BILL Pricing Plans

BILL has built their plan structure around your business growth, so it is fairly straightforward. However, there will be difficult decisions based on how much you are willing to spend versus how much time you want to save. The lower tier starts out with the basic needs of creating digital versions of your existing workflow processes, but once you go beyond being a solopreneur, you will be forced into upgrading your platform. We feel the jump from Essentials to Team is the hardest decision; this is where you can stop losing time on manually uploading CSV files and begin to use the two-way automatic sync feature. This is what we consider to be the "growing pains" level of most businesses; they come to find that paying $16 per month to have to deal with bad data isn’t worth the hassle.

Once your operation becomes even larger, the scaling will shift from saving time to managing risk. We feel the transition to Corporate and Enterprise is not just about having additional features, it is about putting in place additional controls such as PO matching and the ability to oversee multiple entities. We suggest that you view these upper levels as a type of insurance for your CFO. When you have multiple locations and/or departments making purchases, the “honor system” will fail, and BILL’s procurement tools will become vital. As far as we can see, BILL has created a path that follows the natural progression of complexity in a company; you first fix your paperwork, next you fix the flow of your data, and lastly you fix your governance. We understand it is expensive to do this, however, we believe it is necessary to keep a company from having a complete disaster during a year-end audit. At this stage, finance leaders often evaluate spend management alternatives like those available through a Payhawk promo code to compare governance features and total cost before locking into higher enterprise tiers.

BILL has a number of clear and powerful benefits that make it easier to use as an automated back-office solution. Most notably, one of the biggest benefits is having BILL be your single source of truth for all your cash in and cash out transactions. So instead of sifting through multiple conversations on Slack or searching through dozens of emails to find who signed off on some obscure vendor's invoice, you have a complete and unbroken chain of custody (audit trail) that will impress even the most difficult auditor. We've found that the automated data entry with BILL is quite fast and efficient -- faster than manually pulling information off invoices, in fact -- eliminating what we call the "tab and type" cycle of tedious, time-consuming data entry that creates errors due to typos.

Another major advantage is the sheer scope of their payment network. As they have been around for such a long time, they have established relationships with many of the same vendors you do, which greatly reduces the effort required to set up ACH or virtual card payments. While there may be other platforms available, the "peace of mind" that comes from their approval workflow is one of the "secret sauces" that make us recommend BILL to teams looking to decentralize their spending but still maintain control. Specifically, BILL allows managers to approve their own budget line items while the finance team retains control over the entire process. We believe that the cost of the monthly subscription fee can be a barrier for some users; however, the significant reduction in "human error" and late fees far outweighs the cost of BILL by the end of the first quarter.

Determine who should really be using BILL based on how important an accurate, audit-able paper trail is to you compared to a "quick and easy" solution to making a payment. This tool is ideal for mid-sized companies and growing startup businesses that are beyond the days of a founder being able to Venmo a contractor and say he paid him. If your finance department is up at night worrying about manual approval processes and/or is being hounded by auditors to explain who approved a $5,000 invoice, then BILL was made for your company. I've found that companies dealing in a large number of complex vendor relationships find BILL's "set it and forget it" automation capabilities to be essential to staying sane.

I believe accounting firms would also benefit from utilizing BILL as well due to the fact that they can use the Accountant Console to manage multiple clients (dozens) without having to switch login accounts frequently. But I don't see BILL as a good option for tiny freelancers with only 2-3 invoices per month as you would essentially be purchasing a jet engine to cut your lawn. I would recommend BILL to organizations that have outgrown the "pay-as-you-go" type of tools and need a deeper connection to their ledger such as QuickBooks or a large-scale ERP like NetSuite. I believe BILL is the best option for any organization that wants to be able to decentralize the process of requesting payment while maintaining a centralized and solid hold on the process of executing payments.

The decision of whether Bill's pricing is reasonable compared to the features provided is somewhat of an extreme position within the SaaS industry; however, this ultimately comes down to how much you are willing to spend on your company's profitability and your own time. On the surface, the $49-$89 monthly fee per user (in addition to the 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction) can be seen as a "nickel and dime" tactic, particularly when you consider that younger competitors offer bill pay at little to no cost. However, in our view, the price is typically justified by the sheer amount of customization available through the approval engine. While most tools can pay bills, very few can manage a complex, multi-step approval process across multiple departments. We have observed that for businesses with high-volume payments, the "tax" paid in subscription fees is typically lower than the cost of one major manual accounting mistake.

In our view, the value proposition becomes somewhat weak on the Essentials plan since you will still manually upload data via CSV files. We believe it is slightly arrogant to charge a higher fee for a tool that does not communicate natively with your accounting software at the entry-level. In our opinion, the pricing only truly makes sense once you reach the Team or Corporate levels of service, where the automation occurs. Therefore, we would recommend Bill to businesses that place control and audibility above all other priorities. If you simply want to send a few ACHs and do not require a complete paper trail, we believe you will be overpaying. However, if you are growing rapidly and require a system that will remain stable during a Series B audit, we believe the price of admission is a necessary evil.

Usually when we see what BILL plan a business is using, the number of businesses in each tier follow a predictable pattern of growth; however, when looking strictly at the amount of businesses using the Tiered plans (Team & Corporate), Team and Corporate clearly dominate. Most smaller to medium sized businesses figure out that the $49 per month "Essentials" plan is a "trap" because it does not include the essential feature of Automatic Sync. No one enjoys a long day on Friday uploading a CSV file to QuickBooks. For that reason, we have found that the $65 per month "Team" plan is generally the most popular entry point for businesses that place a premium on their own time. The Team Plan provides just enough automation to give users the feeling that they have finally made an upgrade to their lives, without requiring the user to pay for unnecessary enterprise features.

However, once a business has hired enough department heads so that it is impossible to manage all purchases personally, the conversation will shift to the Corporate plan. I believe that BILL labels the Corporate plan as their "Most Popular," for good reason. As a $89 per user plan, the Corporate plan offers users purchasing tools and custom approval policies, features that are non-negotiable when a business can no longer personally manage all of its purchases. My recommendation is that if you are a small, tightly knit group of employees, you should start with the Team plan, but be prepared to move to the Corporate plan the moment you need to delegate spending authority to someone else. While I believe the Enterprise plan is great for large corporations, my experience suggests that most "real world" businesses will find everything they need to function effectively in that Corporate middle ground.

To reduce costs and save time with BILL, you have to look past the monthly subscription and play the system a bit to maximize your ROI. In our opinion, most people overpay because they stay on a pricing plan that’s overkill for their actual needs, or they miss out on the low-hanging fruit of credits and discounts.

We think these are the smartest ways to keep your cash in the business:

1. Bank our BILL offers: If you're using BILL Spend & Expense, take advantage of $500 back. It’s essentially a 100% rebate on your first few business expenses. For the bill-pay side, grab a $100 credit for every 10 payments you process. If you have a high volume of vendors, this wipes out your transaction fees pretty quickly.

1. Lock in annual savings: While BILL defaults to monthly billing, paying annually is the way to go. We’ve noticed you can usually shave off about 15-20% of the total cost compared to the month-to-month grind.

1. Audit your "pricing plan": We recommend checking if you’re actually using the procurement or multi-entity tools. If not, dropping down to a cheaper pricing plan like Team or Essentials can save you hundreds a year per user.

1. Ditch the add-ons: Stop paying for extra seats or modules you don't use. To get started with these deals, just use the SaaS promo code and head to the product page to see the full details.

Our take is that BILL is only expensive if you’re passive about it—if you stack these offers, it practically pays for itself. Beyond negotiating with BILL directly, using a SaaS promo code marketplace can unlock additional credits on accounting, payments, and finance tools that compound those savings across your entire stack.

The tricky part about BILL is that the monthly subscription is really just the "cover charge"—once you're inside, your costs will fluctuate based on how you actually move money around. In our opinion, you have to factor these transaction fees into your monthly budget, or you’ll get a nasty surprise when your bill arrives. We’ve noticed that while some methods are free, the ones people use most often usually carry a per-item cost.

Here is the breakdown of the most common fees we think you should keep an eye on:

1. Standard ACH/ePayments: These will set you back $0.59 per transaction (both for paying out and receiving).

1. Physical checks: If you need BILL to print and mail a check for you, it’s $1.99 each.

1. International Wires: Foreign currency wires (FX) are usually free of transaction fees (they make their money on the exchange rate), but sending USD internationally costs $19.99.

1. Pay faster options: If you’re in a rush, overnight checks can cost up to $24.99, and same-day/next-day ACH carries an $11.99 fee.

1. Credit card payments: If you pay a vendor via credit card through the platform, expect a 2.9% fee.

Our take is that if you can move most of your vendors to virtual cards (which are free), you can actually save a ton. Otherwise, those $0.59 ACH fees add up fast if you’re processing hundreds of bills.