Bills 2.0

Enhanced LIVE Bill.com Customer Support

Customer Support has always been a priority at Bill.com. We know that when you have an issue, most often you need it resolved quickly. Unlike many vendors that have shifted towards only "submitting inquiries" via a website and expecting 24 hour turnaround, Bill.com has continued to maintain LIVE support so you can simply pick up the phone and talk with an expert in real time when you need to.

We are now enhancing our LIVE support option to include electronic chat!

We are now beta testing a chat capability for support that is integrated with the product. 

You will be chatting in real time with the same agents you speak with and email today, however you will be able to do it while more easily multi-tasking and doing other work while not being tethered to the phone.

Of course, the phone is still available when you need it.

We want your feedback!

New Feature: Enhanced ePayment Setup

We have made it faster and easier to set up vendors to receive electronic ePayments from Bill.com. A few new features include:

Ability to add a vendor by entering their Bill.com Payment Network ID

Whenever a vendor registers for the Bill.com Payment Network they will now receive a Payment Network ID. You can set up that vendor to receive ePayments whenever you pay them by simply asking them to provide you with their Payment Network ID. This way you no longer have to "invite" them to join the network if you know they are already registered.

When you go to the "Setup ePayments" page for that vendor and you will see the option to enter their ID.

Invite Multiple Vendors to Register at Once

You can now invite multiple vendors to joint the Bill.com Payment Network rather than inviting them individually. From the Vendor page in Bill.com, simply select "Setup ePayments" without selecting an individual vendor and you will have the option to select multiple vendors from a list and send them all invitations at once.

New Feature: Enhanced Vendor Credit Management

This weekend we added Enhanced Vendor Credit Management to Bill.com. This new feature makes it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to accept vendor credits, route them for review and apply them when paying bills... all through Bill.com and fully synced with QuickBooks or Intacct.

You can now:

• Fax, email or upload credit documentation (credit memos, statements, etc) into Bill.com just like bills
• Route vendor credits to reviewers (including users that do not have access to your accounting system)
• View and apply credits when making payments (you can choose to apply all or a portion of the vendor credits)
• Get reminded of available credits whenever you are looking at vendor information or paying bills

In addition:

• Check vouchers and ePayment confirmation emails will indicate when credits are applied
• Credits will sync with QuickBooks and Intacct and can be exported using our standard reports

Enter credits

• Simply fax, email, or upload vendor credit memos or statements containing credits to your inbox in Bill.com
• Note that credits can now be recorded without needing access to your accounting system... you can delegate the task to an office manager or do it on the road!

Route Vendor Credits Automatically

• Using Bill.com you can have employees (and contractors) who do not have access to your accounting system review vendor credits
  
• If you need others to review the vendor credit, verify amounts or approve them for use, simply add their names and Bill.com will take care of showing them the digital image of the vendor credit and gathering approvals online
• When entering vendor credits you have access to vendor information, vendor contracts, and past vendor credits
• vendor credits can be assigned to GL accounts, jobs, and departments/classes so when they are synchronized with your accounting package they are properly classified

Apply Credits When Paying Bills

• When you pay your bills, Bill.com will inform you if there are available credits
• Simply click on the link to review and apply credits to the payment

Determine How Much of the Credit You Want to Apply

• Simply select which credits (and how much of the credit) you want to apply and Bill.com will adjust the payment amount!

Review and Pay Bills

• Once the credit is applied you are returned to the "Pay Bills" page where you can make the payment
• You will see that a credit has been applied and have the option to make adjustments at any time prior to payment
• When Bill.com makes the payment your vendors will be notified that a credit was applied (on both checks as well as their ePayment notification emails!)

Synchronize with your Accounting Package

• Bill.com makes sure that the vendor credit is properly applied to the bill in QuickBooks or Intacct and credits will be reflected in your chart of accounts
• You can view credits within your accounting package and see where they were applied

We hope you like the new features and will provide us feedback!

Paying employee expenses electronically with Bill.com

Businesses of all sizes routinely reimburse employee expenses. But small and medium sized businesses typically do it the old fashioned way, by filing paper copies or expense reports and receipts and cutting paper checks. This is is time intensive and results in slower payments, and slower access to funds for employees.

While employee expense reimbursement was not the primary reason for creating Bill.com, it turns out that many of our customers use us for just that. Especially now that our ePayment capability makes it easy to pay employees electronically.

In a nutshell, here is what our customers are doing:

• Filling out expense reports using a company's existing process (typically with Word or Excel files).
• Faxing or emailing those forms to their company's Bill.com account along with images of their receipts
• The finance team can then classify all expenses using the general ledger information synchronized with either QuickBooks or Intacct.
• The expense report is then routed to the employee for the "electronic signature" and then routed to management and the finance team. Every step of the process is recorded in the audit log for future reference and all the documents are stored digitally-- the employee can literally shred the receipts and any paper documents.
• Once the expense report is approved, the finance team (or employer) simply pays the employee via Bill.com. If the employee's bank information is present (and it typically is because the same finance team set them up in payroll) then the employee is paid electronically via ePayments, directly to their bank account. If their bank information is not in the system, they get paid by check (without requiring the finance team to print, sign, or distribute the check).
• As an added bonus, the employee receives an automated email when the payment is sent and when funds are available in their bank account. All without any work on the part of the finance team or whoever processed the payment.
• If an employee has a question about payment status, the finance team can look up payment information with a few clicks.

To learn more and try it 30 days risk free, visit http://www.bill.com/businesses/expense-reimbursement.php

Ask Lacerte: Branding Your CPA Firm

This post previously appeared in the CPA Technology Advisor.

Please join me in a thought experiment.  Think of the name of your favorite restaurant.  Just think of the name.  Try not to think about the food, the service, the ambiance or the desert.  For me it is impossible to keep it just to the name.  As soon as I think of the “Flea Street Café”, I can’t help but think of all the attributes (tasty, organic, caring service, friendly) that make it a great place to eat and my favorite in the bay area. 

A brand is not about logos and colors; it’s about what people think about when they think of a company name. Marketing professionals try to influence that with colors, logos and other techniques but ultimately the brand is considerably more complex and is built over time.  And in the case of accounting firms, the brand of the company is the brand of you.  So with that in mind, what is your brand?  What would customers say if I asked them what you stood for?  And how would you like them to answer that question?  And finally, what is the best way to go about building the brand of you?

You may not be asking or know the answers to these questions but you should.  In the absence of you directing and influencing your customers and prospects they will determine your brand attributes.  You cannot afford this.  In the age of technology and outsourcing, your biggest advantage is you.

Every interaction with a customer informs and affects your brand image.  When the customer visits your office, they soak in all the details of your office without even knowing it.  For example, a messy desk full of papers may make them wonder about your organization skills.  An empty office, may make them wonder why you aren’t more busy.  Your degrees and certifications on the wall may help them get comfortable with your credentials.  The list is endless and my guess is that you don’t want your customers wondering about such attributes. Without purpose or context you are giving away your brand.

Accounting firms today are at a cross roads... Not about their image, but how they are perceived in the minds of their clients and market.  Are they a place for businesses to drop off their shoebox of receipts and papers and get back reports/forms, or are they relevant to their clients day-to-day finances/operations?  Ultimately, this is your choice.  Whatever your choice, though, you must communicate your brand consistently to ensure your customers think of you as just taxes and forms or all of that coupled with sage advice, or something else all together.  Whatever image you pick, you probably want it to do what all brands do – create customer loyalty and as a result greater revenue.   And we all would like more revenue and less attrition.  As someone who uses accountants for personal and business here are the things that matter most to me:

Responsiveness -  We are in the information age and for better or worse, information moves much faster now.  We all expect more sooner.  If I can get an answer on Google in 1 sec that would have taken me several hours 20 years ago, why shouldn’t my accountant respond to my question in less than a few business hours?  It may not be fair, but we all are being trained to expect this.  My advice, if you can’t respond quickly, tell your customer when you will respond.  That only takes a few seconds and will reset the expectations.

Communication- Communication is an essential tool in business.  While most firms communicate the positive, one of my pet peeves is communicating the negatives/mistakes. Failure is a unique opportunity to say something about who you are and what you stand for.  If you make a mistake, acknowledging and fixing it can and will enhance your brand.  We all know that we all make mistakes.  Yet it is rare for someone to acknowledge and to proactively make it better.  These are the people we trust and ultimately that is one of the most important brand attributes an accountant can have!

Completeness – Let’s face it, your job is all about completeness.  You have to know all the tax and accounting laws that may affect your clients.  That’s a huge burden but if you don’t then your clients will look elsewhere.  Maybe not today but when they learn that something was not done completely, they’ll move.  So if you are a small firm that may not be familiar with ISO’s and AMT or Family partnerships or some other arcane law, refer the client to someone who does or better yet consult that person and let your client know that you consulted with an expert.  

Efficient Technology– As a technology entrepreneur, it should come as no surprise that this is an important brand attribute for me.  It is the way I manage my life and given what it has enabled me to do, I wonder when someone I work with is not leveraging technology.  Technology can act like a wrapper around your product and services.  You can use it to track important client details and communications, do your work more efficiently, and become more proactive (more on that later).  For me, someone who leverages technology to the fullest has probably done it to get more time and better perspective. 

Proactive advice – Finally, all of the above attributes come together in this attribute.  Going above and beyond the call of duty is the holy grail in servicing clients in any business.  Combining technology and the complete knowledge of your client will allow you to reach the ultimate responsiveness – proactive advice.  Understanding the big picture for your client, timing on retirement, portfolio and investments,  shifts in jobs, business financings, etc is an opportunity for real value add.  After all, as my mentor at Price Waterhouse told me, “the language of business is accounting”.  Make sure you read between the lines. 

Accountants are in a unique position to be consigliore for their clients.  If you can position/brand yourself as such the rewards are strong.  Good luck and happy branding.

Rene

Good advice on scanners

One of the benefits of Bill.com is that we make it easy to go paperless by allowing businesses to digitize bills by using a simple fax machine (every Bill.com account gets a unique fax number as part of the monthly service fee). However, once you really get going we think it is a greeat idea to invest in a good scanner.

CPA2Biz points out in a blog post, as does Alexandra DeFelice that good scanners will make all the difference for accounting firms entering tax season, but also for any business in our opinion. 

A couple things we recommend in addition to their good advice:

• Speed is good. When dealing with bills you often have a lot of pages and don't have time to wait.
• Get a scanner that supports automatic Duplex scanning. Many bills are double-sided. You do not want a scanner that makes you flip the pages to scan the back pages. many scanners like the Fujitsu Scansnap will automatically detect and scan both sides of a document while not scanning blank pages.
• Get a scanner that supports "scan to email". Services like Bill.com make it easy to automate workflow and avoid having to handle and file documents on hard drives and corporate document management systems. If your scanner can automatically send a document to an email address you avoid having to save a pdf document on a host computer and then figure out what to do with it. You simply program the scanner to send documents to Bill.com and you never have to worry about the local document....it's filed automatically for you.

Paperless is the future. While you can get cheap scanners, in our experience spending a little more money (even only a few hundred dollars) will pay off by saving a lot of time and frustration many times over.

Ask Lacerte: Preparing for Disaster with SaaS

This article previously appeared in the CPA Technology Advisor.

Imagine you are having dinner outside at a nice café in your town.  You hear a fire truck racing by, you look up and then continue your dinner.  Then you see not 1 more but 3 more coming from all the neighboring towns.  Soon there is a lot of commotion.  5 blocks away there is a plum of smoke racing into the sky.  After the initial fear for loss of life, you realize that the smoke is coming from the same block that your family business has been operating out of for the last 70 years.  You drop your napkin and run down the 5 blocks to find out that you are safe.  It is not your building that is on fire it is the building 2 doors over.  You think “Wow, I dodged that one” and go on home.

The next morning you go into work and after a few emails you realize you need to go downstairs and get something out of the files.  When you open the door to go down into the basement, you are shocked.  It is full of water.  Apparently, the fire next door took 2Million gallons to put out and much of it ended up in your basement.  All the records that you rely on to make your business run are now gone.  You no longer know what you paid  Tom the last time he did that brochure or what your contract with “Big Company” requires of you.  You realize in a heartbeat that this will be the most challenging time in running your family’s business since your grandfather started it 70 years ago.  You’re afraid that you’re not up to it.  You’re afraid that the business won’t make it.  You’re afraid that in just one moment you lost everything that your family has worked for for generations.

Pretty scary isn’t it.  This actually happened to a friend of mine and it has affected their business in so many ways.  She has survived but it has not been without its sacrifices and challenges.  In the following 2 years, she would close one store, sell inventory below cost, and work harder than ever before.

The department of labor estimates that 60 percent of businesses hit with such a disaster close the doors within 2 years.   Think about that, when disaster hits your clients you have a 60% chance of losing them.  Not because of anything you did or they did but something out of anyone’s control.  

It doesn’t have to be that way.  You, as a trusted advisor, have the opportunity to influence decisions and actions ahead of such a disaster.  Imagine if my friend’s accountant had influenced her to have a disaster recovery plan.  It would have been a few weeks of disruption but the business would not have been at risk.  Instead of the accountant facing a 60% chance of her going out of business and losing a client, my friend would be telling all of her business friends about how her accountant saved her business by forcing her to plan for just this moment.  So instead of the stress of a disaster, the accountant would be busy managing referrals.  As a businessmen and not an accountant, this is exactly the type of advice I expect my accountant to give me. 

This issue is dedicated to giving you the tools to provide lots of ways to help you help your clients plan for that awful moment of when disaster strikes.  My objective in this column is to stress the importance of planning and the value of Software-as-a-Service when it comes to planning the disaster.

By definition “SAAS” solutions have a disaster recovery advantage.  SaaS applications leverage the Internet so that you can work from anywhere.  Everyday, this has advantages.  I do my work from the office, home, on the road, or on my phone.  When it comes to a disaster, this advantage can save your business.  It means that when a Hurricane, an Earthquake, or a Tornado strikes you can leave town like you should and resume work from the next state or town where it is safe and there is an Internet connection.  

The other primary advantage of a best in class SaaS company is that it thinks about disaster recovery and incorporates a strong plan into the DNA of its company.  It is our job and if we don’t do it clearly our business is at risk.  Core to every disaster plan is the backing up of data and documents routinely.  Most small businesses think they are doing great if they back up their files once a month.  Best in class SaaS companies have this built into their application.  We make it so the software and the data that drive the application are backed up REALTIME in different locations that are thousands of miles apart and not in the same disaster zone.  In fact we make sure they are on different Internet back bones and different power grids. That means that as long as there is Internet, you and your clients will be able to get to the tools you need to run your business.  Duplicating this capability for a small business is prohibitively expensive from a cost and time perspective. 

How do you know if the company you are looking at is “best in class”?  You should check the background of the management team for prior successes where this would have been part of their job, make sure they have strong investors that have backed successful companies where this is valued and most importantly make sure they are Sas70 certified by a reputable firm.    The SAS 70 requires that certain procedures be in place including controls and security around any of the stated operations.  The auditors have to check that the procedures are followed so that the data is backed up at the frequency stated.

As you consider adding or expanind your disaster recovery consulting, please consider SaaS.  There are SaaS applications for phone systems, accounting, document management, bill management, payroll, tax preparation, inventory management and pretty much everything you and your clients will need to run your business.

Finally, please don’t wait for the disaster to strike before you see the benefit of developing a disaster recovery plan.  You clients are depending on you to push them, to serve them and to protect them from such disasters.  I should know, I am one of them.

Rene

New CPA2Biz/AICPA White Paper "Transforming Your Client Accounting Services"

A new white paper from CPA2Biz, a subsidiary of the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) was just released and includes lots of information for accounting firms looking to expand beyond their traditional business activities and moving into a new era of Client Accounting Services.

The paper covers the "why" but also the "how", featuring real firms of different sizes that have made the move successfully and also giving practical advice about how to get started and improve your firm's results. Topics include:

• Traditional Client Accounting Services Overview — challenges most firms face today
• Profile of Six CPA Firms who are Leading the Way in Transforming this Area of their Practice
• Client Accounting Services Strategies for the Future
  • Positioning
  • Product/Service Mix
  • Pricing Strategies
  • Place — Identifying Your Ideal Target Clients
• Leveraging SaaS to Improve Profitability

Any firm looking to expand their business into a new era of client accounting services should take a look!

Learn more and download "Transforming Your Client Accounting Services" from CPA2Biz>>

Bill.com Video Wins 2009 Telly Award!

One of our introductory videos produced last year by Compass Rose Media just received a 2009 Telly Award!!!

If you haven't already seen it check out the video on our Youtube channel.

Congrats to Compass Rose and the Bill.com team that worked on it!

P.S. That really is Bill.com CEO Rene Lacerte's voice on the video!

Cool new features coming this weekend!

We are releasing several new powerful capabilities this weekend! Here is a sneak peak of a few major features. More information to follow with the official release notes once the upgrade is complete!

• Payables customers can now invite vendors to the Bill.com Payment Network, thus enabling ePayments without having to ask vendors for their bank information
• We have enhanced payment timing information when paying bills and viewing payment status
• You can now pay bills from multiple bank accounts
• QuickBooks Desktop and Hosted users can now use Job Costing features

We know you will be as excited about these new features as we are! Stay tuned for more information.