Bill Pay Service

Paying bills is an essential part of every startup. Suppliers, vendors, and contractors need to be paid on a regular basis. But while essential, paying bills is time-consuming and, frankly, tedious. It’s certainly not the reason you launched a company.

And while technology has made the process easier (nobody’s printing paper checks any more), it still has limitations. Someone needs to enter new vendors or contractors, check invoices, correct errors, and authorize payments.

Streamline your bill payment process

Our Bill Pay Service can give you more time to focus on your startup by taking the responsibility of paying bills off your shoulders. We work with your chosen payment solution (like Bill.com, Ramp, Brex, Routable, and Airbase) and set up a customized payment process that follows your workflows and authorization designations. We handle the details and you authorize payments as needed.

Why does your startup need a Bill Pay Service?

Our Bill Pay Service makes it much easier for you to make sure your invoices are paid, and it offers several benefits to you:

More time saved for higher-value tasks. Our bill pay solution saves time for you and your employees. For early-stage startups, founders and CEOs don’t need to spend time processing and paying bills. For larger teams, your CFO and accounting staff can focus on more high-value tasks than paying bills, like financial analysis.
Better organization and records. Transactions need to be coded properly, expenses need to be accrued if necessary, and all payments need to be entered into your general ledger. With our service, your books will be organized and ready for monthly close, your books will be accurate and organized, and good payment records definitely make it easier at tax time.
Fewer errors. Automated systems are great, but they still aren’t perfect. Vendors and invoice information needs to be checked, even if your system scans electronic invoices. We’ll make sure the information is entered correctly, add any necessary information, and issue payments promptly and accurately.
Happier vendors. Consistent bill payment processes will improve relations with your vendors. Your vendors won’t need to contact you about payments, and can count on your payments arriving regularly. Solid vendor relationships are important to customer service, cost efficiency, product quality, and your development timeline.

Follow a standardized bill payment workflow

Our Bill Pay Service will establish a standard payment workflow that includes your approvals and that can scale as your startup grows. We work with your payment system, including Bill.com, Ramp, Brex, Airbase, and Routable. Our workflow includes the following stages:

Invoice intake. We will supervise collecting your invoices, and manage your invoice inbox.
Invoice processing. All invoices are processed weekly. Each one is reviewed to make sure that any automated data extraction provided by your payment system is correct. If not, we’ll manually enter the necessary information.
Approval. Based on the approval parameters you establish, we will provide you with every bill for review and approval. If you follow a tiered approval system, we’ll route the invoices for approval to the individual(s) you designate.
Invoice payment. Once approval is received for each invoice, we can pay your vendors directly, or you can choose to issue payments yourself. If you elect to have us issue payments, we will process your invoices and issue payments weekly on the day you select.
Reconciliation. We will match each transaction to you bank statement and make sure each is coded and entered correctly on your general ledger.

Eight reasons you should outsource your bill payments

If you dread facing a pile of unprocessed invoices every month, you’re in good company. Most startup founders and CEOs don’t enjoy paying bills. And if you’re working with limited resources like most startups, your team may not have the bandwidth to process invoices in addition to all the other financial tasks you need to handle to hit your startup’s milestones. Outsourcing your accounts payable (AP) function could help you focus on your top priority: Building your business. Let’s look at some of the reasons why outsourcing your bill payments may be a good idea:

It’s a largely separate function. Paying bills is probably not as integrated into your business as many other functions like operations, so outsourcing accounts payable is usually pretty easy and efficient.
Paying bills includes a lot of steps. The process varies from business to business, but typically accounts payable steps include capturing invoices, matching purchase orders, processing invoices, obtaining approval, keeping payment records, and financial reporting. That’s a lot of detail and paperwork for your staff (or you)!
Processing invoices costs you time. Your AP workflow probably requires significant time and resources, as you can see from the steps above. If there’s a lot of back-and-forth between departments to verify and approve invoices, the costs mount up quickly.
You need controls. Duplicate invoices can be a serious problem for a startup, and it can happen easily. A delay in payment could trigger another invoice from a vendor, and without careful controls you could pay twice! Missed or late payments can affect your vendor relationships, and create issues with financial metrics like your burn rate.
Smooth vendor relationships. You definitely don’t want your vendors to find it difficult to work with your startup. Missed due dates and payments mean vendors will be contacting you to track down their payments, which puts strain on your vendor relationships and further increases the amount of time you’re spending on bills. If the vendor resends an invoice and you accidentally pay it again, that’s affecting your bottom line as well as increasing the time spent.
Outsourcing is less expensive than adding headcount. Hiring people to handle bill payment increases your startup’s overhead, and salaries are probably already one of your largest expenses. Plus, you’ll need to spend time and money recruiting and hiring.
Better accountability. An outsourced bill payment service can provide your accounts payable the attention it needs. Most employees at a startup already wear a lot of hats – this is one role that can be delegated to an outside resource. Your payment vendor will usually provide reporting as well, including things like month- and year-end close and reconciliation.
Fewer errors. With bill payment, things don’t always go perfectly. Automated invoice scans can generate a lot of errors that require review and often, manual corrections. An outsourced provider will handle those details and make sure the invoice payments are accurate and timely. And with an outsourced service, you’ll have an audit trail that you can review if necessary.

So if you’re dealing with a backlog of unprocessed invoices, or spending many hours each month paying bills, outsourcing your accounts payable can save you a lot of administrative headaches and more importantly, time. You, and your employees, can get back to the business of running your startup, without the responsibility of paying bills.

Top bill pay systems for startups

Startups have a range of options for bill payment systems. Bill payment software keeps track of what bills you owe and when they need to be paid, and that’s important to running your business. The best systems automate manual processing, and include things like accounting software integration and invoice scanning. Good bill payment systems should reduce manual data entry, streamline your accounts payable process, and include customized approval workflows to route payments to managers. Here are the providers that most of our clients use.

Why startups should use Bill.com

There are three main reasons why startups should use Bill.com:

The IRS requires you to retain at least three years of all bills you’ve paid, and Bill.com does that.
Bill.com generates a solid audit trail, and you don’t get that from paper checks or other online bill pay methods.
Using Bill.com means you’ll spend less money on accounting.

Ramp’s built-in bill pay financing

Ramp’s bill pay feature has added a financing option, which could be very useful for for bootstrapped or struggling startups. Businesses using Ramp bill pay can get credit for a reasonable interest rate that may be better than what they’re getting from other credit options. You’ll need to compare the financing rates of different credit options to see which one offers the best deal, but Ramp is one you may want to consider.

Ramp now offers international payments

Startups that use Ramp to make payments can now take advantage of Ramp’s international payment service. One of the features is that for many countries, you can actually issue payment in that country’s currency. So vendors and contractors don’t have to convert currency or get charged additional fees for foreign currency.

Routable helps companies pay bills worldwide

Omri Mor, Co-founder and CEO of Routable, explains how the company’s platform sends B2B payments worldwide. Routable focuses on helping businesses scale their payment solutions, the company developed its platform for sending B2B payments worldwide, helping businesses automate their accounts payable processes from vendor onboarding to final payment.

Airbase offers cashback program

Airbase, one of the leaders in the startup world for expense management tools, has established a cashback program on card purchases by Airbase clients. This is in addition to their very robust expense management software, and it’s very helpful to early-stage startups that are extremely price sensitive.

Brex offers integrated financial services to startups

Brex offers startups a sophisticated financial stack that includes things like expense management, bill pay, cash management options for funds, and business credit cards. The online interface lets founders and CEOs view all finances in one place, and Brex integrates with accounting and payroll systems.