Bill.com
Pay vendor bills through approvals, collect invoices, and sync the trail to QuickBooks or Xero.
Best for
Businesses with steady vendor invoices that need capture, approval routing, and payment in one place, and want to shrink reimbursements by paying vendors directly.
Not ideal if
Teams whose main problem is employee receipts and card transactions. You will still need an expense workflow alongside it.
Standout
Invoice capture with approval routing: bills get read, coded, approved, and paid without a checkbook, then the trail can sync to QuickBooks or Xero on Team and above.
About Bill.com
BILL (formerly Bill.com) is the accounts payable and receivable layer, not the ledger, and not BILL Spend & Expense. Vendor invoices land by email, upload, or the BILL inbox. You code the lines, route them through the approval chain you set, and pay by ACH, mailed check, virtual card, credit card, or international transfer. Customer invoices go the other way: you send them, remind, and collect ACH or card. On Team and above, bills, invoices, vendors, and payments sync both ways with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, or Xero. You still close the books in those systems.
It does not replace QuickBooks Online or Xero. Melio is a cheaper bill-pay path with a free ACH allowance. BILL Spend & Expense is the sibling free card and budget product. Ramp is card-first spend, not a vendor-invoice inbox. Kick replaces the ledger instead of sitting next to it. BILL's job is capture, approve, pay, and collect, then write the trail back to the file you already have.
People who stick usually have steady vendor invoices, more than one approver, and a bookkeeper who wants one AP inbox. The audit trail and the vendor network are why firms put clients on it.
What people who used it say
What they tend to like
Approvals so staff cannot pay unsupervised
Bookkeepers describe BILL as the inbox: they code, the owner clicks approve, then payment goes out with a trail.
QuickBooks Online sync that actually posts bills
r/Bookkeeping users report vendors, categories, and classes coming over, with occasional cleanup on voids and stale checks.
Time back when invoice volume is real
Firms say AP/AR time drops once the team adopts the inbox. Not worth it for a sole prop paying a handful of bills.
What they hesitate about
Seats plus per-payment fees
The monthly user price is only half the bill. ACH and check fees stack with volume, which matches BookkeepDIY's ranking catch.
Vendors wait on the ACH float
Official standard ACH is about 4 business days. Bookkeepers and payees report longer waits; Instant and Pay Faster cost extra.
Support and a denser interface
Ranking already flags a learning curve. Forum and App Store threads add billing-after-cancel and payee-side support complaints (virtual card defaults, delayed deposits).
How it hits your books
- Replaces your ledger
- No
- QuickBooks Online
- Partial
- Xero
- Partial
- Multi-entity
- Partial
- Inventory
- No
- 1099s
- Yes
- Payroll
- No
You review coded bills and collected invoices in BILL, then sync (Team+) or export CSV (Essentials) into QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, or Xero. Close is still reconcile and exception cleanup in the ledger: voids, returned payments, class mapping. Auto-sync is about once a day; you can also run it on demand.
Invite the accountant, or let the firm run the Accountant Console. They get the AP/AR trail and can e-file 1099s from BILL ($1.99/form on the console). The general ledger and the tax return still live in QuickBooks, Xero, or the CPA's software.
Images
Features
Capture and code vendor bills
Forward invoices to the BILL inbox, email them in, or upload. The W-9 Agent (all AP plans) chases and validates vendor W-9s. Team and above add the Invoice Coding Agent for automatic multi-line coding.
Approval routing before money leaves
Set policies and roles, then route bills before payment. Essentials: standard policies and 6 standard roles. Team: custom roles. Corporate: custom policies and discounted approver-only seats. Approvers can act in the AP & AR mobile app.
Pay vendors by ACH, check, card, or wire
Pay from a connected bank. Published payor fees: ACH $0.59, mailed check $1.99, virtual card free, international USD wire $19.99, Instant Payment 1% ($9.99 min, $100 max), Pay Faster ACH $11.99, pay-by-card 2.9%. Standard ACH is about 4 business days.
Two-way sync on Team and above
Team, Corporate, and Enterprise sync both ways with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, and Xero (about daily, or on demand). Essentials is CSV only. Enterprise adds QuickBooks Enterprise, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Dynamics, Acumatica, and Rillet.
Invoices out, payments in
Create and send invoices by email or US mail ($1.99 mailed). Recurring invoices, reminders, and auto-charge. Customers pay by ACH or card (2.9%). AR uses the same Team+ sync gate as AP.
1099s from the AP file
AP customers can collect W-9s, mark 1099-eligible vendors, generate 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC, and e-file. List price $2.99 per 1099 ($1.99 via Accountant Console), plus $1.99 mail and $1.49 direct state filing. Spend-only accounts do not get this.
Pricing
Sticker is $49/user/mo on Essentials, but a QuickBooks Online or Xero shop that wants live two-way sync pays Team at $65/user/mo. Two seats (owner + bookkeeper) is $130/mo before payments. Five full Team seats is $325/mo; Essentials and Team bill every user as a standard seat, so extra approvers are not cheap until Corporate. Then add $0.59 per ACH and $1.99 per mailed check. A few hundred ACH payments a month can rival the software bill. Standard ACH is about 4 business days unless you buy Pay Faster ($11.99) or Instant (1%). Accountant Console is $49/mo plus per-entity wholesale, not per firm staff seat. Spend & Expense at $0/user/mo is a different product.
Essentials
AP and AR with standard approvals. CSV only to the ledger. Fine if you do not need live QuickBooks or Xero sync.
- Enter bills and send invoices
- Standard approval policies and 6 standard roles
- W-9 Agent
- Pay by ACH, virtual card, credit card, or check
- Manual CSV import/export to accounting software
Team
The usual plan for a QuickBooks Online or Xero shop. Every user is a full-price seat.
- Automatic two-way sync with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Pro, Premier, and Xero
- Invoice Coding Agent
- Custom user roles
- Everything in Essentials
Corporate
Custom approvals plus procurement in the same AP seat. Approver-only users cost less.
- Custom approval policies and custom roles
- Discounts for approver-only users
- Procurement: purchase requests, POs, 2-way matching, unlimited free requesters
- Same QBO / Xero / QuickBooks Pro-Premier sync as Team
Enterprise
Multi-entity shops and ERP ledgers. Quote only.
- Two-way sync with QuickBooks Enterprise, Oracle NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics, Acumatica, Rillet
- Multi-entity and multi-location
- SSO, dual control, API access
- Priority support
Integrations
Platforms
Audience
Pick something else instead of Bill.com
Melio
Pick Melio instead if you want cheaper bill pay: a free-forever plan with a small ACH allowance, and you do not need BILL's firm console or the full AP/AR seat ladder.
BILL Spend & Expense
Pick BILL Spend & Expense instead if the problem is employee cards and budgets, not vendor invoices. That product is free software on the Divvy card. This listing is paid AP/AR.
Ramp
Pick Ramp instead if you want free cards with accounting automation and you are not trying to run a full vendor-invoice inbox.
Kick
Pick Kick instead if you want the books to live in a replacement ledger. BILL sits next to QuickBooks or Xero; it does not replace the file.