Experience hands-free accounts payable with BILL AI

Table of contents

Check out additional BILL resources

Traditionally, accounts payable (AP) has been a very hands-on operation. From opening envelopes, to paying bills via paper check, to keeping records in the pages of a thick, bound ledger, to storing paper payment receipts in file cabinets, the hands of accounting staff were rarely ever idle. And even after the digital revolution of spreadsheets and email, AP continued to be labor intensive, with people spending hours hunched over their keyboards, performing manual labor by another name.

The result is that business professionals spend a lot of time doing what amounts to busy work. In fact, a report from Salesforce found that on average, SMB finance teams spend 23% of their average workdays manually inputting data. Instead of using their critical thinking skills and creativity to tackle higher level business challenges, they are wasting their talents on rote tasks.

Companies are not only wasting time on manual tasks, they are wasting money. According to a study by CFO, manual processing of paper invoices adds about 62% to a company’s labor costs. And these labor intensive practices are more than just tedious—they are messy and complicated, and hence prone to human error. Management is often left worrying about when, not if, the next error will occur.

But what if accounting could put hands-on AP tasks on autopilot? What if they could go hands-free?

Hands-free with AI

AP departments have been exploring ways to accelerate and improve the accuracy of their invoice processing with technology. In fact, 38% of AP professionals want to innovate to reduce payment errors, according to The Digital Shift, a PYMNTS and Corporate Spending Innovations (CSI) collaboration. Some of the most common AP problems, including manual data entry, payment errors, and slow and inefficient processing, can be solved with AP automation, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). When surveyed, 53% of CFOs said they believe eliminating human error will be one of the biggest impacts to their business as a result of AI.

Cutting time spent on bill creation, while reducing costly human errors, can be a game-changer for small businesses with dozens of priorities. BILL AI helps businesses reduce human error, ensuring higher accuracy of invoice data. Our AI has been trained on millions of invoices, and it will continue to become more intelligent and precise over time. The result is smooth AP automation from Day 1 of adoption. And the more you use it, the more the AI will learn your particular preferences and processes. Not only will your workflows be completed more quickly, but it also means that in the event of staff turnover, the knowledge that the AI has learned about your business will be retained and never lost.

BILL AI drives some of the core capabilities of AP automation. The AI extracts critical invoice details from your documents and uses that information to populate fields within a bill, including vendor, due date, amount, and invoice number. With data extraction, BILL customers have less manual work and report reducing time spent on bill pay by 50%. BILL AI can also detect duplicate invoices and auto-split multi-page invoices into multiple bills.

“When invoices come in, BILL AI automatically processes and codes the invoices in the system with vendor name, invoice number, amount and due date. This drastically reduces hours spent on manual entry." — Gary Hornbeek, CFO, Quicken

BILL AP automation sets you free

With the power of AI to expedite your AP workflows, you have the freedom to focus on your customers and other business priorities.

Here are just a few of the other “freedoms” afforded by our AI:

FREE from data entry

Using the power of AI, BILL transforms invoices into digital bills that are ready for payment in just one click. And two-way active sync with most leading account software keeps books up to date, so you are free from the need to enter (and re-enter) the data manually.

FREE from human error

BILL’s AI prevents data entry mistakes and never guesses when invoice information is unclear. You can be confident that extracted info is correct because our AI leaves fields blank if data isn’t recognized.

FREE from duplicates

Our proactive intelligence will detect and flag duplicate invoices so that you don’t run the risk of making multiple unnecessary payments.

FREE from stress

The ability to compare invoice and extracted data side-by-side to confirm accuracy puts you in control. Once you've confirmed all info is complete, you can save bills with just one click to proceed to payment.

FREE from unnecessary delays

Immediately break down multi-page invoices into individual bills, so you can move quickly from receiving bills to paying them.

“BILL AI auto-reads, extracts data, and enters it all automatically. It’s a huge time saver and maintains data accuracy.”

— Manoj Bhutani, Director of Business Development, Furey

Hands free, but very much in the driver’s seat

With BILL, we're empowering SMBs to go hands-free with their AP. By eliminating manual, error-prone tasks from the bill-pay process, and automating these steps, our AI gives your business complete control end-to-end. It's our way of taking on the tedious tasks on your behalf, so you can spend more time on business priorities, all while saving valuable time and money. Let us (and our AI) focus on automating your payables process, so you can focus on your business.

Author

The BILL Team

At BILL, we supercharge the businesses that drive our economy with innovative financial tools that help them make big moves. Our vision-driven team makes a real impact on growing businesses. We operate with purpose and curiosity—because that’s what drives innovation.