Valley Creek Church closes books 10 days faster with BILL Spend & Expense

“Without BILL, I don't see how we could close the books by the 10th.”

Every month, Todd Baden faced the same problem, and the numbers never worked in his favor.

As Pastor of Finance at Valley Creek Church, Baden oversees financial operations for a multi-campus megachurch serving 5,000 people weekly across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. With approximately 80 full-time employees, four campuses, and two more in the works, Valley Creek is a large and growing organization. 

But under its old expense management system, the finance team was closing books on the 20th, 21st, or even 22nd of every month, nearly three weeks into the next period.

When Valley Creek adopted BILL Spend & Expense, that timeline collapsed. Today, the church routinely closes its books by the 10th, giving Baden's team the visibility to make financial decisions when they actually matter.

The challenge: A 21-day close in a 30-day cycle

Valley Creek's previous system relied on data scraping, but gathering transaction data from credit cards meant waiting at least three to four business days just to see the numbers. For staff members making purchases, transactions didn't appear in their expense report for a week, which is plenty of time to forget about uploading a receipt.

"That was our biggest pain point on closing the month," Baden says. "Transactions wouldn't get in until the 12th of the month, and it's impossible to close the books when we don't have all expenses."

The receipt workflow compounded the friction. Staff had to remember to photograph the receipt, save it to their phone's photo library, then wait a week for the corresponding transaction to appear before reopening the app to upload and code it. For a church that empowers nearly every employee with a credit card, a deliberate strategy to minimize invoices and maximize speed, this bottleneck affected the entire organization.

And the ripple effects extended beyond the finance team. With the books staying open until the 20th or later, leadership had no timely way to flag spending issues. "If we needed to turn the ship a little bit, to follow up with teams on spending, by the time we identified the problem a whole month had gone by," Baden explains.

The solution: 79 cards, great rewards, zero user fees

Baden first encountered modern expense management tools at a conference. That exposure sparked a methodical search: his team evaluated Ramp, Concur, and BILL, narrowing the field based on the team's specific needs.

For Valley Creek, what put BILL over the top was the financial model: no subscription fee and a competitive cash-back rate on spend. For a nonprofit where every dollar serves the mission, that difference was decisive.

"What made BILL the easy choice? It saved us a lot of money," Baden says.

Valley Creek issued BILL Divvy Cards¹ to virtually every staff member, 79 physical cards in total, empowering each employee to manage their own expenses within set limits. The system integrates with the team's Sage accounting software, and automated rules handle routine coding, eliminating one more manual step. The system even recommends coding options for individual cardholders based on their previous coding choices and spending patterns.

"We empower our staff to manage their own spending, and they honor our budgets really well," Baden explains. "People don't overspend where they're not supposed to, and BILL makes it easy to set and manage those limits."

The results: 10-day close, 5-second expense management

The impact was immediate and measurable.

10+ days faster month-end close. Transactions now appear almost  instantly. Valley Creek requires staff to submit expenses by the 4th of each month, with supervisor approvals due by the 6th. The finance team closes books by the 10th, compared to the 20th-22nd under the old system.

Five-second expense coding. The streamlined mobile experience means staff can code transactions at the point of sale. "Our campus pastor has 20 transactions a month," Baden says. "He can do it in five seconds." Features like automatic receipt matching and intelligent vendor categorization make the process nearly effortless.

Administrative savings redirected to ministry. By empowering 79 cardholders to self-serve, Valley Creek eliminated the need for administrative coordinators dedicated to processing others' expenses. Those payroll dollars now fund people-facing ministry positions.

Cash-back rewards, simplified. With their previous credit card provider, rewards had to be redeemed for Visa gift cards, a cumbersome process that made it difficult to capture those benefits. With BILL, cash-back can be credited directly to the statement, making every dollar work harder for the church.

When asked to describe BILL in one word, Baden offers two: "Simple and effective. It just works, every time. Our teams love it."

Looking ahead: A 5-year mission to build a 7-continent vision

Valley Creek Church is one year into a five-year plan called Mission Move: Create the Future. The church is launching Valley Creek College in partnership with Southeastern University, offering accredited four-year bachelor's degrees, with 49 students already enrolled and a building under renovation. 

An 18,000-square-foot prayer center is under construction on the Flower Mound campus. Two new campuses are planned: one in Argyle and a university-specific location near the University of North Texas. And a seven-continent missions strategy will start by sending teams to Uganda, Thailand, Ecuador, Greece, and India.

It's ambitious growth for a church that started with a single congregation in 1992. But with financial operations running smoothly, Baden's team can focus on supporting the mission instead of chasing down receipts.

"BILL is worth my weight in gold. And I'm 6'4," Baden says with a grin. "We were looking for something different, something better, and BILL is it."

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1 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.