Entreprenista cuts bill approvals to minutes a week

Before she built a vibrant community for thousands of women founders, Courtney Spritzer paid her company's bills the hard way: handwriting checks, putting them in envelopes with stamps, and mailing them out one at a time.

Today, Spritzer is the co-founder and co-CEO of Entreprenista, a media platform and membership community for thousands of women entrepreneurs, home to the Entreprenista League. She runs operations and strategy, travels to events and conferences every month to meet members and partners, and manages all of the organization's finances with a team of 12, alongside an outsourced CFO agency.

That combination only works because bill pay finally stopped eating up her time. With BILL Accounts Payable and Spend and Expense, Entreprenista's core team now spends minutes each week approving bills.

The challenge: A founder paying every bill by hand, one stamp at a time

"Before using BILL, I was literally handwriting checks. I was mailing them with envelopes and stamps, putting them in the mail, and randomly paying some things virtually," Spritzer recalls. "It was disorganized, and it became too much."

What broke the manual system was growth. As the business moved into event marketing, the volume of bills climbed: more vendors, more individual payments, more to keep track of.

"I had QuickBooks, but I was still doing things very, very manually," she explains. "We had a bookkeeper, but I was the one responsible for paying bills."

The real cost wasn't a line item she could measure. By her own account, it was the worry that weighed on her.

"I don't know how much time it was taking, but I wanted to be sure that our business was set up for success and that we would not make mistakes.” Spritzer notes. "My priority was making sure that people would get paid on time."

Making sure she had the right solutions to streamline her business operations kept her up at night. "Before using BILL, I was stressed and anxious, and a lot of it kept me up at night. I was a new entrepreneur and at the time, I didn't know that there were specific tools that could help make my life easier," she adds.

The solution: Four steps, one weekly rhythm, zero handwritten checks

Everything changed when Spritzer brought in a financial consultant, who introduced her to BILL. The consultant put real processes in place around the tools she already had.

"It completely changed my life," Spritzer says. "It took me from figuring it out manually on my own and handwriting checks to a more seamless and efficient process."

In place of envelopes and stamps, the team built a repeatable four-step workflow: bills get forwarded into BILL, the bookkeeper categorizes them, they route to approvers, and bills get paid weekly at a set time. Instead of "randomly paying some things virtually," the business now pays on a schedule everyone can plan around.

"It gave me more confidence in our financial systems, and I now have a team and software to support me," she notes. "It gave me peace of mind that things were more organized, people were going to get paid on time."

The rest of the stack fell in line behind it, everything integrating with each other. Entreprenista uses QuickBooks Online for their accounting software, and she describes the sync as “seamless.” For payroll, they use Justworks for payroll, and an outsourced CFO who handles bookkeeping, strategy, financial planning, and analysis, with BILL managing bill payments.  

On the spend side, the team uses the BILL Spend & Expense** solution including the mobile app, virtual cards, and budgets alongside bill pay. Keeping payables and spend on a single platform is a deliberate choice, and it's the advice Spritzer gives other founders.

"It's always better and more efficient to have everything in one place and make things a lot easier, so I always say consolidate tools as much as possible."

The results: Minutes a week on approvals, and a standard operating rhythm

The founder who once wrote every check by hand now spends almost no time on accounts payable at all.

Approvals measured in minutes each week.* As the business scaled, bill pay became a dedicated role instead of the founder's own task. "It has saved me a lot of time since we implemented BILL," Spritzer says. "We're now at the scale where I have a finance team managing this, but it still saves my core team's time by taking minutes each week to approve bills."

A predictable operating rhythm for cash flow. Set payment timing turned bill pay from a source of surprises into an input for planning. "We have an operating rhythm now," she adds. "We know what bills we can expect to pay and when bills are due, so this definitely helps with decision-making and cash flow management."

Fewer errors, and vendors paid on time. The specific fears that once kept Spritzer up at night have been designed out of the process. BILL "saved me time, helped me get more organized, and helped me understand when bills were due," she recalls. "It also helped me make sure I didn't pay bills twice." She describes the platform as having "removed areas where there could be errors."

Spritzer has been using BILL since her first company. "When we first signed on to BILL, everything was a surprise to me about how easy and efficient this was," she says. "Now that I've been using it for over 10 years, I just don't even have to think about it."

Asked to describe BILL in one sentence, Spritzer answers as a founder, not a finance lead: "BILL is my go-to partner for getting accounts payable organized. This used to be an area that kept me up at night, and now I don't worry about it."

Looking ahead: “I wish I had implemented this sooner.”

Entreprenista’s ambition is a big one. "We're building the largest community and network for women entrepreneurs in the world," Spritzer explains. "We know what happens when women collaborate with each other, and we can all grow faster together."

That mission is also why bill pay matters to her. Many of the founders in the community are first-time entrepreneurs facing the exact pain point she spent years working around. Now she gets to hand them the shortcut she didn't have.

"Partnering with BILL gives me the opportunity to help our members a lot faster if they're also struggling with the pain point that I did for years: manually paying bills and not having a set process."

Her advice for other founders? "I wish I got this off my plate sooner.  If your volume of bills is increasing month over month, it's time to get software like BILL implemented. You don't have to do it alone. As founders, our energy is better spent in other places, not focusing and worrying about the process of paying bills."

_{*Results reflect Courtney Spritzer / Entreprenista's experience. Results are not typical and will vary depending on how BILL is used.} 

_{** The BILL Divvy Card may be issued by one of Divvy Pay, LLC's bank partners (bill.com/bank-partners). The BILL Divvy Card is not a deposit product. For your specific lender, see your Card Agreement. Credit lines and the advertised range are not guaranteed and will be determined upon application approval.}

_{For more information on rewards, please see the Rewards Program.}