Bill Pay Service

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.

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. 

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:

1. 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.

2. 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)!

3. 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. 

4. 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. 

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.