Evaluating On-Line A/P (Bill Paying) Systems
The cost of paying bills is not limited to the fact that your money goes out, fast. The intangible cost is the time spent receiving paper bills, writing and mailing checks, entering the information in your accounting system, and filing the bills for future auditing.
On-line bill paying systems can remove much of this intangible cost. There are several options we explored before selecting our CoolBizApp winner in this area.
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Option 1: Use your on-line banking system to pay the bills.
Pros:
- Comes right out of your bank account, and shows up in your statement
- The bank transactions eventually get downloaded into your accounting system, which will include the bills paid
- Usually no extra fees are charged
- They do all the mailing
Cons:
- No automated approval process with other employees
- The transactions don’t show up in your accounting system immediately
- There is no record of what you are paying for; simply an amount and payee
- Doesn’t deal with filing the bills
Option 2: Use accounting software such as QuickBooks Bill Pay to pay the bills
Pros:
- Direct integration with your accounting system
- Vendor information stored only once, in your accounting software
- They do all the mailing
Cons:
- Costs $15.95 per month for up to 20 payments, and $6.95 for each additional set of 10 payments (in addition to paying for QuickBooks).
- Doesn’t integrate with electronic bills; all information is entered manually
- Doesn’t solve the filing of the bills
CoolBizApp Recommended Solution: Bill.Com
Pros:
- Starts with the receipt of electronic bills; eliminating paper
- Keeps the electronic bills for future; eliminates filing
- Direct integration with your accounting system; one-click sync
- They do all the mailing
- Calendar tracks payments sent and due
- Includes approval system
- Bills assigned to accounting system categories at time of payment
- Supports multiple clients if you are an accounting firm
Cons:
- Pricing is a little steep for multiple clients: $29/mo for first company, $25/mo client 2, $10/mo client 3+; however, pricing is comparable to Quickbooks for one client
- Price of $.99/bill after 10 bills.
We particularly like the fact that all our vendors can send their bills to one email address or fax number that Bill.com sets up for us. We enter the information, route the bill to an approver, then pay the bill and sync to QuickBooks. All the invoices are stored on Bill.com for future review if needed.
View our feature checklist. Use it to evaluate other on-line systems that you might be considering. If you find another product that beats our recommendation, let us know. We’ll share your information with others. Click here to view.
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Best Practices for paying vendors
Other on-line bill paying systems to consider:
Pay Trust (owned by Intuit)
Incomplete Bill Paying Systems:
MyCheckFree.com – Only pays specific vendors in their list; you cannot create your own vendor list
Choicepay.com – only pays specific vendors
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