Bill.com Blog

4 Questions for Calvin Wilder Founder of SmartBooks

Q1. How did you get into your line of work?
From experience at prior jobs in which I worked with hundreds of small businesses; I saw that most struggled to get good bookkeeping and financial management. Their existing options were inadequate. I thought there must be a better solution, so why not be the one to develop it. So we launched SmartBooks.

Q2. What have you learned through the school of hard knocks?
Consistent operating policies and procedures are critical. Flexibility is great but know your limits. Agreeing to customized service requests might seem like good client service at the time, but the reality is, service levels will break down unless a certain standard of consistency is maintained. Great people are very important, but I also learned I need to reduce the degree of difficulty as much as I can, through using great systems.

Q3. What keeps you up at night?
Aside from newborn twin boys, I worry that SmartBooks has such a tremendous opportunity to help small and midsize businesses, but we are not fully capitalizing on that opportunity to grow our business. Specific client needs and figuring out how to efficiently meet those needs will always keep me up. And lately, I have lost sleep thinking about a more efficient way to support manufacturing businesses using Bill.com in conjunction with inventory management systems.

Q4. How has Bill.com helped your business chase its dreams
Without a system like Bill.com, SmartBooks would not be in business. Central document management and internal controls are critical in an outsourcing model. When I was thinking about launching SmartBooks, I designed what I thought was an ideal application to manage the accounts payable process. Then I found Bill.com had already built that system!  Tweet: @smartbookscorp to stay in tune with SmartBooks!

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!

What’s your horsepower?

It’s interesting that that hottest electric car on the market, the Tesla Roadster , touts its 288 horsepower engine. It is an oxymoron in some respects when you think of the imagery--  you don’t think of 288 horses dragging you down a road. Rather, you think of speed. So why is this unit of measurement from 1702 promoted by James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, still used 308 years later? It is because we humans have a hard time adapting and letting go. It is because no matter how hard we try to look forward, we can’t help but look in the rearview mirror for comparison purposes.

One of the things we all hold on to is the technology we’re accustomed to using. Whether it’s the horses doing the work for us or our level of comfort with our metal filing cabinet and filing system, we have a tendency to resist change. As accountants, you are in a unique position to advise your clients and sometimes maintain their systems and processes. You are in the position of looking forward, not just for your own business but also for your clients. That means you have to take extra care and caution when implementing new technologies or processes.

Although some might disagree, my experience through the years is that accountants have generally been early adopters of technology. I only have to look at the family businesses to see that accountants drove the adoption of punch cards, tax automation and payroll outsourcing (before ADP and PayChex). Accountants have consistently been the folks that understand the efficiency gains that technology brings. As a service provider with lots of clients, you have insight to what technologies work long before the market at large does.

That being said, there has also been a sense of caution in implementing new tools. The best example I can think of is the move from DOS to Windows. While most businesses moved in the early ’90s, it was the late ’90s before many accountants made the move. Part of the reason is that Windows didn’t necessarily drive efficiency gains. In fact, I know there were many things that I could do faster in a DOS environment than with the graphical user interface (GUI) of Windows. However, Windows’ GUI simplified things for staff and clients, and so accountants eventually made the switch.

So where are the efficiency gains of today? What are the things you are holding onto that could change your business and your customers’ businesses? I think the biggest area is in changing our viewpoint from a transactional orientation to a process orientation.

Accounting software by nature is transaction based; it is all about recording transactions and reporting on transactions. Tax software is all about reporting transactions in the right buckets. Transaction views fail to provide the overview and the planning we all need. In fact, by nature, transaction views are after the fact.

Process views require that you think before the fact and allow you to add more value to the customer relationship. Process views require that you leverage your expertise and knowledge across all of your clients into each situation. Taking a process view makes you more valuable and, in my opinion, is more fun.

Unfortunately, over the last 30 years, software led accountants to be more transaction-oriented. But the Web has finally started to change that viewpoint. One of the things that got me excited about starting PayCycle and Bill.com was the opportunity to reintroduce the process view to accountants once again.

Payroll is clearly a process that other companies had commoditized away from the accounting profession. Specifically, ADP and PayChex recruited accountants to resale their products. And for the most part, this took accountants out of the process and removed an opportunity to add value to the client relationship. At PayCycle, we used the Web to simplify the process so you could manage your clients’ payroll. We had tens of thousands of accounting firms and some with well over 100 clients using our service. I hear from accountants all the time about how they appreciate and enjoy getting back into the process of helping their clients in this area again. Similarly, at Bill.com our customers constantly tell us they use our service because we understand that business bill payment is a process and not a transaction.

There are lots of processes you can choose to automate for your clients-- payables, receivables, document collection, workflow collaboration, and much more. Taking a look at how your clients work will give you a lot more opportunities in which to advise. As you begin to explore additional areas of client service, I suggest that you leverage others who are already singing this tune. Folks like Darren Root, Doug Sleeter, Randy Johnson and several of the industry contributors hold seminars and speak at conferences. Their whole focus is on helping you stay competitive while enjoying what you do. It’s the whole idea of community learning.

Technology is constantly in flux, and if we aren’t careful or if we’re slow to adopt, we will miss important opportunities. Accountants have been the change agent driving systems migration for years — from ledger books to data processing and from DOS to Windows and now the Web. However there is always pressure to maintain the past. As you move forward and lead your clients down this newest road, I hope you live by the words of the Rolling Stones and don’t let “wild horses drag you away!”

Thanks for reading! René Lacerte
Founder and CEO
@rlacerte

4 Questions for Amber Hurst from Ganze & Company

Q. How did you get into your line of work?
Ganze & Company has been doing bookkeeping  and tax related work for 25+ years. I joined the firm a little over 3 and half years ago. I wanted to work in the accounting field and a tax class that I attended led to a position at Ganze and Company. Not long after I began with the firm we started working on a project to make bookkeeping and accounting tasks less paper intensive and more easily accessible to both clients and accountants. 

Q. What have you learned through the school of hard knocks?
I have learned that it is extremely important to keep the client happy! The easier the transition and the day to day tasks and the less the client has to do the more happy they are. This gives them the ability to really focus on what they are good at, running their business. I have found that clients also like maintain some sense of control and still be in the loop, because it is important for them to understand what is happening in their company financially.

Q. What keeps you up at night?
Making sure that we are meeting our clients expectations and finding ways to exceed those expectations. It is extremely important to be on the same page and have good communication.

Q. How has Bill.com helped your business chase its dreams
Bill.com has made it much easier to develop a “PaperLess” accounting system. We have the ability to access the clients vendor documents when we have questions and concerns. We also are able to provide better more timely information to business owners. The calendar function makes it much easier for clients to manage cash flow and project what is to come. Our clients have also really enjoyed the flexibility of being able to access information on the go and manage payables away from the office.

Bill.com has really helped pull together our accounting solutions. Bill.com is one of the best tools that we use and so far clients have really been impressed.

Download a complete PDF of these 4 questions

 

Note: 4 Questions is a new feature on the Bill.com blog where we will 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 four questions will result not in repeat answers, but in interesting insight into many different journeys. Want to be profiled? Tweet us at @billcom and let us know!

Celebrate good times..Come on!

Bill.com celebrated its 5th birthday on August 6th
with Margaritas, Chips, Guacamole and Key Lime Cupcakes. It was wonderful to reflect on what we have accomplished so far, especially when we look back to where we started. We are very proud to say that one thing that has never faltered is our vision of creating a financial platform for small businesses to manage their finances. This belief is so fundamental that it is especially exciting to announce our new release because we have added another major piece to the platform puzzle that really rounds out our Accounts Receivable solution. 

All of you know that we offer a financial platform to manage your AP and AR. Many of you may not know that there are a number of services that we do under the umbrella of our star AP/AR features; things like, ePayment, customer and employee collaboration, and document management to name a few. In the August 2011 release we linked payable and receivable transactions between companies using Bill.com - this simplifies transactions, speeds up payments and provides a holistic picture of your companies overall cash position. 

Over the last year we have worked hard to add core AR functionality.  With the key infrastructure in place, we have now linked AP and AR allowing us to have a full circle process that starts when an eInvoice is processed through the system as an eBill and rounds out the circle with an ePayment to the original eInvoice.

Our eInvoice solution allows your organization to create an invoice in your favorite accounting package (QuickBooks/Peachtree/etc.) and then sync that Invoice into Bill.com Your customer receives and accepts the eBill with no data entry That data syncs and sends over the ePayment to your initial eInvoice. 

Best of all when the bill is paid the payment is automatically applied back to the biller's account. Viola!  It's like magic. Truly this is the bomb - no more data entry for buyer or seller. This release is set-up for paying Bill.com customers. Future releases will allow vendors to create eBills from their free vendor portal.   

In addition to eBill and eInvoice, there are lots of other cool features - US postal mail for invoices, QR codes for the postal invoices, simpler credit card and ACH processing for our AR customers for when you need to enter your customer information for billing and a streamlined set up process.  

For all of us at Bill.com, this is really cool stuff; everything we’ve worked for over the past 5 years is coming together. In short, the future is here and the days of data entry are numbered. Thanks again for being a part of the Bill.com family and for providing such great feedback. Your input makes us better and we definitely enjoy the ride more.  
  
Thank you for reading -- René   @rlacerte

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Recently I have been reminded of change and how hard it is to  make happen. Whether it’s a personal change or a professional change, it isn’t easy.  For example, this publication is going thru some pretty cool changes but I am sure it wasn’t easy to get action or at least universal action on all the changes desired.  Maybe you want to switch your business model to a monthly service model or maybe you want to get more strategic with your clients or maybe you want to handover the reins to someone else. All of that is big change and my guess is that your organization puts up resistance when you discuss anything like this.

Why is that?

I used to think that as individuals, we get comfortable with what we are doing and we tend to be lazy.  While that may be true it is more complicated than that. I just finished reading  a great book , “Switch”, by Chip and Dan Heath, that provides some great ways to think about change as well as tools to manage change.

Imagine you are riding an elephant to your favorite ice cream shop. You’ve been going there since you were a kid and love it. It happens to be on the other side of the river. You find out that the bridge is out and have several options – 1) Ride two days out of your way or 2) try a new ice cream shop 2 blocks away that has been getting great reviews. 

The rational part of you thinks the new shop sounds great but the emotional side is very attached to the original place. The rational part of you is referred to as the rider while the emotional part is the elephant.  The Rider can influence the elephant a little but for the most part the elephant does what it wants.  The rider is also responsible for providing the path for the elephant. So no matter how hard you try to get the elephant to go to the new store they keep walking the way to the old store. 

This is the nature of change and our resistance to change. Our emotional attachments prevent us from accepting the rational argument for something new. So whether it is changing your business model to smooth out revenue or moving your technology platform to the cloud to become more efficient or handing over the reins to someone so that you can retire, it all comes down to emotional attachment. Either your customers are attached to the old way of doing things, or your team is attached to what they already know or your employees are attached to you.

So what can you do?

As the rider, you have a few tools at your disposal. They include shaping the path,  focusing on bright spots,  and taking “baby steps”. When you are the rider of an elephant one of your jobs is to pick the path you are going to take. The path will have its own guidance built in to help you get the elephant to go in the direction you want.  The elephant may not know that you are influencing the destination but it will follow the path you set. As a leader in your organization, you can change the destination by changing the path you are on. The principle here is that it is easier to follow path then it is to change the destination. So carefully set the path to influence the change you want.

Focusing on bright spots is a great management tool. All too often, we focus on failures that need to be fixed.  For example, we all have had employees or customers that have been difficult to manage. The tendency is to spend time trying to make them happy. What if instead you took that time and developed your best employees and customers to be even better? Chances are you would be happier and the results would be much better. 

When you have big change to implement with a client or your firm, focus on those small efforts that have been successes in the area of change. If you are trying to switch your employees to cloud based apps that are more efficient, highlight the one employee that has made the switch. Encourage them to do more and to share with others. You’ll be surprised by what happens.

We have all seen babies learn to walk. They don’t start with giant steps running around, they take small steps in the direction they want to go. Taking “baby steps” with organizational change is a much easier then getting the organization to adopt your end plan all at once. 

If you are trying to switch the business model from the annual tax return cycle to a smoother monthly service model, you wouldn’t announce to your employees and customers that starting tomorrow the business model has changed. That would confuse your employees and force customers to leave.  The better approach would be to select some customers that you are already providing monthly services such as bookkeeping, payroll, accounting or general financial advice and offer up a monthly all inclusive fee.  Once you get a few takers, you take an employee and have them manage it. After 6 months, you find out what worked and what didn’t and focus on what worked and roll it out to more customers/employees.

The book identifies many more tools to draw on but hopefully this give you a sense for how to make change happen. Change is never easy but in my experience it is the most rewarding work we do. It may make us uncomfortable but it is also where we learn. So good luck implementing what ever changes you desire and don’t stop singing that tune.

Thanks for reading! René Lacerte 
Founder and CEO
@rlacerte

4 Questions for Bucky Beeman, Owner, The Ground Force, Snappy Signals, Snappy Stop

1. How did you get into your line of work?        
I developed a mind for business and technology while I was still in  high school.  I needed to find a way to make money, so my friend and I started mowing lawns and we created a maintenance business called The Ground Force. I turned a common childhood job into a flourishing local business. Nearly one year after mowing our first lawn, we had 150 lawn care and maintenance customers; now we have over 1000 locations that the Ground Force maintains. My interest of entrepreneurship grew and after our success with The Ground Force, I purchased Snappy Signals and one fast food restaurant called Snappy Stop. I just love being a small business owner.

2. What have you learned through the school of hard knocks?
I learned that starting and managing a business takes a lot of work so don’t be afraid to knock on doors if you have to. I realized quickly that working 12-hour days is necessary part of being an entrepreneur. I am also a true believer that efficiency in my businesses will make me more successful and utilizing today’s technology resources helps me take amazing leaps in a short span of time.

3. What keeps you up at night?
Knowing that not everything is as efficient as it can be. Seriously, worrying about efficiencies does keep me up, but I do use that time to research and find problem solving  solutions. One of the best solutions I have found to date is Bill.com.

4. How has Bill.com helped your business chase its dreams?
The Ground Force is continually growing and now with Bill.com’s new receivables solution, I have found a simplified way to improve my bill pay, invoicing and workflow process and my customers love it. I use Bill.com’s payables and document storage system for my other two businesses, Snappy Stop and Snappy Signals. Before Bill.com, I had 3 filing cabinets full of receipts. Now, my financial office is mobile – I can pay bills, review receipts, send documents and invoice from anywhere, Bill.com has advanced the way I run my businesses and given me the freedom to grow even more.

Download a complete PDF of these
4 questions

  Note: 4 Questions is a new feature on the Bill.com blog where we will 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 four questions will result not in repeat answers, but in interesting insight into many different journeys. Want to be profiled? Tweet us at @billcom and let us know!

Your Brand: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Have you ever Googled your name or your firm’s name?   

If not, you should. This is exactly what each of your prospective customers will do. Soon if not already, customers will look to facebook or linkedin to gather more information about you. The web is how we learn today. Increasingly it is how we make purchase decisions and it is where your brand begins.

Brand image is an important part of any purchase decision. The really hard thing about Brand is that no matter how hard you tell your prospective customers what your brand stands for, ultimately it is up to them to decide. The corollary is that the more you tell them what your brand stands for the more likely it is that they will agree with you. 

When I think about my perception of a brand it almost always starts with the underlying values, the company is trying to convey.  This is especially important when it comes to service and not product decisions.  Essentially, it is the underlying character and values that I care most about when I am deciding on a new accountant, attorney, graphic artist, engineer, etc.  Ultimately, this is what marketers call your “Voice” and “Promise”. 

As an entrepreneur, I think it is impossible to separate your “Voice” from the company values. Whether or not you have written down and communicated your firm’s values, they exist. If you don’t write them down then how can you be sure your employees understand them?  That leads me to the first step in building your brand.

Step 1: Write down and communicate your values with your employees.
In my experience, it’s best to write down an outline of the things I care about and then talk with the team to get their input. The most important thing is to be yourself when deciding your values.Your values will help communicate your brand help you and your employees run the business. Once you have the values written down post them on your wall right at the front door! Values are too important for a company memo. 

Step 2: Practice your values everyday when you are hiring, growing, and managing your team.
Practicing your values is harder than it sounds. This is why they need “to reflect” who you are as a person and who you aspire to be. If you have done that well, then you will be comfortable managing to them.  As a manager you have to take the time to share your thinking around the values. As an individual contributor, you have to take the time to make sure your decisions reflect the values.

Step 3: Communicate your values through your everyday actions to your customers.
Communication has to be proactive and with purpose in order for you to make sure your customers get it.  But indirect communication can make or break you. Only through a common set of values can you ensure that your direct and indirect communications are consistent and say what you want.

One interesting exercise is to imagine what an archeologist would say about your business if you walked out the door today and they walked in 500 years from now. What pictures are on the wall, is the office neat or messy, is the furniture frugal or expensive, is there a lot of security or none? Would the archeologist be able to tell what business you were in? What would they think you cared about? Much in the same way that the archeologist interprets the essence of a culture by examining hints of it, so do your customers as they walk in your office.

One of the many indirect cues you give your customers about your brand is the set of tools you use to manage both your business and their business. Accountants all the time tell me they want their customers to think of them as buttoned up and on top of things. That’s why it is most gratifying when customers tell us that they love our core features, but what they love most is that it makes their business look "buttoned up". 

Imagine doing your clients taxes with pencil on the forms mailed from the IRS in today’s world. What would your client’s think?  What does writing checks out by hand for your clients with check stock in an unlocked drawer say to your clients? If you are still doing that, chances are the brand voice you are communicating is not a forward thinking “buttoned up” accountant. On the other hand, if you provide tools that enable your clients to access the information they need to run their business from a mobile phone or respond quickly to their email with a digital copy of their tax return during a mortgage refinancing, you will wow them.  And they will think you are buttoned up.

Your brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what your customers think it is. And actions speak louder than words. No matter what, indirect communications and the way you manage your business will dominate your clients’ impressions. A solid set of values that drive your people and your business will ensure that your brand promise is what you want it to be. Now, and when the archeologists come digging!   

Thanks for reading! René Lacerte 
Founder and CEO
@rlacerte

Tech-Savvy -- You Know Why!

How CPA's are Experiencing Client Growth Through the Recession...

This recession has taken a toll on all of us, but some seem to survive the recession and come out of it stronger, as they find technologies to help their clients reduce expenses while increasing revenues.

Businesses are all confronted with challenges to maintain liquidity and anticipate fluctuating customer demand while stabilizing operating performance. Most businesses are looking to their CPAs to help them weather the troubled economy, but it is the Tech-Savvy CPA who is truly arming their clients with consistent success. These CPA's have found solutions that reduce a clients overhead, easily manage cash flow and reduce/eliminate their clients time chasing payments.

Savvy businesses aren't the only ones reducing expenses. A biennial survey conducted by the AICPA's Private Companies Practice Section and the Texas Society of CPAs shows that following the recession; the most successful CPA firms have sharpened their business management skills to soften the economic blow. From 2008 to 2010, 30 percent of larger accounting firms experienced a decline in gross fees (the average owner's hourly rate was $179, while rates ranged from $117 at the smallest firms to $319 at the largest). As with most industries, CPAs feel the pressure of higher expectations for productivity. They're no longer guaranteed customer growth, and as a result, they need to protect the bottom line and make changes to preserve cash flow. Fortunately, Bill.com's CPA customers have a variety of weapons in their arsenal to protect themselves and their clients.

Many CPAs noted that this is a common problem in recession times and have taken the initiative to address client recession concerns. Since every business must develop plans that make sense to their individual needs, tech-savvy CPAs are busy with cash flow forecasting, advisory work for clients adjusting to a tougher business environment, redesigning clients' business processes and providing services on risk and fraud management. The results have been impressive as firms embrace cloud based technologies to increase productivity while reducing costs. Firms have been able to recruit new clients, develop new services for existing clients and retain clients by increasing client satisfaction.

"Our CPA customers are seeing the opposite of December's biennial survey's results," said René Lacerte. "They're actually more productive without feeling that tremendous stress because the Bill.com cloud based software platform makes it easy. And with this, they're managing more clients, who are referring them to other clients, and it evolves into this collaborative, word-of-mouth business environment. We're incredibly happy that our customers are successful growing during the recession while saving both time and money."

Progressive CPAs Seek Cloud-Based Solutions to Automate

One firm at the forefront of accounting firms that has embraced the new technologies is Blumer & Associates, CPAs, PC. Jason Blumer, President and Managing Shareholder, is always looking for ways to keep his firm and his clients more profitable, more productive, more efficient and in the technology vanguard. Blumer says, "We've been ′ministering′ in the realm of business for over 15 years, with the goal of making our clients think and challenge the common-place to grow and thrive."

Early on, Blumer identified bill pay management and the accounts payable process as a time- and labor-intensive area that could benefit from automated paperless technologies. Like many other firms, bill management and the A/P process comes with a host of challenges for a firm and its clients, including the timely receiving, approving, and tracking of bills; bills getting lost; tedious data entry; lack of a standardized process; and fraud risk.

Bill.com CPA Program Increases Profitability While Driving Greater Efficiency and Improved Client Collaboration

Bill.com, a paperless bill management solution, enabled Wegner to automate the bill management and A/P process. Through this cloud-based service delivery platform, Richter's firm is able to set up their clients on Bill.com and create a standardized digital workflow for submitting, approving and paying bills electronically. The data synchronizes with their accounting package and helps their clients better manage cash flow. By automating the bill pay process, Wegner has experienced an increase in staff productivity, reduction in non-billable hours and enhanced client collaboration.

Clients also benefit from the technology savings. Wegner CPA clients pay a monthly fee to the firm for services, a rate that's normally increased at the start of each New Year. "We gained so much time with the Bill.com integration," Richter said, "that clients on the new system, received lower increases for 2011. And our clients vendors are happy because they are now getting paid electronically, in three to five days, instead of waiting a week or more to receive a paper check."

CPAs are also recognizing Bill.com's cloud based financial platform is ideal for clients in industry verticals such as franchises who have multiple stores/locations that need to review bills from a common set of vendors/suppliers and can leverage a centralized dashboard for easy cash flow review and simple approval of the bills for all locations.

Another firm capitalizing Bill.com's efficiencies is Minnesota based accounting firm, Moquist Thorvilson Kaufmann Kennedy & Pieper LLC (MTK). MTK introduced its client Peter Gaspary, the owner of 28 Miracle-Ear Stores across Illinois, to Bill.com. MTK sold Gaspary on a whole new way for doing bill management, showing him how he could easily view his cash flow for all 28 stores in one simplified location. Gaspary excitedly embraced the new technology and commented, "I have a better understanding of what's happening on a cash flow basis because Bill.com's calendar acts like a whiteboard, telling you what needs to be paid this week, plus three weeks in advance. There's a certain comfort in knowing that my accountant is handling my books."

From this success with franchisee Peter Gaspry, MTK has successfully implemented Bill.com's cloud based financial platform it to new franchisee customers in Virginia and Florida allowing them to grow their Minnesota based firm and increase revenues.

Bill.com's most recent offering on its platform is their receivables package that synchronizes into your clients accounting programs and will automatically sends out e-mail invoices assigned accounts. Colorado based ASAP Accounting and Payroll Services loves this new application for their homeowner association clients. Tracking down and notifying 900 resort-area homeowners about their assessments and reminding them of missed payments was an enormous task for ASAP. Then they began working with Bill.com to develop its online payment management system that automatically bills homeowners, keeps track of when they pay their dues, and nudges them when they don't.

"Homeowners like the new arrangement," said Diana Murray, ASAP's director of business development. "Because they have control over their accounts. They can choose to initiate electronic payments each month and decide which day to pay their dues. Some elect to set up recurring payments when the dues are consistent."

Dan Lind, Bill.com's vice president of operations and support, reports that, on average, customers using the Bill.com's Receivables program with its e-payment option are getting paid 2 to 3 times faster than with their previous paper systems. E-payments, Lind says, average just five days from the invoice due date, while payments by check take 12 days. Murray says, "Getting paid faster makes an enormous difference to our small and mid-sized business customers who rely on steady cash flow."

Protecting Clients from Fraud

Based on a 2010 Report from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiner (ACFE), on average small businesses lose 5% of annual revenue to fraud. Accounting departments experience the largest percentage of fraud with check tampering and billing as the easiest type of asset misappropriation. As a certified fraud examiner, Jason Blumer has identified Bill.com as an invaluable tool for his small business clients in establishing internal controls in the A/P process to mitigate the potential for fraud and asset misappropriation. "When you operate in the cloud with a financial system like Bill.com that delivers security, it reduces the chance that things will be manipulated" says Blumer. "Because Bill.com is an audited digital process and no user can access system data without their user-restricted access code."

One additional benefit from using Bill.com's cloud based financial platform is that it provides CPA Clients a free place to store all documentation, allowing the user or the CPA to find answers on contracts and bills easily by diving into the digitally stored documents. Latha Saikrishnan, Manager of Outsourcing Solutions in LarsonAllen's Arlington, Virginia office has been quoted in saying "This is especially helpful during the annual audit – Bill.com has helped us reduce our discovery hours to provide a faster, cleaner and more cost-effective audit for our customers."

Tech-Savvy Benefits of Streamline Your Processes

24/7 Access - mobile like you: All of your business financial data synched in one place - Bill.com. Bill.com's web-based cloud application is accessible anytime, anywhere and simplifies CPAs' and their clients' business processes.

Improved workflow: Firms and their clients have experienced more efficient workflow processes and increased productivity, thanks to the automated simplicity of client bill pay.

Automating the bill payment and invoicing process: Bill.com also automates the entire bill payment process, saving staff and clients' time and reducing errors. Clients don't have to write and print and mail checks anymore. They can pay all their bills electronically. Firms can manage the whole process (from entering and coding the bills, to scheduling and approving the bills for payment and synchronizing the data into their accounting package). There's nothing clients have to do, unless they want to.

Increasing the firm's profitability: Using Bill.com extends a firm's bottom line as well. The solution helps automate routine tasks and allows firm staff to focus on higher-value/billable work. As new clients are added, staff have less to do thanks to Bill.com. As firms continue to grow, firms are able to do more with less staff.

Security: Introducing a new technology to clients can lead to many questions. One is data security. Bill.com is more secure than checks on a desk and checks having to go through the U.S. Mail. Bill.com uses bank-level encryption and undergoes an annual SAS 70 Type II Audit to ensure your data is safe and secure.

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@Billcom Customer Tip - Get Paid Faster!

If you want to pay and get paid faster and more accurately, then this tip is for you!

The most important piece of information you can collect up front from your vendors and customers (other than their names, of course) are their email addresses. With just a name or email address, you can set up a vendor or customer to get paid or pay you electronically.
And it is free to them!

Preliminary research shows that Bill.com Receivables customers get paid twice as quickly and vendors who are paid electronically know exactly when they will be receiving funds. These are facts that you, your customers and vendors can bank on!

Collect the email address up front when establishing relationships with your customers and vendors. You'll be glad you did! If you need help with this process, contact us. 
We are always here to help!

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

Add the Paperwork Monster to your Twitter Feed: @Pprworkmonster

4 Questions for W. Michael Hsu, CEO and Founder, DeepSky

  1. How did you get into your line of work?
I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur but wasn’t completely sure how to achieve it. After getting my CPA and Masters of Accountancy, I started working for a public accounting firm. Working as a consultant, I felt as if the accounting departments of the businesses I was working with were not moving forward as the rest of the same business would grow. One day it hit me, “why am I going to different accounting departments trying to fix problems one at a time when I can just build my own solution and allows other businesses to benefit from it?” From there, DeepSky was born with the sole focus of helping entrepreneurs to be successful. I based my business on the radical idea of applying cloud based technology solutions to accounting practices – this combination helps business owners make strategic real time decisions that allow them to achieve their goals.

2. What have you learned through the school of hard knocks?
I am still learning, but I believe that there are three things that are engrained in my business process:

• Be humble and confident – This opens doors. People are more willing to help you learn and become more successful.
• Do more with less – Small changes make a big impact.
• Make ideas happen – Ideas have great value, but it is important to take action because action makes an idea become a reality.

3. What keeps you up at night?
My customers and how I can deliver a better experience to them. DeepSky is unlike any accounting firm or what anyone in the accounting industry has done. It is similar to how Bill.com changed the industry for paying and managing bills. I dream at night of reaching potential customers who haven’t found our business. I had a prospect call me and say “I have been looking for you for your service for the last 2 months. I just didn’t know what you were called or that you existed.” I wont have to count sheep anymore once I know my customers can easily find DeepSky.

4. How has Bill.com helped your business chase its dreams?
I’m not trying to be cheesy but when I love a product, I talk about it a lot. I love Bill.com and I tell other people all the time how much I love your financial platform. Bill.com has changed the marketplace and changed the way bill pay, workflow, invoicing and document storage is supposed to be done. We are educating our customers about the benefits of Bill.com – once they start using it they love Bill.com just as much as we do. Bill.com changes their life and is a cornerstone of our service.

Download a complete PDF of these 4 questions

Note: 4 Questions is a new feature on the Bill.com blog where we will 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 four questions will result not in repeat answers, but in interesting insight into many different journeys. Want to be profiled? Tweet us at @billcom and let us know!

Case Study: Soutirage - A Better Wine Experience

Soutirage, a Napa Valley wine business that uses the latest  in Internet-based technology to inventory the thousands of bottles of fine wines in its warehouse, was still paying bills by hand until their new CFO found Bill.com. Today, paying Soutirage's electric bill is as easy as finding a bottle of 1990 Chateau Lafite Rothschild in the wine company's warehouse.

Soutirage – the French term for the refinement process in wine-making – was founded in 2007 by Chad Meyer, the son of a Napa Valley winery pioneer, and British native Matt Wilson, who had been a Manhattan wine consultant. The partners spent two years designing a business that helps wine aficionados around the world expand and maintain their collections. Soutirage wine experts evaluate clients' existing wine collections, oversee the design of new wine cellars and suggest and procure wine selections for everything from intimate parties to state dinners. The average bottle of wine sold by Soutirage in 2010 cost $200; prices can go over $10,000 for a rare vintage. 

CFO Neev Nissenson said that when he joined Soutirage in 2011, the founders were using NetSuite's financial software for accounting and inventory management. "But they were still doing accounts payable the way they had done them for many years: printing checks, putting them into envelopes and mailing them out. The time it took was excessive. A NetSuite partner company was supposed to add an automated bill paying function, so I spent two or three months calling them, but they never called me back," he said.                                 

The frustrated CFO looked around for an alternative and found Bill.com while searching on the Internet. "I saw that Bill.com was in beta phase of an integration with NetSuite, so I asked to participate," Nissenson said. "A Bill.com technician set us up, and it's worked seamlessly ever since. We use the Bill.com/NetSuite integration to pay about 100 bills each month from our non-wine vendors, including utilities and professional services providers. Some vendors have joined our e-payment network, which makes paying them even cheaper and safer. Bill.com will send them an ‘evite’ to accept payment via ACH, and when they accept, they’re always amazed with how much faster their payments go through."  

Nissenson also added as a Bill.com/NetSuite beta integration participant. "Bill.com's customer support has been outstanding," he said, “During the beta process, they took care of any problem immediately and they appreciate my feedback."

Bill.com saves the 11-person Soutirage staff time in other ways as well. Because all bills are now online, Soutirage supervisors can approve bills remotely, when they are working from home, or internationally scouting wine. And because Bill.com allows users to attach documentation to each bill, "If there's something I don't remember, I just click on the bill and all the information pops up, showing who approved it and when payment was made,” said Nissenson. “If a bill was synched into NetSuite, an icon appears and I can see full bill approval and payment details, so I immediately know the status.”

Soutirage continues to build a reputation as a sophisticated limit-pusher by leveraging technology to its greatest potential. Before the 2011 G8 Summit in May, French President Nicholas Sarkozy held a pre-summit for global media and technology leaders and invited 300 of them, including the founders of Facebook, Google and Amazon, to a private showing and wine tasting at the Louvre. After two weeks of negotiation, event organizers convinced the French museum staff to allow American wines to be served there for the first time, and commissioned Soutirage to choose and pour them wines. As an extra attraction, Soutirage put a Quick Response (QR) code on each bottle, so that as they sipped, the tech leaders could read tasting notes about each wine on their smartphones.

“With 11 people, we’re constantly looking for solutions that reduce unnecessary time waste. I have so much stuff to do! Rather than stuffing envelopes or licking stamps, I’m able to focus on making business decisions that determine the future of Soutirage. Bill.com has helped us maintain a very advanced, tech-savvy operation while dealing with very old, refined wines.”

Download the complete Case Study here.

Are you a Bean Counter?

The term has been around since the 70’s and refers to accountants  that are so meticulous that they count every bean when doing inventory. Having worked at Price Waterhouse in the 90’s, I can appreciate the value in such thoroughness. But having worked with many accountants thru Intuit, PayCycle and now Bill.com, I know it is far from the truth of what you do.

That is why, when I hear competitors (that shall remain nameless) refer to accountants as “Bean Counters”, I get annoyed. They clearly don’t understand what you do every day and where the profession is heading. Nor do they understand what your clients really need. As we come to the end of the year and the last remaining tradeshows for the year, there is no better reminder of this than the annual Sleeter conference. Accountants get together to learn how to help small businesses manage and build their business using the newest techniques and technologies. The profession has moved well beyond the numbers.

However, with so many new opportunities you have to focus or else you will only offer partial solutions to your clients. As accountants, your plate is full. Your clients call with tax questions, estate planning, technology issues, bookkeeping needs, audit requirements and general business advice. What is the best way to focus?

My suggestion is to pick one thing as a specialty and to leverage your network and or other employees for the other needs of your clients. The specialty could be anything-- systems integration, estate planning, tax advice, business management or a broad generalist.  Whatever it is just make sure you like doing it. This is crucial as you are going to end up doing whatever it is over and over again.  More importantly, your positive energy will lead to better creativity and hence, solutions for your customers. 

Once you have your focus, or specialty as I call it, you need to position your self and or your firm to acquire customers. In addition, you need to extend your network so that you can help your clients no matter what the question is. I think today’s social networking tools can help you do both at the same time. 

By now you have undoubtedly come across LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Each of these tools have their place in extending your network and promoting your business. First let’s discuss the granddaddy of social networking, LinkedIn.

LinkedIn started in 2003 as a place for people to stay connected with those in their network and to connect to your networks’ network. The first thing you do is create a simple profile of your career. I highly recommend getting a few people you have worked with to recommend you. You should of course return the favor. This will give more credibility to your resume.  Ideally, you would have them discuss your “specialty”. Once you have done that, you’ll be surprised to see how big your network is.  When one extends their network to their friend’s network and so on it is pretty easy to get connected to anyone.  For example, I have 658 direct connections in my account. Those 658 individuals have a total of 213k connections and those 213k connections have over 8M connections. Pretty amazing to see how small the world is. Granted some of the connections might be loose but the network does work. I have found employees, partners and customers thru Linkedin. In fact, I just got pinged by a very interesting partner thru a friend of a friend.

In the last few years, LinkedIn has been leveraging the network via user groups. These groups are similar to the old Compuserve forums we may have used but way more effective given the size of the network.  Folks can post questions for help and offer advice in as little as a few minutes. Daily digest come to your email where you can learn about the challenges your peers face which of course prepares you for the future. You can use the group functionality to augment your specialty as well as to promote it. So get an account at LinkedIn, find a few groups that you are interested in and start getting connected.

Facebook started in 2004 and now has over 500M active users. Think about that, more people are on Facebook than live in the United States. You cannot ignore this juggernaut. Even if you don’t understand it today, you have to tomorrow. Facebook has many of the features that LinkedIn has with groups.  Individuals can post information in a group and all members in the group receive real time updates. One challenge with Facebook is the consumer focus. LinkedIn is solely about your career and as such has a business focus. Facebook is primarily about your social life – posting pictures of food you eat, talking about your weekend and sharing your personal life in a public setting. Large companies have started leveraging facebook to promote their brand to their customers. The model is evolving and will be important so start playing around with it if you haven’t.

Finally, Twitter was started in 2006 and has over 100M registered users. In it’s short history it has managed to change the way we gather and share information. Though it may be more known for promoting change in Iran during the pro democracy demonstrations a few years back, it is used to promote businesses more and more. If the taco truck can use Twitter to let folks know when it is at the corner or the baker can use it to let customers know cookies are fresh out of the oven, than accountants can use it to promote their “specialty”.

These tools are new, but the need for professionals to help businesses improve is not. As readers of CPA Technology Advisor you are already a step ahead because you know the importance of being ahead of the market and ahead of your clients.The good new is that these new technologies will help you grow your own firm and help your clients at the same time. Show your mastery of them and nobody will referr to you as “bean counters.”

Thanks for reading! René Lacerte 
Founder and CEO
@rlacerte

@Billcom Customer Tip - Bill.com Tames the Paperwork Monster!

Drowning in paper and unfiled company documents? Bill.com has many great features that allow you to manage your Payables and Receivables online. In addition, we also provide free document management features with either our Payables or Receivables services.  

Many customers use Bill.com to store nearly every piece of paper their office might have previously held in a file cabinet. These include things related to paying bills, like contracts and vendor information, and also company information like prior year tax returns, important communications and other documents. You can organize these using folders (yes folders!) you can set up on the Documents tab. You can also restrict access to your Company documents using our powerful built-in custom role features for all the users of your Bill.com account.  

We continue to improve our document management features, and are currently offering our Receivables customers the ability to share documents and collaborate with their own customers.

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

Add the Paperwork Monster to your Twitter Feed: @Pprworkmonster

 

4 Questions for Tim Hughes, Principal of Virbo

Q. How did you get into your line of work?
I excelled in math and loved financial analysis. When in graduate school, the class I loved the most was Entrepreneurship. I couldn’t sleep at night, I would get so excited.  

Q. What have you learned through the school of hard knocks?
That you really need to stay focused and have a plan. Also, the current technology solutions are making it easier to become scalable.

Q. What keeps you up at night?
When we are not on top of a client.

Q. How has Bill.com helped your business chase its dreams.
Bill.com has allowed us to become more scalable by having a turn-key payable and now receivable system. We can feel comfortable that we are on top of our clients entire accounting process, and we can do this when we are on the road.

 

 

 

 

Download a complete PDF of these 4 questions

Note: 4 Questions is a new feature on the Bill.com blog where we will 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 four questions will result not in repeat answers, but in interesting insight into many different journeys. Want to be profiled? Tweet us at @billcom and let us know!

Summer Thoughts - Year End Predictions

It’s summer time and with that comes the warm long evenings where we relax and let our minds drift to think about what we have accomplished so far this year and what we have left to accomplish. Some make New Year’s resolutions; I like to take the time to reflect mid-year on what might be coming in the future. So here are my top 8 predictions:

1. People truly start spending - after all, we are Americans and we like to spend. The savings rate has moved in the right direction, but I think there is some pent up desire to spend. As that happens, business will improve, which means businesses will need help. Given the financial crises we have just been through, small business owners will turn to their accountants for guidance and financial work. So get prepared to take on more business, leveraging technology and your network.

2. Businesses and accountants find their voice in the social media fray and find it is more fun to be social. Social media is a great way for accountants to stay connected to their network and to see what their clients are up to. Imagine how comfortable your clients will be when you show that you care because you’re up to speed on what’s going on with them and their business courtesy of Facebook.

3. More accountants will adopt SaaS/Cloud solutions as they see their peers wearing flip flops and doing work from a Starbucks with their dog at their feet. Don’t you ever wonder why Starbucks is so full and who the lucky folks are that don’t have to go into the office? Stop wondering, and start living your life from wherever you want.

4. Large companies that have failed to see that the Internet is about servicing customers better will lose another year to the startups that get it. The most powerful thing about the Internet is the increase in “connectivity” that lets you know what your customers are doing and what they need from you. While this applies mostly to large companies, accountants that use the Internet will have an advantage (complete access to client data while controlling client access is just one example).

5. Small companies that think the Internet is about being free will go away or consolidate. There is no such thing as a free lunch, so if it’s free watch out. Either the business model is advertising (which I personally have had enough of) or they don’t have one.

6. Giants win their second World Series thanks to great accounting. Seriously, how else can you explain the great talent at less than half the price of the Yankees?

7. Collaboration between young and old accountants creates a new breed of firm — the hip technology guy backed by tons of experience. As the boomers begin to think of retirement, they will bring in young technology savvy folks to transition their firms. As they do that, they’ll find they can work less, do what they want and still make money.

8. Apple unveils a new gizmo just for accountants. Seriously, they already have. Check out the iPad with any SaaS service. No more lugging a heavy leather briefcase full of regulations and client workpapers. Save your back today, and try it out.

Keep enjoying your summer and if you have any opinions on my top 8 let me know - I always love hearing from you. Thanks for reading! Rene'  @rlacerte