BILL Holdings, Inc. provides financial operations platform for small and midsize businesses worldwide. As a champion of SMBs, the company is automating the future of finance so businesses can thrive. The company’s integrated platform helps businesses to more efficiently control their payables, receivables, and spend and expense management. Hundreds of thousands of businesses rely on BILL’s proprietary network of millions of members to pay or get paid faster. The company is a trusted partner of l...
BILL Holdings, Inc. provides financial operations platform for small and midsize businesses worldwide. As a champion of SMBs, the company is automating the future of finance so businesses can thrive. The company’s integrated platform helps businesses to more efficiently control their payables, receivables, and spend and expense management. Hundreds of thousands of businesses rely on BILL’s proprietary network of millions of members to pay or get paid faster. The company is a trusted partner of leading U.S. financial institutions, accounting firms, and accounting software providers.
BILL's purpose-built, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled financial software platform creates seamless connections between the company’s customers, their suppliers, and their clients. Businesses on the company’s platform generate and process invoices, streamline approvals, make and receive payments, manage employee expenses, sync with their accounting system, foster collaboration, and manage their cash flow. The company has built sophisticated integrations with popular accounting software solutions, banks, card issuers, and payment processors, enabling its customers to access these mission-critical services quickly and easily. The company’s integrated platform also includes BILL Spend and Expense, its spend and expense management product, which provides a solution for businesses to have smart corporate cards, build and monitor budgets, manage payments, and eliminate the need for manual expense reports.
As of June 30, 2024, approximately 474,000 businesses used the company’s solutions and processed $292 billion in Total Payment Volume (TPV) during fiscal 2024. As of June 30, 2024, approximately 7.1 million network members have paid or received funds electronically using the company’s platform.
Solution
The company’s platform automates the SMB back office and enables businesses using its solutions to pay their suppliers and collect payments from their clients, acting as a system of control for their accounts payable, accounts receivable, and spend and expense management activities. As a result, the company’s platform frees businesses using its solutions from cumbersome legacy financial processes.
Platform
The company’s purpose-built platform leverages its ability to see both sides of a transaction and can easily connect both transaction parties. This promotes the rapid exchange of information and funds, with strong network effects and greater monetization opportunities as more customers adopt the company’s platform. The company’s platform also expands the ability of businesses using its solutions to real-time budget for, monitor, and approve employee expenses across organizations of all sizes.
In 2023, the company announced the launch of its integrated platform, which incorporated BILL Spend and Expense into its main accounts payable and receivable platform, and which it has continued to augment during fiscal 2024. The integrated platform enables businesses using the company’s solutions to navigate its product offerings easily, and to gain more visibility and control, empowering them to better manage their finances.
Accounts Payable Automation
The company’s accounts payable automation service streamlines the entire payables process, from the receipt of a bill, through the approvals workflow, to the payment and synchronization with the accounting system. Here are some highlights of its service:
Visibility at a glance – Through its platform, businesses using the company’s solutions gain a comprehensive view of their cash inflows and outflows.
Document management – BILL automatically assigns a dedicated email address to each customer to provide to its suppliers. Suppliers use that email address to send invoices to the customer’s dedicated BILL inbox. Alternatively, scanned invoices can be uploaded directly through the company’s application. Once uploaded, the company stores the bills securely, linking them to the associated supplier. With a single click, customers can use its search feature to scan documents quickly and resolve open questions. The company’s document management capabilities help businesses using its solutions make payment decisions, answer supplier questions, and provide support to accountants and auditors.
Intelligent bill capture – The company has automated the capture of data from bills by leveraging its proprietary AI capabilities. Incoming bills are machine-read, and critical data fields, including due date, amount, and supplier name, are pre-populated. The customer's Accounts Payable staff can review the result and make any adjustments required, and its platform routes the bill internally for approval.
Digital workflows and approvals – The company’s platform speeds approval processes through policy-driven workflows. Much of this activity takes place while people are on-the-go: one of the top three uses of its mobile app is bill approvals. The company’s platform proactively suggests payment dates based upon a bill’s due date, helping customers avoid late payment penalty fees. Businesses using the company’s solutions assign each user a role: administrator, payor, approver, clerk, or accountant. Each role has its own entitlements to ensure appropriate checks and balances in the back office.
Collaboration and engagement – The company’s platform promotes collaboration. The company’s in-app messaging capabilities make communications between businesses using its solutions and their employees, vendors, and clients, easy. For example, BILL allows administrators and payors to remind approvers to act, or delegate payment authority when a key employee is unavailable. The company’s platform creates a clear audit trail that becomes invaluable in the event of an audit, or for tax compliance.
Accounts Receivable Automation
The company’s accounts receivable service automates the entire process, from the creation of an invoice and delivery to the client, to funds collection and synchronization back to the accounting system. Here are some highlights of its service:
Easy invoicing – Using a simple template, customers can easily create electronic invoices on the company’s platform and insert their own logos to customize them. If required, its platform also enables the printing and mailing of paper invoices. Many accounts receivable customers take advantage of its recurring invoice feature.
Digital workflows and visibility – The company’s platform automates and simplifies electronic invoice creation, delivery, and collection of funds. Using its progress bar, customers have complete visibility into the accounts receivable process. When both parties to a transaction are in the company’s network, businesses using its solutions can see when their invoices are delivered, opened, authorized to be paid, and when payment was received. Invoices and supporting documents like contracts are readily accessible and notes can be entered for future reference.
Collaboration and engagement – To make paying an invoice easy, the company offers a customizable, branded client payment portal. Clients receive a link to an electronic invoice accessible on the Bill.com site. From this portal, the client can make a payment via ACH or credit card within seconds. For reference purposes, the client has ongoing access to bills and associated payments within the portal. Just like the company’s accounts payable service, its in-app collaboration tools make communications between the accounts receivable customer and its clients easy and trackable.
Spend and Expense Management
With BILL Spend and Expense, spending businesses gain robust spend and expense management tools, helping them spend smarter. The company’s spend and expense management product provides businesses full visibility into their spend, by giving businesses the ability to issue any employee their own BILL Divvy Corporate Card, a charge card for business expenses. Every card provides access to charge card lines originated through its card issuing partner banks (Issuing Banks) and is linked to proactive spend controls. Managers control their budgets by team through the assignment of individual permissions. Employees can request funds from their phones, and budget owners or admins can approve or deny spend requests on-the-go from a push notification to their phone. Spending businesses can leverage a single, centralized budget or opt for a more sophisticated scenario, where budgets are established by department, team, or project. Rather than building a business budgeting strategy using outdated numbers in a static spreadsheet, the company’s budgeting software syncs automatically with the employee's Mastercard or Visa cards, while also facilitating reimbursements and vendor spend. The intuitive web and mobile applications enable budget owners to drill down into spending by department, team, project, or individual. Whether on-the-go or in the office, an SMB can view up-to-date spend against budgets, so they always know where they stand.
The company markets BILL Spend and Expense to potential spending businesses and issue business-purpose charge cards through its partnerships with Issuing Banks. When a business applies for a BILL Divvy Corporate Card, it utilizes, on behalf of the Issuing Bank, proprietary risk management capabilities to confirm the identity of the business, and perform a credit underwriting process to determine if the business is eligible for a BILL Divvy Corporate Card pursuant to its credit policies. Once approved for a BILL Divvy Corporate Card, the spending business is provided a credit limit and can use the BILL Spend and Expense software to request virtual cards or physical cards.
Payment Services
The company’s suite of comprehensive payment services includes:
ACH payments – The company enables ACH transactions for both disbursements and collections. The company’s network makes it simple to make the switch from paper checks.
Card payments – Through a third-party service provider, the company offers businesses using its accounts receivable solutions the convenience of accepting credit and debit card payments. In addition, the company enables virtual card payments to vendors of businesses using its accounts payable solutions. Virtual cards support faster payments to suppliers, which includes the data needed to easily match incoming payments with open receivables. Through card issuing partners, BILL provides both physical and virtual Mastercard and Visa cards to companies that enroll in its business spend and expense management program.
Real-time payments (RTP) – Through The Clearing House’s RTP network, a real-time payments platform, the company offers an instant transfer service to allow businesses using its solutions to disburse funds rapidly to meet urgent funding needs. The company also facilitates near real-time payments to customers’ debit cards via a service offered with a partner.
Checks – The company issues checks if its customer prefers or needs to pay via this method. By design, the company protects its SMB customers against check fraud by never disclosing their bank account details to a supplier and by reviewing every check presented against a check issue file to help detect and prevent check fraud.
Cross-Border Payments – The company simplifies cross-border disbursements by facilitating electronic funds transfers around the world with its International Payments service. Payments can be issued in either U.S. or foreign currency, and the company’s platform synchronizes with customers’ accounting software for a consolidated view of domestic and international outflows. The company offers its U.S.-based customers the ability to disburse funds to over 130 countries worldwide.
Pay By Card – The company’s Pay By Card feature allows businesses using its solutions to make payments using a credit or debit card, even if the vendor or contractor does not accept card payments. The company processes the payment with the business' credit or debit card provider, then it pays the vendor or contractor using a method they accept.
Invoice financing – Through a relationship with a third-party bank, the company enables businesses easier access to cash by allowing them to finance outstanding invoices. For a small origination fee, businesses using its solutions can receive cash immediately instead of waiting for their invoices to be paid.
Value-Added Services
Two-way sync with leading accounting systems – The company’s platform automatically synchronizes customers, suppliers, general ledger accounts, and transactions with an SMB’s accounting system to automate reconciliation. The company is an integrated with several of the most popular business accounting software applications, including QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Oracle NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Xero, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The company’s two-way synchronization capabilities virtually eliminate double data-entry, as its platform and the customer’s accounting software continuously keep each other updated. Customers who use other types of systems use its advanced file import/export capabilities to minimize data entry activities.
Purchase Order (PO) Matching – The company syncs POs directly from accounting software systems, including Oracle NetSuite and Sage Intacct, and QuickBooks Desktop into its platform. Users can compare POs and invoices on one screen, then route bills for approval and payment seamlessly in the same workflow. This eliminates the need to switch between systems for two-way matching and reduces the back-and-forth communication between PO creators and accounts payable managers.
Frequent Status Updates – The company provides timely status updates of financial inflows and outflows by providing status updates of all transactions on a regular basis. Through its workflow progress bars on each page, businesses using the company’s solutions can see who has approved an invoice and what approvals remain, the status of each payment, and the date transactions are expected to clear.
Cash Flow Forecasting – The company empowers businesses to optimize their cash flow management with dashboards that showcase key metrics, including Cash In and Cash Out, Net Cash Flow and Cash Balance, and to generate cash flow forecasts for up to 13 months.
Treasury Services – The company’s platform integrates advanced treasury services tools that are normally either not offered to or are costly for SMBs. Examples include:
the positive pay feature the company employs to ensure only authorized payment transactions are processed;
a streamlined void and reissue function when an in-process payment needs to be cancelled; and
the cleared check images the company makes available to enable businesses using its solutions to confirm payment receipt and facilitate research.
Custom User Roles – The company’s platform enables customers to define custom user roles. These roles can be used to expand or limit each user’s access to the platform and core financial operations functions. For example, a customer can temporarily enable its auditors or tax preparers to access its platform using a custom role that allows them to view source documents in support of the services they are providing, but not have access to other confidential documents or information.
Document Discovery – With its advanced document management capabilities, a customer can easily search for an uploaded document and search its data elements, regardless of how old it is, or how long it has been in the company’s system. Businesses using the company’s solutions utilize this feature when deciding whether to pay a given bill or re-issue an invoice, or in determining who authorized a certain payment.
Integrated, Robust Mobile Functionality – The company’s mobile-native apps, available in both iOS and Android, are easy to adopt and use. Through its apps, businesses using its solutions can manage their transaction workflows, send an invoice, make payments on-the-go, and manage spend.
Partner Integrations
Accounting firms use the company’s platform to provide financial automation, bill payment, and client advisory services, or CAS, to their clients. The company’s platform empowers accountants with a purpose-built console to collaborate with their staff and clients across multiple workflows enabling them to be more strategic and serve more clients.
The company provides its financial institution partners a technology platform that enables a white-label integration with their existing business banking services. The company delivers single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, integrated provisioning, and entitlement of new accounts, as well as integration with required compliance systems. Transactions are synchronized automatically between the financial institution’s platform and the company’s, keeping the customer’s view current and consistent.
In addition to its white-labeled solution, the company supports a broad range of partners and customers with its platform application programming interfaces (APIs). These APIs allow the company’s partners to integrate its platform seamlessly into their solutions, create web or mobile apps that integrate with its, or leverage ots payments capabilities. Through the company’s APIs, developers can:
interact with business entities, like suppliers and clients;
obtain summary-level reports, such as payables and receivables reports; and
interact with accounting details, such as the general ledger codes of the chart of accounts.
The company is also developing embedded technology that will enable it to deploy its platform offerings, including accounts payable, accounts receivable and spend and expense management, as a set of embeddable capabilities through third-party platforms, allowing partners to seamlessly offer these services to their customers while expanding the universe of businesses using its solutions.
Unique Data Asset
BILL's TPV and number of documents processed for businesses using the company’s solutions provide it with a unique data asset. This asset has allowed it to build powerful AI capabilities. The company’s system continues to learn with each payment made and document processed. This virtuous cycle of learning powers a network effect that facilitates customer satisfaction, offers intelligent insights, improves trust and safety, and fuels further growth.
Network
Through its AI-enabled platform, businesses using the company’s solutions can easily connect with existing network members. The benefit of being in the network is simple: customers connect with others to pay and be paid electronically, freeing them from the need to solicit or share bank account and routing numbers with each trading partner individually. The process of adding bank account details to the company’s platform is easy and secure. For example, when a supplier of an accounts payable customer receives an invitation to join its network, the supplier can accept and securely share its bank account details once with BILL. From that point onward, all payments to that supplier will be electronic.
Once in the network, other BILL customers can easily link to that same supplier without the supplier having to repeat this process again. This approach to connecting businesses has allowed the company to build a robust and growing business-to-business payments directory, which includes approximately 7.1 million network members as of June 30, 2024. The company defines network members as its BILL standalone customers plus their suppliers and clients, who have paid or received funds electronically via its platform. These network effects promote greater adoption of the company’s platform, higher levels of engagement, and increased value across its ecosystem.
Payment and Risk Management Services
The company’s payments engine powers its payment services. Through dedicated connections with banks and payment processors, the company issues checks, initiate card-based transactions, originate ACH-based payments, including real-time payments, through its instant transfer feature, and execute wire transfers. The company’s payments engine handles all aspects of payment file transfers, exception file handling, and required payment status reporting. The company has redundancy across its core payment methods such that if there is an outage with one payment processor, it can direct payments to an alternative provider.
Through its risk engine, the company uses both proprietary and third-party tools to assess, detect, and mitigate financial risk associated with the payment volume that it processes. Throughout the transaction lifecycle, the company monitors data and payments to ensure that it is safeguarding its customers, their suppliers and clients, and the company. When a bank account is added to the platform, it validates that the bank account is held at a U.S.-domiciled financial institution, is associated with the organization adding the account, and is in good standing.
When customers use its services, the company monitors key activities looking for signals that would indicate anomalies that could create risk exposure and need to be investigated. The company’s risk engine analyzes many unique data elements to score transactions. Those that score above its thresholds are routed to trained risk agents for manual review. Agents have the latitude to contact customers to gather further information, or if a financial risk is imminent, to prevent funds from leaving the company’s system until any suspicious activity can be resolved.
Once a payment transaction is processed, the company continues to manage its exposure. The company has extensive contacts in the banking industry, and it utilizes these to reverse payments when possible.
Security, Privacy, and Data Protection
Trust is important for the company’s relationship with customers and partners, and it takes significant measures designed to protect their privacy and the data that they provide to it. Keeping the company’s customers’ data safe and secure is a high priority. The company’s approach to security includes data governance as well as ongoing testing for potential security issues.
The company has robust access controls in its production environment with access to data strictly assigned, monitored, and audited. To ensure its controls remain up-to-date, the company undergoes continuous external testing for vulnerabilities within its software architecture. These efforts have enabled the company to certify its platform to SOC1 Type II and SOC2 Type II standards. The company’s security program is aligned to the NIST-800-53 standards and is regularly audited and assessed by third parties, as well as its partners, including some of the largest banks in the world.
The focus of the company’s program is working to prevent unauthorized access to the data of its customers and network members. To this end, the company’s team of security practitioners work to identify and mitigate risks, implement best practices, and continue to evaluate ways to improve.
These steps include close attention to network security, classifying and inventorying data, limiting and authorizing access controls, and multi-factor authentication for access to systems. The company also employs regular system monitoring, logging, and alerting to retain and analyze the security state of its corporate and production infrastructures.
The company takes steps to help ensure that its security measures are maintained by the third-party suppliers it uses, including conducting annual security reviews and audits.
Sales and Marketing
The company distributes its platform through direct and indirect sales channels, both of which it leverages to reach its target customers in an efficient manner. The company’s direct sales are driven by a self-service process and an inside sales team. The company’s inside sales team augments its direct sales capabilities by targeting potential customers that have engaged with it on their own.
The company also reaches customers indirectly through its partnerships with accounting firms, financial institutions, and accounting software providers. While these partners sometimes require an initial integration investment, a go-to-market flywheel takes effect as its partners accelerate the delivery of its platform across their customer base with minimal incremental investment from it.
The company focuses its marketing efforts on generating leads to develop its sales pipeline, building brand and category awareness, enabling its go-to-market partners, and growing its business from within its existing customers. The company’s sales leads primarily come through word-of-mouth, its accounting firm partners, and website searches. The company generates additional leads through digital marketing campaigns, referrals, in-product customer education, brand advertising, public relations, and social media.
Intellectual Property
As of June 30, 2024, in the U.S., the company had 25 issued patents that expire between 2028 and 2042, and seven pending patent applications, two of which have been allowed, along with five pending international patent applications. As of June 30, 2024, in the U.S. the company had two trademark registrations covering the Bill.com logo and three trademark registrations for DIVVY or the Divvy logo, along with registrations for Divvy slogans. The company also owns a U.S. trademark registration for the name Invoice2Go, the Invoice2Go logo, the name Finmark and the Finmark logo. The company owns a pending application in Canada for BILL.COM plus design and the B logo, along with a registration in Canada for the Invoice2Go logo. The company owns one registration in Australia for the Invoice2Go logo, along with additional registrations internationally for the mark INVOICE2GO or the Invoice2Go logo. The company also owns several domain names, including www.bill.com, www.getdivvy.com, and www.invoice2go.com.
History
The company was founded in 2006. It was incorporated in the state of Delaware in 2006. The company was formerly known as Bill.com Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to BILL Holdings, Inc. in February 2023.
