John Delalio, Managing Director of the EisnerAmper Cloud Accounting practice, talks about how BILL and its ability to handle international payments empower a proactive outsourcing group.

Tell us about your firm.

EisnerAmper is a larger accounting firm with the depth and breadth of a Big Four, yet with a personalized service model that is ideal for small to midsize companies, family offices, and high net worth individuals. Helping clients understand challenges and find answers is in our DNA. We have a very strong presence nationally, but we also have offices overseas helping international clients do business in the United States and abroad.

Why does EisnerAmper use BILL?

To put it simply, BILL takes the headache out of AP. It provides a highly automated electronic solution that allows us to process bills and payments for our clients very quickly and efficiently. We no longer need to worry about keying in data, sending faxes, waiting for paper-based or email approvals, or managing check stock, envelopes, and postage. Our clients love it as well because they can review and approve bills from almost anywhere in the world all on their smartphone.

How does BILL support client accounting services?

To provide amazing CAS, we cannot mess around with inefficient and manual work processes. The true value EisnerAmper provides is the advice and guidance clients need to help grow their businesses and manage their finances. We need a bill payment option that runs like clockwork so the bills are paid without wasting the time of our accountants or our clients.

The international business payment function from BILL is particularly useful. BILL converts the currencies and provides clarity in accounting. It’s all recorded, synced, and shown as a journal entry in Xero. We have one international CAS client that has an aggressive time frame for closing at month’s end. Before the company came to EisnerAmper, it struggled with converting and reconciling global payments from the parent organization in Europe. After we started and put in a tech stack that includes BILL, we were able to achieve the goal of closed financials within one day.

With CAS and BILL, we can compile all financial data into a system, analyze it, and use it to guide clients and help their companies grow. We can employ that data to anticipate and proactively advise on financial performance. The conversation isn’t about what happened last month, rather it’s focused on the future.

What do you like best about BILL?

The people. The company’s culture seems to focus on how to help clients be successful. They’re forward-thinking, already looking ahead to develop solutions that will solve future challenges such as pay cards or cryptocurrency payments. I also really like the intuitive nature of the BILL user interface. Our staff learns the product very quickly, and training clients takes very little time. Best of all, once it is up and running, it just operates without support issues or retraining.

How does BILL support the firm?

BILL helps me close deals and provides functionality to clients that they love. We use BILL not only to improve operations but to provide value to our clients.

A client's perspective

Sebastian Freude, chief of staff for Good&Co Labs, shares how international business payments via BILL help the company save money and meet assertive deadlines. 

Tell us about your company. 

Good&Co provides cultural assessments for the 21st century. On the consumer side, we empower job seekers and employees to understand their personality and skills to make better, more informed career decisions. We’ve already helped over three million people find their dream jobs.

On the enterprise side, we give employers the tools to hire people that fit their company culture and enable them to identify unique micro-cultures all the way down to a department or team level. We’ve already helped companies like Coca-Cola and Estée Lauder to boost productivity, create happier workplaces, and reduce turnover.

What impresses you about EisnerAmper?

We got sold to a publicly traded company in Germany in 2016. In one day, we went from a startup to a company with thousands of accounts. EisnerAmper has enough in-house and global expertise to allow us to keep a lean overhead, use resources wisely, and focus on our product instead of significant overhead.

We have a monthly closing process that must happen in one day, and it would be a challenge for us without an experienced partner like EisnerAmper. Now, we’ve met that deadline for the past three years.

How has BILL helped your company?

BILL makes AP easy for me. One click on a mobile phone or website and I’m done. For us as a growing company, we’re getting more and more bills every day. Paying through BILL is extremely easy, and we meet corporate governance principles. The automatic audit trail BILL provides is essential, as is the ability to have multiple approvers.

How has BILL helped with international business payments?

We have quite a few vendors overseas, so I was happy when BILL offered international business payments. Before that, I would have to make a wire transfer or use other bill pay systems offered by the bank, but they are hard to handle, old-school, and not very efficient.

Now, I can pay all bills – domestic and international – with BILL and in a click of a button. BILL is especially helpful with conversion rates. They’re calculated and synced with Xero automatically, and it’s very convenient and easy for us.

Before BILL, the cost for international transfers was $45 each, and that gets pricey when you’re sending five international payments a week – around $10,000 in fees alone in a year. BILL brought down that cost for us efficiently and securely.