“I think everyone is a good candidate for BILL Spend & Expense. We would prefer to have all of our clients on it”

Summary

Founded in 2002, Summit CPA , now a Division of Anders CPAs + Advisors, is an accounting group specializing in virtual CFO services, including forecasting, financial reporting, and spend management in order to maximize profits, minimize taxes, and increase cash flow for their clients. As the leading provider of Virtual CFO Services in North America, Summit provides professional Virtual CFO Services for over 100 companies across the United States.

The challenge: No visibility or accountability

Summit found that expense management for their clients brought with it several pain points because they struggled with lack of visibility and delayed reporting. “Without BILL Spend & Expense, there’s just a delay in trying to get the financials to close,” explains Jake Grimm, CPA and Director of Technology at Summit CPA. 

In addition, clients had concerns about employees overspending, and this made budgeting more difficult.

The solution: BILL Spend & Expense with real-time dashboarding

When Summit started recommending Spend & Expense to clients, the advantages were obvious. They gained valuable visibility into the budgets, because Spend & Expense provides real-time dashboarding that allows clients to sign in and see their current budgets and status. This way, they can see what’s available to them at any given point in time. 

As Jody Grunden, Partner at Anders CPAs + Advisors, Founder & Head of Summit CPA, describes, “Spend & Expense provides peace of mind and helps us solve clients’ concerns around overspending.”

The firm benefits: More informed CAS and less time chasing payment details 

Summit found that using Spend & Expense allowed them to be more effective in cash flow forecasting and management, even on a weekly basis. They are now able to work with clients to set forecasts and expectations, and to advise on the results and trends they see—which informs their client advisory service (CAS) offerings.

“Our accountants like training clients to use Spend & Expense virtual cards for recurring transactions, because they’re guaranteed to go into the right budget and the right category.”

Spend & Expense also made a big impact by helping Summit’s accountants with credit card classification coding for transactions. This helps them save time hunting down details. 

Summit also appreciates that Spend & Expense helps eliminate the risk of client overspending, which can help save money. And now that expense categorization is handled by spenders themselves, no one has to trackdown that information. 

When enough clients switched to Spend & Expense, the Summit team couldn’t ignore the firm’s time savings. “I would estimate that it might save us about two hours per week for some of our bigger clients,” says Grunden. 

They also love BILL Accounts Receivable for their firm. “We use BILL to invoice clients.” Grunden describes. “Before, we would take hours sending invoices, chasing payments and collecting. Now, BILL delivers the invoice online, sends out an auto-reminder, accepts payment and then syncs with QuickBooks.” They get paid much more quickly with BILL, and their clients love the audit trail—plus the BILL app allows them to work anywhere, anytime. “We’ve decreased AR time by 90% with BILL,” says Grunden.

Benefits for clients: Security, time savings, and an end to overspending

Spend & Expense also has the added benefit of security features to protect clients from fraud. “Fraud is a growing concern, and virtual cards help manage that,” says Grimm. Because Spend & Expense’s virtual cards allow clients to generate a new card number for any purchase, physical card numbers are protected, and fraudulent activity is easier to spot. 

Virtual cards are also useful for recurring payments. “I like having virtual cards set up for different vendors so you’re not relying on one card that’s being used in hundreds of different areas that could get compromised,” explains Grimm.

“Spend & Expense reduces overspending and saves time with auto-categorization. This means for an average client with 50 team members, they might save about $600 per month using Spend & Expense.”

“The biggest pain point our clients experience without Spend & Expense is the amount of time they spend categorizing expenses,” explains Grimm. “They get a feed of all these bank transactions, and they might have some rules set up to categorize them, but they sometimes end up guessing what category they should use. And they have to wait on receipts or track them down.”

This process was a challenge for clients. “But Spend & Expense is the software solution that manages all of those expenses, and categorization happens right when you swipe the card,” says Grimm.