.

When you pay via Bill.com the system will show you the expected payment arrival date

Payment timing is based on many factors. With this new release, when scheduling a payment via Bill.com the system displays the number of business days from the process date to expect arrival of the payment. This will help you when deciding on a process date to maximize cash flow on a bill-by-bill basis.

Increased efficiency (and fewer clicks) for bill payers!

We have made several improvements to the bill payment page to help streamline the process and reduce clicks.

• On the "Pay Bills" page we now show you any notes added to a bill by simply scrolling over a link. Now you can see approver's comments without opening the bill itself!
• When you hover the vendor name on the bill list you will see the check payment address or ePayment information without needing to click on the link
• Bill.com will now alert you if the approved amount of a bill you are paying is less than the bill amount
• For each bill, you will see expected arrival timeframe based on payment type

What's in a name? "Online Payments" are now called "Bill.com Payments"

With the introduction of ePayments, we have made a small change in terminology so there is no confusion between the concept of "online payments" and "ePayments".

• On the "Pay Bills" page, what we used to call "Pay Online" is now "Pay via Bill.com". By selecting this option, Bill.com will make the payment for you. Funds will be withdrawn from your bank account on the Process Date and Bill.com will send it by check or ePayment to your vendor.
• "Record Offline Payments" is now "Record as Paid". You can record payments made by credit card, checks you already wrote, or checks you will print in your accounting system.  You will be prompted on the next page about the details of this payment that you are taking care of outside Bill.com.

When viewing payment types within the system, including audit trails, you will now see payment type "Bill.com" instead of "Online". This indicates that Bill.com made the payment for you either by check or ePayment.

More flexibility in sending documents to the Inbox

Receiving invoices from vendors in the body of an email and not an attachment? Want to just email yourself a message to pay someone and store it as an invoice? It's now easy to do both.

You can now process invoices sent inline in the email without needing to create a separate attachment. Just write (or forward) an email with payment amount and instructions, access it in the inbox, and create a bill to be paid. In addition, you can now easily view the original email message associated with any document sent to the Inbox by clicking the "View email" link on top of the thumbnail.

We have also improved our document display capabilities in the inbox, with support for:

• Adobe PDF (pdf | version 5.0 or later
• Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx | version 97 or later)
• Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt | version 97 - 2003)
• Microsoft Excel (.xls or .xlsx | version 97 or later)
• Images (.jpg or .png or .gif)
• Emails in plain text format or text files

Improved Payment Confirmation

It is now easier to know the status of your payments. On the "Remittance Info" column on the Payments History page, you can see if the check was cleared or the ePayment was sent.

• When you click on a payment, you will see more detail on the payment as well as a cleared check image if applicable
• For ePayments there is no cleared check image, but you will see details on when the payment was made

We hope you like these new features. As always,please contact us with feedback!