Bill.com

Bill.com, now branded BILL, is a cloud accounts payable and receivable platform covering invoice capture, approval routing, payment execution, and sync back to the accounting ledger.

How accounting firms use it

It underpins outsourced AP as a service line. Client invoices arrive by email, upload, or a dedicated scanning address; the platform extracts the data, routes each bill through an approval chain defined per client, and executes payment once approved. The firm operates the process, and the client approves from a phone without touching the accounting file.

The separation of duties is the substantive part. Because approval and payment execution are recorded with an audit trail, a firm can run disbursements for a client while maintaining defensible controls — which is what makes outsourced AP viable for clients too small to segregate duties internally.

Key features

Invoice capture handles email, upload, and mail scanning, with data extraction and coding suggestions that improve against a vendor’s history. Approval workflows support multi-level and conditional routing by amount, department, or vendor.

Payments run by ACH, cheque, virtual card, or international wire, executed from a clearing account so vendor remittance does not expose client bank details. On the receivable side, invoices can be delivered and payments collected with automated reminders.

Two-way sync with QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, and Sage Intacct keeps coding consistent between the AP layer and the ledger.

Who it’s best for

Firms managing AP for clients with meaningful vendor volume, and mid-sized businesses where cheque runs and manual approval chasing consume real staff time. The economics improve with volume, so very small clients with a handful of monthly bills rarely justify it.

Firms wanting document capture only, without payment execution, are usually better served by Dext or AutoEntry. Melio and Plooto compete on payment execution at lower cost, with less depth in approval workflow.