What Is a Bill Pay Software?
A bill pay software helps automate the bills payment process saving your accounts payable (AP) teams numerous hours of work. You don’t need to go through multiple payment apps just to settle your business expenses. With bill payment software, payment processing is streamlined and automated.
How Does It Work?
Using bills payment software should help you centralise all your payables in one dashboard. It should accommodate local and overseas payments as well. Many companies struggle with finding the best rates for overseas transfers and this is one feature you should consider when looking for the right bill payment software for your business.
Bill payments are one of the many features that you can find in Spenmo. With a payments platform, bills are paid in two easy steps.
Step 1: Upload your bills and invoices to Spenmo be it 1 or 1000
Step 2: Using OCR technology, Spenmo scans the bills and carries out the payment for you
In addition to bill payments, Spenmo is integrated with accounting software, like Xero and Quickbooks. Payables logged in Spenmo are recognized and synced in the accounting software when the payment has been made. Closing your books at the end of the month has never been easier!
When it comes to overseas transfers, Spenmo customers enjoy a 0% FX markup on Google rates – talk about a massive bargain!
Traditional Bills Payment Process vs. Automated Bill Payments
Traditional bills payment processes require a visit to the bank for local bank transfers and overseas payments or telegraphic transfers. Remittance centres are another option for overseas payments. These days, electronic payments have become a more common way of paying bills due to the stay-at-home protocols brought about by the COVID pandemic.
While online methods allow you to pay easily through your laptop or mobile phone, the process continues to be siloed as there is a need to use multiple mobile applications to process a single transaction. This leaves more room for error, not to mention the time it takes to process payments.
Payments automation, on the other hand, takes it up a notch by centralising the payments workflow in a single dashboard. Our study shows that it takes an average of 115 clicks to process and pay a bill and match records, such as receipts and purchase orders, to an accounting system. Meanwhile, using payment automation software, like Spenmo, can reduce the workload by up to 80%.
One way a payment automation system can optimise workflow is through its invoice approval system, wherein payments are automatically carried out as soon as a bill has been approved by a finance or admin manager. Finance teams can also track the payment status in the same platform, ensuring that the payment has been received by the biller.
Bill pay automation also has the ability to pay bills that are recurring, such as rent. Not only does this reduce the amount of time spent on repetitive and mundane tasks but it also ensures that you never incur late payment fees. When this happens, you can improve your credit score and maintain a healthy cash flow. Just be sure that you have enough funds each month for the process to be completed.
8 Ways A Bill Payment Software Can Help Your Business
Having bill payment software as an ally to your payables workflow offers many benefits to your small business. We list down the ways below.
It helps you streamline your business payment process
Managing payables in a business are a never-ending process. Equipping your finance team with expense management software can optimise your payables and approvals workflow.
It helps your small business scale faster.
The software can support the growth of your business by saving you from troublesome finances. It can also help you in terms of budgeting. You would be surprised that it can improve vendor and customer relationships as well.
It helps automate your invoicing and bill payments
You no longer have to manually do your invoice and data entry as these can be automated. You won’t have to miss any due dates too or experience late fees.
It provides multiple local and international payment options
When a bill comes in, you can use your bill pay software to carry out the payment in various methods from corporate credit cards, local bank transfers and overseas payments. Do note that software providers have different rates for bill payments, so be on the lookout for those that offer the best rates!
It helps ease your IT workload through its SaaS features
Since SaaS platforms typically provide ready-made software, this reduces the need to create in-house tech to streamline finance and accounting processes. If you have accounting software, you can easily reconcile your payables to close your accounts faster.
It helps reduce the cost of invoice payments
You no longer need to worry about the invoice cost as it is lesser with bill payment software. There is no denying that automating your bill payments can save you money as it saves your team precious hours doing repetitive tasks, requires less manpower, and reduces human error in processing payments.
It helps reduce error and the possibility of fraud
Automation can prevent errors. The software will help you track your expenses so you or any member of your company can easily spot issues and fix them right away. Moreover, each payable is monitored within the platform, which avoids the possibility of fraud.
Things to consider when choosing the best bill payment software in Singapore
A lot of companies consider Singapore as a good place to start their business. After all, it is the business epicentre of Southeast Asia with more than 154,000 businesses considering Singapore as its base location. As a result, the country has become a breeding ground for startups seeking funding from local and international investors.
That being said, startups and small businesses need to have full visibility over their accounting books and financial statements to ensure that they have enough proof points to convince investors to fund their business
Even at its earliest stages, business owners should consider the use of an expense management system with automated bill pay capabilities for full transparency over their company’s accounts payables. Payments software like Spenmo gives founders a full view of their corporate spending in real-time so that they can properly manage cash flow and make sound business decisions.
To help narrow down your search, we list down the things you look out for when choosing the best bill payment software for your business.
1) Multiple payment options
Common bill payment software only processes bills and invoice payments for its customers through local bank transfer. Expense management software, on the other hand, provides more payment options for bill payments such as corporate credit cards and overseas transfers.
2) Top-up funds from bank account or existing credit
In a manual process, finance and admin managers usually log in to the online banking system of the corporate bank account to make the payments. To save on costs, finance teams would opt to open multiple accounts at various banks to avoid transaction fees when paying a biller with an account from a different bank.
A payments software, on the other hand, would allow you to top up from your bank account of choice or your existing credit card and use it to process multiple payments – all while enjoying the software’s low transfer rates.
3) Cheap overseas payments
A business should not limit itself only to local vendors and suppliers – especially when they can help save you costs. However, most businesses often consider the cost of foreign bill payments in their product pricing, and these can be a pain when the costs start to add up. It is vital for a business to look for a payment platform that offers affordable rates on cross-border payments.
4) Unlimited access to physical and virtual corporate credit cards
Giving your employees access to physical and virtual cards, similar to the one that Spenmo provides, is a good way to empower your employees to spend for your business whilst having full visibility over their business expenses. The slow approval process from traditional methods normally holds companies back from scaling their business.
5) Efficient approvals workflow
Speaking of slow approval processes, founders should aim to eliminate this with an expense management system. Owners tend to be frugal when it comes to their corporate spending but this should not be the case when you want your business to scale and grow faster.
6) Full integration with accounting software
Syncing your payments platform to your accounting software reduces another step in the AP workflow. Spenmo is fully integrated with accounting software, like Xero, which helps your accounting teams complete their month-end balance sheet on time.
7) Affordable monthly fees
SaaS platforms are accessible such that they should be able to offer their tech at affordable monthly rates and when it comes to bill payments, costs start to add when done in bulk. Be on the lookout for payments software with affordable rates fit for startups and SMBs. Take a look at Spenmo’s pricing here.
Get Started with Payment Automation
Starting your journey to payments automation should be easy. You can easily onboard Spenmo on the same day plus we have our amazing customer support team to help you get started.