From Error-Prone to Effortless: Automated Bill Pay as a Scalability Solution

Richard Corn, CPA, Director of Product Management, BILL

“AP is too manual. It takes too much time.”

I often hear these types of comments when I speak with family offices about bill pay. Traditionally, the bill pay process requires labor-intensive steps across spreadsheets, emails, paper checks, and more. With so many manual steps required, it can be difficult to ensure every bill is paid on time.

Mistakes can lead to inconveniences for clients and erode an office’s reputation for white glove service. For example, utilities may be interrupted at a client’s vacation home or - worst case scenario - payment information is inadvertently compromised.

A lack of efficiency in this process also means that more headcount is needed as bill volume increases. This limits the ability to efficiently scale operations.

Family offices and multi-family offices need bill pay services that produce better results in less time. By automating bill pay, you can shrink a mountain of client needs down to a neat, compact, achievable molehill. Automation combined with advanced technology delivers what clients want and need—while also making bill pay easier for your staff. 

The hidden costs of manual bill pay

Manual bill pay is time-consuming, costly, and risky. Here’s why:

• Time expenditure: Offices can spend hours tracking down invoices, chasing approvals, and reconciling payments. The time needed increases as the volume of bills do.
• Errors: Manual processes increase the risk for data entry errors, misplaced invoices, duplicate payments, or missed due dates. This can damage client trust and cause financial penalties. It also means more time is required from staff to address these errors.
• Payment risks: Paper checks have all the information needed to commit fraud printed on them. If they’re lost in the mail or stolen, it can compromise your clients’ banking information. Also, paying via bank portals gives any individual with a login direct access to funds. Plus, they often require clients to sign physical checks – an inconvenience for them. 
• Lack of visibility: Without a centralized, digital space, it’s difficult for family offices to understand where each bill is in the approval workflow or research vendor questions.
• Incomplete audit trails: Who reviewed a bill? Or approved its payment? With manual processes, it can be difficult to have a clear audit trail.

These hidden costs can add up quickly, eroding efficiency and client satisfaction.

The value of automated bill pay

Leveraging automated bill pay technology enables firms to offer greater value to HNW clients. Today’s platforms are designed specifically for the unique needs of family offices. Here’s what they offer:

• Streamlined workflow and operational efficiency: Automated bill pay solutions digitize the entire process—from invoice capture to payment approval and execution. Your office creates the workflow based on vendors, bill amounts, and more. The system will automate the process from there, ensuring each person necessary is included in the workflow. This saves time and reduces administrative burden.
• Enhanced security and fraud prevention: Leading bill pay platforms have multi-factor authentication, role-based permissions, and detailed audit trails. This reduces the risk of fraud significantly. Automated workflows also support the separation of duties and approvals, while providing an audit trail for each step. Most importantly, it protects your clients’ banking information, so access to valuable data such as bank accounts and routing numbers is limited to only those that are authorized.
• Improved accuracy: Automated bill pay software helps populate critical information, including vendor name, contact information, invoice number, due date, amount, payment terms, PO number, IBAN number, and SWIFT code. This reduces the need for data entry, which often opens the door for errors and missing data.
• Easier vendor management: An established bill pay network hosts millions of vendors. If your vendor isn’t already on the network, they’re simple to add. Each vendor chooses their preferred payment type and maintains their contact and payment information. Vendors also get automated updates on payment status, sparing your office from follow-up calls.
• Better cash flow management and forecasting: With bill pay data centralized and accessible in real time, advisors and clients gain visibility into cash flow across all entities for better forecasting, budgeting, and strategic decision-making.

How Mark Cuban Companies leverages automated bill pay

The benefits of bill pay automation aren’t theoretical. They’re realized by leading organizations every day – so much so that Mark Cuban Companies burned filing cabinets of check stock.

The company automated its bill pay process and reduced time spent on payables by 50%, improved accuracy, and gained the ability to scale their operations without increasing staff.

Prior to automating, Josh Hull, Director of Finance for the Mark Cuban Companies, described their bill pay process as:

“We were writing physical checks across maybe 75 different checking accounts. Each account had its own pre-printed check stock, so we had thousands of pre-printed checks just sitting around. It was a terrible security risk. The team was keeping track of our monthly AP by sheer willpower. There were a lot of cracks in that system for things to slip through.”

The team moved from a manual email inbox to automated bill pay. As a result, they created multiple benefits.

First, they saved time. According to Hull, “Our AP clerk hasn’t worked even one hour of overtime. Even covering 100 entities, she doesn’t feel stressed at all.”

Next, automation enhanced their tracking capabilities. 

“I can see who entered each bill, who changed it, what was changed, and when it was approved,” Hull explained. 

Leverage the power

For wealth managers and family offices, the move from manual to automated bill pay represents a strategic imperative. The benefits are clear: greater efficiency, enhanced security, improved client satisfaction, and the ability to scale services as clients’ needs grow.

For more insights into transforming your family office or wealth management practice, visit us or request a personalized demonstration of automated bill pay here.

BILL (NYSE: BILL) is a leading financial operations platform for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). As a champion of SMBs, we are automating the future of finance so businesses can thrive. Our integrated platform helps businesses to more efficiently control their payables, receivables and spend and expense management. Hundreds of thousands of businesses rely on BILL’s proprietary member network of millions to pay or get paid faster. Headquartered in San Jose, California, BILL is a trusted partner of leading U.S. financial institutions, accounting firms, and accounting software providers. Learn more.