The transaction lifecycle—encompassing all processes that enable businesses to pay and get paid—is critical to companies of all sizes in all industries and geographies. Businesses begin the transaction lifecycle by creating and mailing invoices, approving bills, and making payments, and end the process by recording and reconciling transactions in an accounting system.
Managing this critical set of activities efficiently and effectively is vital for any business. Yet, for most businesses, cash flow is managed in a complex, inefficient, and all too often, paper-based manner.
SMBs, despite comprising a large part of the economy, are underserved by existing financial software solutions. Instead of developing purpose-built solutions, many software providers attempt to sell solutions designed for consumers or enterprises which struggle to gain traction in the SMB market.
SMBs generally handle their financial workflows the same way they have for decades. The lack of an end-to-end financial software platform tailored for SMBs results in a back office that is Manual and Cumbersome, Inaccurate and Error-Prone, Paper-Based, and Not Secure, and lacks visibility. Bill.com believes SMBs deserve and are ready to adopt a modern, efficient, cloud-based offering that meets their needs.
Bill.com Holdings, Inc. is a company based in San Jose, California, that provides automated, cloud-based software for financial operations. Bill.com’s mission is to make it simple to connect and do business. Bill.com focuses on small and midsize businesses (SMBs). What does Bill.com do? How does Bill.com work? What is the business model of Bill.com?
What does Bill.com do?
As a leading provider of cloud-based software that simplifies, digitizes and automates financial operations for SMBs, Bill.com creates efficiencies and frees its customers to run their businesses. Bill.com’s vision is to become the leading one-stop solution that helps millions of businesses worldwide manage their financial operations.
Bill.com’s purpose-built, artificial-intelligence (AI)-enabled financial software platform creates seamless connections between its customers, suppliers, and clients. Customers use the Bill.com platform to generate and process invoices, streamline approvals, make and receive payments, manage employee expenses, sync with their accounting systems, and manage their cash.
Bill.com has built sophisticated integrations with popular accounting software solutions, banks, card issuers, and payment processors, enabling customers to access these mission-critical services quickly and easily. Divvy, a Bill.com company, provides products for businesses to build budgets, manage payments, and eliminate the need for expense reports.
As of June 30, 2022, Bill.com’s partners included some of the most trusted brands in the financial services business, including 85 of the top 100 accounting firms and six of the top ten most prominent financial institutions in the U.S., including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo Bank, and American Express.
As of June 30, 2022, over 157,000 Bill.com customers trusted the Bill.com platform to manage their financial workflows and process their payments, which totaled $219.1 billion in Total Payment Volume (TPV) during fiscal 2022. As of June 30, 2022, approximately 4.7 million Bill.com network members have paid or received funds electronically using its platform.
How does Bill.com work?
Bill.com’s platform automates the SMB back office. It enables its customers to pay their suppliers and collect payments from their clients. It acts as a control system for accounts payable, accounts receivable, and spend and expense management activities.
As a result, Bill.com’s platform frees its customers from cumbersome legacy financial processes and provides the following key benefits:
- Automated and Efficient: Bill.com’s AI-enabled platform helps its customers pay their bills efficiently and get paid faster. Bill.com provides tools that streamline the transaction lifecycle by automating data capture and entry, routing bills for approval, and detecting duplicate invoices.
- Integrated and Accurate: Bill.com provides an end-to-end platform that connects its customers to their suppliers and clients. Bill.com’s platform integrates with accounting software, banks, card issuers, and payment processors, enabling customers to access these mission-critical partners easily.
- Digital and Secure: Bill.com enables secure connections and storage of sensitive supplier and client information and documents, such as invoices and contracts, and makes them accessible to authorized users.
- Visible and Transparent: With Bill.com’s solutions, customers can easily view their transaction workflows, create budgets and manage spend, enabling them to gain deeper insight into their financial operations and manage their cash flows.
Bill.com’s Platform
Bill.com’s purpose-built platform leverages the fact that it can see both sides of a transaction and can easily connect both parties and promote the rapid exchange of information and funds, with strong network effects and greater monetization opportunities as more customers adopt the platform.
Bill.com’s platform also expands the ability of its spend and expense management customers to budget for, monitor, and approve employee expenses across organizations of all sizes – all in real time.
Accounts Payable Automation: Bill.com’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.
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Accounts Receivable Automation: Bill.com’s accounts receivable service automates the entire process, from creating an invoice and delivery to the client to funds collection and synchronization back to the accounting system.
Spend and Expense Management: With Divvy, spending businesses gain robust spend and expense management tools, helping them spend smarter. Divvy provides access to credit lines originated through its card-issuing partner banks and is linked to proactive spend controls: managers control their budgets by the team by assigning individual permissions.
Payment Services: Using Bill.com’s platform, accounts payable customers can disburse funds to suppliers through multiple payment methods. Accounts receivable customers collect funds quickly and efficiently using electronic funds transfers. Bill.com’s suite of comprehensive payment services includes ACH Payments, Card Payments, Real-time Payments (RTP), Checks, and Cross-Border Payments.
Partner Integrations: Bill.com provides its financial institution partners with a technology platform enabling white-label integration with their existing business banking services. Bill.com’s single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, integrated provisioning, and entitlement of new accounts and integration with required compliance systems.
Bill.com’s Network
Through Bill.com’s AI-enabled platform, its customers 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 accounts and routing numbers with each trading partner individually.
For example, when a supplier of an accounts payable customer receives an invitation to join Bill.com’s network, the supplier can accept and securely share their bank account details once with Bill.com. From that point onward, all payments to that supplier will be electronic. Once in the network, other Bill.com customers can easily link to that same supplier without the supplier repeating this process.
This approach to connecting businesses has allowed Bill.com to build a robust and growing business-to-business payments directory, which includes approximately 4.7 million Bill.com network members as of June 30, 2022. These network effects promote greater adoption of Bill.com’s platform, higher levels of engagement, and increased value across its ecosystem.
Bill.com’s Business Model
Bill.com efficiently reaches SMBs through its proven direct and indirect go-to-market strategies. Bill.com acquire customers directly through digital marketing and inside sales. Bill.com also indirectly acquires customers by partnering with leading companies trusted by its current and prospective customers, including accounting firms, financial institutions, and software companies.
Bill.com generated $642 Million in 2022. Bill.com generates revenue primarily from subscription and transaction fees. Bill.com’s subscription revenue is primarily based on a fixed monthly or annual rate per user. Bill.com transaction revenue consists of transaction fees and interchange income on a fixed or variable rate per transaction. Transactions primarily include card payments, check issuances, ACH origination, cross-border payments, and the creation of invoices.
Subscription revenue increased by $81.9 million, or 73%, during fiscal 2022 as compared to fiscal 2021, primarily due to the increase in customers and average subscription revenue per customer due to increased users. Transaction fee revenue increased by $319.2 million, or 265%, during fiscal 2022 as compared to fiscal 2021, primarily due to increased adoption of new product offerings and the mix of transaction revenues shifting to variable-priced products.
