Bill.com Blog

Reflections on the October 2011 Release

What an exciting month for Bill.com. By now you have seen our redesigned user interface. The team has been working on this for over 8 months and we are all really proud of it. The most exciting part to me is what this means for future features.  

My original vision for Bill.com was to be a place that businesses could mange their cash by managing all the processes and activities related to payables and receivables. In short, I wanted a Command and Control center for cash flow forecasting and managing. Over the last year we have added more features to both AP and AR and the product has become more crowded as a result. In addition, as the product has grown over the past five years, it was time to redesign the user experience. We needed to simplify the navigation, make buttons pop, and lay the groundwork for more closely integrating AP and AR into a cash dashboard.

One of the things you will notice in the user interface is that many of the bottom edges on the windows are turned up, creating the image of paper. You might be asking why would we do this given our goal of creating a paperless experience? It's because we wanted to create a bridge from the old way of doing this to the new Bill.com way. The most popular new user experiences are successful because they bring something that reminds folks of the way things used to be while helping them adapt to the new approach. You only have to look at the phenomenon of the iPhone and the iPad to see what I mean. Before computers everything was "touch based.” Whether it was a pad of paper or a folder, it was something you touched.  While many had developed tablets before, Apple was the first to understand that the tablet needed to appeal to our brain’s memory of how we used to complete the task. The gestures you use with Apple products create a touch experience that lets the customer interact with the device. My favorite gesture is the way you turn a page on the iPad; you grab the corner and as you drag it curls the page as you would on a paper book.  

We know at Bill.com that we are asking all of you to change your processes; To drop the "old way" for the new way that is Bill.com. It is our job to make you feel more comfortable during that transition. That is the reason the new user interface reminds us of the paper we used to process.

Thanks for your support and feedback. It's what we live for every day.

Thanks for reading,

René Lacerte
Founder and CEO
@rlacerte

 

Employee Spotlight - To Design or Not to Design?

This is my 5^th play. Well, I’m not in the play -- I am 
a drama booster. I support my daughter, Savannah, with her school’s drama club. What do I do to help? Well, I’ve sewn costumes on my Singer 221 sewing machine. I’ve assisted in building props. But the duties I perform that bring me the most joy are working with the design students who develop the art for each play. I get to help teach them a little about composition, art, technology and software, all at the same time. Between working with the students to produce art for marketing materials for the play and working as a Senior Director of User Experience at Bill.com, I get to incorporate my passion for design, on and off the clock.

My interests have always been design and I truly love everything related to it; everything from the simple pieces for drama club, to sophisticated hardware design, to elegant and easy to use software. For me it’s always about the experience of a product; from the moment you touch it or interact with it, view the colors, layout and brand.

Over the years I’ve developed a deep appreciation for design and brand. I find interest in how the two are related and how emotions are involved. Watching people use things like phones, remotes, or interact with other devices or software always fascinates me. Every day we interact with a host of different devices and software applications and we are emotional about them at some level or another. Working on the Bill.com application suite has been the same for me. At first, I had a hard time acclimating to it because I couldn’t discern many of the functions. But with this last release and some of the changes we made to the experience, I can honestly say it has matured significantly.

I enjoy helping and teaching the drama students new skills for their projects. Designing and working on the customer experience is as much fun as working with the students, and I enjoy all the people I work with every day. We’re always learning and creating new and better ways to make the software we love to use better and easier to utilize.

Thank you for reading, Anthony.

4 Questions for Eren Omer Atesmen, Co-Founder of Clean Energy Experts

Q1. How did you get into your line of work?
Growing up in California, I’ve always had an affinity for energy conservation. I strongly believe that education is a critical stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of changing consumer behaviors as they relate to energy consumption. After several years of working at the Boston Consulting Group, I co-founded Clean Energy Experts, a firm dedicated to accelerating the adoption of cost-effective energy saving products and technologies through education and awareness. The company’s mission stems from a belief that education and awareness are the greatest barriers to the adoption of clean energy technologies. 

Q2. What have you learned through the school of hard knocks?
I’ve learned that a good idea doesn’t necessarily equal a good business. It’s critical to answer the tough questions as you start and grow your business.  How are we going to make money? Will our clients like our product? Unbiased forethought is paramount to developing a sound business plan, but by the same token, it’s nearly impossible to know how things will really work until you test them. With that said, we have learned to be very diligent at testing our products and ideas – allowing us to shift and adapt based on real-time feedback.  This is a key to success in business development activities.

Q3. What keeps you up at night?
I stay awake thinking about the inevitably long list of things on my plate. However, I’ve always believed in three fundamental concepts. First, be fair and honest in all your business relationships. Second, stay true and focused to your vision. Third, do the best you can. Follow these three fundamentals and hopefully work won’t keep you up at night.

Q. How has Bill.com helped your business chase its dreams?
Bill.com allows me to maintain managerial oversight in key financing activities while off-loading the busy work to our accountants. The approval systems and ePayments have allowed us to reduce the time and effort required to handle finances while improving efficiency. Thanks Bill.com!

To learn more, visit www.solar-energy-installers.com.

Download a complete PDF of these 4 Questions

 

Improving Customer Experience from the Inside: Bill.com Draws Inspiration from Steve Jobs

The tech community is still—and may forever be—reflecting on the life of one of our greatest visionaries,  Steve Jobs. His passing hit close to home for all of us at Bill.com, as he lived just a short distance away from our Palo Alto headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley. His singular focus on design and the customer experience is inspirational. It influences all of us at Bill.com on a daily basis to build the best customer experience we can.

We rely more and more on technology as it sinks its teeth into our everyday lives, and we can thank Steve Jobs for helping change the way we engage with it—inside and outside of the office. Jobs was most interested in developing products that were user-friendly so that technology would enhance, not complicate, our lives. Jobs understood that the transition from PC to Mac requires some handholding, so he opened the Apple Store offering first-rate customer support. The intense customer loyalty and extremely high customer satisfaction is the kind of intuitive design and service that I want Bill.com to instill in its customers.

At the core of Jobs’ approach to delivering user-friendly technology was his belief that form is borne from function. He explained it this way:

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains or the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

I think Jobs innately understood that if you focus on quality, beauty, function (or whatever it is you value),  you’ll deliver a product that reflects these values. You can’t expect to throw a bunch of ideas on the wall and take what sticks—or take what looks the best. You’ve got to put in the work, the research, apply your vision and stay focused on your customer to get somewhere you can feel good about at the end of the day. That’s why it’s important to us to keep things simple for Bill.com customers.

Take Bill.com’s new User Interface. It isn’t changing so it’s simply prettier, flashier, or sleeker. We want to make sure Bill.com does what it says it’s going to do in the best way possible. You’ll see that in addition to giving it a fresh look and layout, we’ve improved the navigation and made it even easier to use. We've streamlined and simplified, putting everything where you'd most expect it to be, with a higher focus on important, high-usage features so your most common tasks are within easy reach.

These enhancements are designed to help you work more efficiently than before. By evolving with our users’ preferences and offering a product that’s easier, faster, and smarter—we’re taking the user experience to the next level.

René Lacerte
Founder and CEO
@rlacerte

Bill.com Bolsters Customer Experience and Brings Online Invoicing and Payments 360-Degrees with Significant Product Enhancements

First-of-its-Kind eBilling Functionality and New User Interface Updates Make it Easier than Ever to Pay Bills and Get Paid Online; No Spreadsheets or Stamps Required

PALO ALTO, CALIF. — Oct. 24, 2011 — Bill.com today announced new product enhancements that make it incredibly easy for businesses and accounting firms to pay bills, receive payments and manage cashflow online. With the rollout, Bill.com is bringing online invoicing and bill payment 360-degrees by making digital money transfer between payers and payees effortless while simultaneously eliminating the need for paper-based financial systems, tedious data entry and reliance on the US Postal Service.

New eBill Functionality Makes the Move to Online Invoicing and Bill Payment Seamless
With Bill.com’s new eBill functionality, when both payer and payee are utilizing the Bill.com platform, sending electronic invoices and making online payments is a snap. eInvoices can be generated by the issuing party using Bill.com or their preferred accounting software, and they instantly convert into eBills – along with any supporting data or attachments required – in the payer’s system, ready for review, acceptance, approvals and payment.

Once the ePayment is issued, it is automatically applied to the payee’s eInvoice and to the payer’s eBill with no manual work required. Even better, the entire process syncs with leading accounting packages such as QuickBooks, Peachtree, Netsuite and Intacct, even if the payer and payee are on different systems, ensuring all transactions are properly documented while eliminating tedious data entry entirely for both parties.

“To date, eBilling and eInvoicing solutions have been complex and only available to Fortune 2000 companies,” said Rene Lacerte, founder and CEO of Bill.com. “As businesses of all sizes seek to gain efficiency in their financial processes, we aimed to provide a product that meets the needs of businesses where they are today and makes the transition to online bill payment and management a seamless one. Bill.com is providing a way for our customers to help their vendors participate with a low learning curve and a free portal to ease the friction of adoption.”

“eBill cuts out the extra step of turning an invoice into a PDF and guarantees invoices are created correctly and delivered instantly,” said Chris Fenster of Propeller Industries. “Our vendors are finding it enables them to pay more efficiently, eliminate errors and reduce the time spent scanning and handling documents. It’s all automatic, so we’re getting paid faster than ever before.”

User Interface Enhancements Streamline the Bill.com Experience
Bill.com is also introducing a number of User Interface (UI) updates to enhance the overall look and feel to make it even easier to use. The new UI was incorporated based on direct customer feedback, striking a unique balance of functionality and style. It includes an improved navigation layout, easier and faster access to key features and a more streamlined use of real estate that also sets the console for accountants up for planned future growth. Access to key buttons such as Help, Settings and Sync are now always a click away, and quick access to customer lists and profile information are readily available, making the award-winning Bill.com user experience even better than before. 

About Bill.com
Bill.com is an on-demand accounts payable and accounts receivable application for businesses of all sizes and has a tailored product for accountants and bookkeepers. With Receivables, Bill.com users can send custom invoices, collaborate with customers and receive electronic payments that automatically sync to their existing accounting software programs. They can also receive, route and pay invoices electronically resulting in time and cost savings of over 50 percent versus manual accounts payable and check writing processes. Bill.com uses enterprise-class fraud protections and integrates with popular desktop and on-demand accounting packages, ensuring consistency of financial data and streamlined financial planning, reporting and audit activities. Bill.com has received numerous awards including Bill.com's Zen (Zero Entry) service winning Accounting Today's Best New AP/AR Product for 2011, a 2011 Innovation Award from CPA Technology Advisor, a 2011 Intuit App Showcase award, and a 4-star rating from PC Magazine.

 

Media Contacts:

Jeff Seedman                                                           Allison Yochim

Ruder Finn                                                                 Ruder Finn

+1 415 249-6763                                                   +1 415 348-2724

seedmanj@ruderfinn.com                            yochima@ruderfinn.com

@Billcom Customer Tip: Learn About the Three Important Icons of the New User Interface.

One of our major changes in our user interface is the three icons in the upper right hand corner of the navigation bar. The three icons (from left to right), are a Switch, Magnifying Glass and Gear.

Under the Switch is:
 - My Companies:
    - Access your company list quicker
    - Company list displays in order of last viewed - top to bottom
    - Access your top 5 companies

Under the Magnifying Glass is:
 - Search:
    - Hover over the magnifying glass icon to search

Under the Gear is:
- Settings
- Help
- Sync: this does not perform the sync function but takes you to the page where sync is executed.

We hope these new changes improve your Bill.com user experience. Contact us at support@hq.bill.com if you have any questions or to learn more!

October 2011 Release

Experience our fresh, new look: No trick, it's our treat! 
We've streamlined and simplified, so your most important tasks are now easier to complete. Do everything you've always done with Bill.com, just a little quicker. And when you want to try something new, it will feel familiar: we've put everything where you'd most expect it to be. Spend less time on your billing/invoicing, and more time on your business. We're here to help (and to look good while we do it).

Customers without accounts: Self-service signup
We don't let something silly like "not having an account" deter a customer from paying you.  Instead, we make it easy for them to sign up (and for you to get paid). That branded website we provide for customers to pay you?  Put a link to it on your company website.  When customers go the site, we ask "Don't have an account?", then step them through signup.  Mail invoices to your customers the old fashioned way?  No problem:  each invoice includes a scannable QR code, which takes customers to our mobile website to signup

Customers with accounts: What are they ALL up to?
Sure, you can look at each individual customer, invoice by invoice, and piece together what they're doing. But that cuts into time you could spend working on your business, or carving into pumpkins. Instead, take a look at our new Customer Activity Report. You'll see all your customers. You'll see who's logged in recently, who's added a bank account or credit card to pay you, and who's chosen to pay you automatically. Best of all, you'll see who's paid you recently.

Demos: Show and tell, to help you sell
Want to impress a potential client with how you'll save them time and money?  But don't want to show them your personal Bill.com account with all your details?  Create Demo companies from your Console!  We pre-load each Demo with realistic bills, payments, and dates.  And each Demo includes videos that cover advanced topics, such as syncing with accounting.  No money gets moved, so click whatever you want!  Close that sale, or just tinker with a Demo to learn more about Bill.com for yourself.

Have Questions? View the October 2011 release highlights webinar*, (youttube version of the October 2011 release webinar) download the October 2011 Release Slide Deck, or click "Support" in your Bill.com account to contact us for more details.

*Webinar link is currently available for windows users.

Even Elvis Would Agree That There’s Safety in the Cloud

There’s an interesting paradox in business today: for as much as companies rely on web-based tools and online processes to conduct their operations, about 80 per cent of small and medium-sized businesses are still using snail mail to send invoices and pay bills. In light of the financial crisis staring down the US Postal Service—and the possibility that the services SMBs depend on might soon be scaled back or even ceased—business owners have a great opportunity to consider new tools and practices that can help them manage their financials more effectively. Cloud-based Bill.com keeps operations running efficiently, on time, and without the hassles of “it’s not late, it’s just in the mail.” 

Let’s take a cue from popular culture. Elvis Presley sang, “I gave a letter to the postman, he put it in his sack. Bright and early next morning, he brought my letter back.” You see, even Elvis understood that mail delivery doesn’t always run smoothly. Ok, ok, his letter might have been returned due to a romantic dispute as opposed to a post office snafu, but one thing is for sure: if Elvis’s letter contained a paper invoice—it surely didn’t get paid!

Facing potential postal service limitations—if not Elvis’s romantic ones—we’re reminded that paper-based processes usually aren’t as dependable as electronic ones. If your financials are in the Bill.com cloud, you have a completely mobile cash flow command and control center enabling you to complete all your billing transactions with vendors, customers and employees, online. Your payables and receivables won’t be slowed down if the US Post Office cuts back on first class mail, eliminates Saturday delivery, or closes facilities.

The US Post Office has been the backbone of business transactions since the very beginning, and while I don’t see it going away completely, the business community—including the postal service itself—has to adjust to changes in technology and its impact on economics. We’ve spent years developing a solution that meets the specific financial management needs of SMBs while improving their existing accounting processes. Bill.com is built to make your life easier so you can focus on your business and not worry about others’ limitations.  

If business owners don’t want to be left behind the times, they should take note that cloud-based solutions like Bill.com offer an easier, and often more trustworthy, way to get things done. Don’t you agree that if Elvis had the option to send his message via a cloud-based alternative, he might have gotten better results?

Thanks for reading! René
Founder and CEO
@rlacerte

@Billcom Customer Tip: How Do I Handle a Check Returned (or Not Received) by a Vendor?

What happens to check payments
returned as undeliverable?  

Checks that are returned as undeliverable by the US Postal Service will be processed by our Operations Department, and indicated as a "To Do" item in your Home Page. Click on the task "Review x returned check(s)" and then follow the instructions to either Remit the funds back into your bank account, or to Re-issue the check (once you have corrected the address).

What happens to check payments that are lost or misplaced by your vendor?

Sometimes your vendor may have misplaced or lost the check payment sent by Bill.com. When this happens, you can easily issue a new check from Bill.com. To do that, login to Bill.com, and on the Home Page, click on the To Do task to "Review x uncashed check(s)". Locate the payment, click the Payment Confirmation link and then click on Void Check. You can choose to either Re-issue the check, or if you plan to pay the vendor outside of Bill.com, choose to Remit the funds back into your bank account.

Contact us at support@hq.bill.com to learn more!

Add the Paperwork Monster to your Twitter Feed: @Pprworkmonster

4 Questions for Barry Yarkoni, CEO of Vinomis Laboratories

Q1. How did you get into your line of work?
Marketing has been my passion since I worked at Intel and Apple in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, I have stayed in the hi-tech field working at both start-ups and large companies. Three years ago, a past colleague from my Silicon Valley days, presented me with a great opportunity to help market products for his start-up company working with dietary supplements based on resveratrol. After reading the research on resveratrol from Harvard Medical School, I was excited by both the product and the opportunity. I have worked at Vinomis Laboratories for almost three years now and when my colleague stepped down for health reasons, I was named CEO.

In 2009, while searching for multiple ways to use technology to run the business efficiently, I found Bill.com. Because we are a virtual company that is spread across the country, Bill.com was a perfect match for us. Bill.com enables us to run a company where we literally do not own a filing cabinet. We are completely paperless.

Q2. What have you learned through the school of hard knocks?
The most important lesson I learned was to continue exploring and learning because things are constantly changing. It is crucial to keep your skill sets and knowledge up-to-date. I also have learned it is all about the people. Businesses need to pay as much attention to the people as they do to the operations side.

Q3. What keeps you up at night?
Because of today’s noisy and fast-paced marketing environment, finding cost effective ways to scale up the business is the biggest challenge. I am constantly brainstorming ideas on how we can create buzz and acquire new customers economically.

Q4. How has Bill.com helped your business chase its dreams?
Bill.com has dramatically reduced the amount of time that we spend doing unproductive things. Because we don’t spend time on the nuts and bolts, we can focus on growing our business, and strategies for customer acquisition. I know from experience that it is easy to get caught up on tedious, time-consuming tasks, but with Bill.com we are able to keep our vendors and our bookkeeper happy at very low cost and with very little time. The best part of Bill.com is using it as our online filing system for anything related to the business. In addition to the obvious documents (bills and statements), we use Bill.com to file all our correspondence, contracts, bank and merchant account statements, and even our tax returns.

Download a complete PDF of these 4 Questions

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!

@billcom Customer Tip: What if My Customer Already Uses Bill.com?

The customer pays you directly from Bill.com (instead of paying from the branded website we create for you). When you email their invoice, it shows up in their Bill.com Inbox as
an eBill.
 
Here's a summary of the differences for customers:

Pay bills via the branded website Invoice received in their email Website - they log in to your branded website (from link in invoice email) Branding shows your logo on the customer website we create for you Pay invoices - they pay at your branded website Payments are automatically applied to invoices History - they see all past invoices and payments as you make updates (real time) Confirmation - you get an email summary of all payments received Fees - you pay $0.49 per payment received (shows up in your Bill.com statement)

Pay bills via Bill.com Invoice received in their Bill.com Inbox as an eBill Website - they log in to Bill.com No branding  - you're one of their vendors Pay invoices - they pay at Bill.com (where they can route invoices for approval before payment) Payments are automatically applied to the invoice. However, if the customer has overpaid, the    payment will show up in your Inbox so that you can manually apply it to the correct invoice(s). History - they see invoices and payments they've made through Bill.com Confirmation - you get an email for each payment your customer makes Fees - you pay nothing: your customers pays the transaction cost.

They can still log in to pay through your branded website from the link in their email, but we recommend they pay through Bill.com (so that they can route the invoice payment for approval).

Have any questions? Please feel free to contact support and we will happily walk you though the process!

Add the Paperwork Monster to your Twitter Feed: @Pprworkmonster

Someone Knocking at the Door?

As the regular readers of this column know, I like to reference rock’n roll from the 70’s. This time, as I  sit down  to write this column about listening to your customers, one of my favorite songs from the Wings comes to mind. 

“Someone's knocking at the door, somebody's ringing the bell,
someone's knocking at the door, somebody's ringing the bell,
do me a favor, open the door and let 'em in.”

I hope you are singing the song in your head as I am. This song is a constant reminder to me to “let customers in”.

For me, customers and their input are always there - just waiting to be heard. Their knocking on the door, ringing the bell and most of the time we just don’t do the favor.  We’re busy doing other things, moving on to the next project, solving the next problem so we fail to “let ‘em in”.    

Letting them in, though, is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your success. Customers have great ideas about their experience with you. They can tell you who you are and why others should buy from you. They can tell you how to make their lives even easier and if you listen to the feedback they become happier customers. And therein lies the key to a healthy business: happy customers promote your service to other people thereby bringing you more happy customers. 

One of the many things I learned from my grandfather was the importance of listening. For him, it was natural. He didn’t talk much; he just listened. Active listening in any conversation is always a good idea but as my career progressed I learned that there are proactive ways to listen to your customers as well. When I was at Intuit, I learned the classic market research tools used by the biggest companies 1) interactive interviews with small focus groups and 2) quantitative research through questionnaires to customers or prospects.

While both of these forms of research can take on a life of their own, there are simple ways to do them.  One of my favorite bosses taught me the importance of just talking to a handful of customers. His experience had taught him that talking to 10 customers would get you 80 – 90% of the learning. I agree wholeheartedly.  So, jot down a list of questions you would like to know and call up 10 customers. If you haven’t done this yet you will be surprised how much you learn. 

If you feel you need a broader sampling use a tool like www.surveymonkey.com to send a questionnaire out to all of your customers. I have been using this tool for many years and within a few days you will know what your customers think and how they feel.

The above tools are a great way to get you engaged with customers about services and tools that you might be considering. While gaining a better understanding of your customer needs, it is more important to first understand how well you are serving your customers. 

In the last 10 years, a tremendous amount of research has been done to determine the best way to gauge customer satisfaction. For me the research that makes the most sense is based on how strongly your customers would refer others to your service. This is called the NetPromoter score. For more on how to do this, check out www.netpromoter.com. 

I’ve been using this methodology for the last 8 years – first at PayCycle and now at Bill.com. The easiest way to do it is to follow the questions in the book (< 10) using a survey tool such as Survey Monkey. The beauty of the NetPromoter score is that it is simple for customers to respond to and you get an answer very quickly.    

So what’s keeping you from doing it? I have used an accountant for over 20 years and never once have I been asked for feedback on how likely I am to make a referral or what the firm could do better. Given the ease of surveying customers these days, I hope this changes. Accountants have some of the strongest customer relationships built primarily through the active listening techniques my grandfather taught me.  Using the simple tools above, will make them even stronger. I am very curious to see what happens as firms start applying more tools to the process of listening. You never know, it might lead to lots of people knocking at your door(ring ring)

Thank you for reading -- René
Founder and CEO
@rlacerte