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Manually managing your startup’s bill pay process can be a real chore. Toggling between physical checks, paper invoices, and different online payment portals is not only tedious and time-consuming, but makes you more susceptible to mistakes and late fees.
Thankfully, integrating online bill pay software into your business's financial software stack can help automate the accounts payable process, saving you time, money, and sanity. There are seemingly countless billing software providers targeted toward businesses; many startups use Bill.com, Plooto, Routable, and Stripe, with the help of Zeni’s modern finance service to keep their accounting processes running smoothly. Some banks offer free online bill pay features, though their offerings can be limited in scope and abilities when compared to other online bill pay software providers.
The only downside of using bill pay software are the fees. Each provider has different pricing structures, but most charge fees per transaction on top of a monthly subscription fee. While it’s not exactly ideal to, well, spend money to spend money, the benefits of using bill pay software can far outweigh the downsides of manually managing the process yourself. After all, startup founders have better things to spend their time on than micro-managing bill payments.
If you’re contemplating automating your startup’s accounts payable process with bill pay software, read on to learn more about the advantages of using online bill pay software for your company.
8 Advantages Of Vendor Payment Software for Startups
1. It saves time.
The ability to automate your bill pay process is perhaps the biggest advantage of bill pay software, saving a sizable chunk of time each week. Use bill pay software to automatically enter invoice data, schedule payments, store and automatically apply important vendor information including preferred method of payment and payment terms, put recurring bills on auto pay, automatically alert you with reminders for bills coming due, and more.
2. It streamlines approval flows.
Approval flows are an important element of making sure your company is audit ready, and bill pay software makes this easy to implement. Most bill pay software providers allow you to configure custom approval workflows and automatically route bills for approval.
3. It syncs with your accounting software.
By integrating directly with your accounting software, bill pay software helps keep your books accurate and up-to-date, eliminating human data entry mistakes and simplifying account reconciliations.
Most mainstream bill pay software providers have direct integrations with popular accounting software used by startups, including Quickbooks Online, Xero, Oracle NetSuite, and Sage Intacct.
4. It’s paperless.
No more relying on physical invoices and bills. Easily connect your bank account, debit card and/or credit card, upload digital invoices to your bill pay software, and process electronic payments immediately.
For example, with leading small business bill pay software provider Bill.com, or scan and upload any bills or invoices to your digital inbox. From there, simply create a new bill, enter a few quick details, and pay it via ACH, or select the option to print and mail physical checks if required.
5. It’s mobile.
Because online bill pay software operates in the cloud, you can review invoices, submit approvals and execute payments from virtually any device, anywhere in the world, as long as you have internet access. This is especially helpful for sales reps and business leaders who travel frequently.
6. If offers more flexible payment options.
Paying your invoices virtually gives you more flexibility with payment options. Choose from paying with debit, credit cards, and bank transfers, whenever you need to. You can even collect points on your credit card for processing transactions!
7. It keeps you organized.
Another advantage of using bill pay software is that it centralizes the bulk of your bills and payments to one platform. This not only allows your business to streamline payment processing, but also acts as a virtual filing cabinet for your various invoices and receipts.
8. It eases collaboration with your finance team.
Your startup’s finance team are responsible for tracking expenses and enforcing appropriate controls and workflows on the company’s behalf. Bill pay software gives them the ability to collaborate with other members of the company on details related to the bills in queue, gather information necessary to process payments, and more.
Automate all of your business finances with Zeni
Zeni is a full-service AI-powered finance firm that takes care of all your startup’s bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO needs. When you work with Zeni, you get 100% accurate bookkeeping, a direct line to an always-on finance concierge, and instant access to real-time financial data in the Zeni Dashboard.
Zeni’s team of finance experts manages your accounting system in the best way to support your startup business operations, from advising on the best accounting tools for your startup and managing them end-to-end on your behalf. We work with dozens of venture-backed tech startups to make finance management simple and stress-free.
See how Zeni can make a difference for your business: Click here to book a demo.
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