Table of contents
A new era is here for accounting firms—where growth is driven by innovation, not limited by hours or headcount. The most forward-thinking firms are building smarter systems with automation, AI, and repeatable excellence.
When you focus on scalable foundations, you can:
- Expand offerings or grow your client advisory services (CAS) practice.
- Onboard more staff and clients with ease.
- Deliver consistent, scalable service that reflects your firm’s commitment to quality and responsiveness.
That’s where BILL comes in. With BILL, you can automate, standardize, and secure your workflows—from AP/AR to spend management to 1099 filing and beyond. Laying a strong technology foundation frees your team to focus on what matters most: growing your firm and delivering greater value to your clients.
“Standardization is how you move from heroic effort to repeatable excellence.” (Ariege Misherghi, SVP & GM of AP, AR and Accountant Channel, BILL)
Is your tech foundation holding you back?
If your team is buried in spreadsheets, double data entry, or manual reconciliations, your technology is slowing you down. A brittle tech foundation—one that can’t grow with your firm—creates integration bottlenecks and blocks real-time data.
Even more critical, you could be missing growth enablers like AI agents, customizable approval workflows, and a platform flexible enough to expand into AP/AR, spend and expense management, procurement, and forecasting.
Bottom line: If your technology creates more friction than it solves, it’s time to act.
97% of accounting firms believe they’re inefficient with technology. Read the top reasons why.
How can you build a resilient technology foundation?
For a tech foundation that supports sustainable growth, start with these core steps:
- Strategy: Define your vision for growth and how technology will help you get there.
- Roadmap: Develop an actionable plan for implementing and evolving your tech stack. Even a few steps can guide your firm forward.
- Standardization: Establish consistent processes and best practices across your firm to drive efficiency and quality. Apply this to your tech stacks, too—using a standard set of tools helps your team focus on client service, not learning new solutions with each engagement.
- Automation: Use automation to eliminate manual tasks, reduce errors, and free your team for higher-value work.
- AI: Combine AI and AI agents with automation to collect documentation and W-9s, surface insights and flag anomalies like duplicate or missing invoices.
- Training: Invest in ongoing education so your team can confidently use new tools and adapt to evolving technology. Start with your technology providers—they can provide training resources and support.
- Integrations and security: Make sure your systems work seamlessly together and that both your data and your clients’ data stay protected at every step.
Why is BILL the technology foundation for scaling firms?
BILL is purpose-built to help accounting firms scale with confidence. Here’s what sets us apart:
- Centralized client management: The BILL Accountant Console serves as your firm’s home base for managing clients and staff across our integrated suite of products—simplifying workflows and uncovering new opportunities.
- Enterprise-level AI: BILL AI brings enterprise-grade automation and insights to everyday client work. With intelligent agents integrated across the BILL platform, firms can eliminate manual processes, respond faster to clients, and scale without adding headcount.
- Security-first payment processing: Protect every transaction with industry-leading security protocols.
- Customizable approval workflows: Tailor controls to fit your clients’ needs for compliance and transparency. BILL helps enforce separation of duties—whether for a small business, a large enterprise, or clients in regulated industries.
- Comprehensive audit trails: Know exactly who approved what and when. BILL records every action for compliance and peace of mind.
- In-house support: Our Accountant Care experts understand your firm and your clients, so you get support that’s fast, relevant, and reliable.
- Accelerated results: Dedicated onboarding, certifications and resources, shorten your learning curve so you see value and results faster
- Experience: Over 9,000 accounting firms partner with BILL, moving $300B in total payment volume annually—around 1% of US GDP.1 Plus, BILL is CPA.com’s preferred provider for digital payments, and BILL Spend & Expense is CPA.com’s exclusive partner for spend and expense management and corporate cards.
See how BILL compares to the competition.
Streamlining accounts payable
Accounts payable doesn’t have to slow your firm down. With BILL Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable, you can reduce lost invoices, manual errors, approval delays, missing audit trails, and other headaches. Streamline your workflow with digital invoice capture, seamless approvals, and automated reminders that keep everything on track.
BILL also removes double data entry and reduces errors by integrating seamlessly with accounting software, including NetSuite, Sage Intacct, QuickBooks, Microsoft, and Xero.
Once you’ve connected your systems, it’s time to take automation to the next level with new features that put you in control.
Shut down repetitive payment processes with BILL Multi-Entity, giving your firm one command center to approve, review, and pay hundreds of bills at once. End the form runaround with the W-9 Agent, which automatically collects, validates, and stores vendor W-9s so 1099 filing is fast, accurate, and stress-free. And with Cash Account, turn every payment into potential—helping clients earn high-yield interest on operating cash while keeping vendors paid on time.
Resources to help you power simpler payables with BILL AP/AR
- Taking automated AP services past that first client
- The evolution of business payments: Upleveling CAS just got easier
- BILL payment timing and limits
- Creating new CAS opportunities with automated 1099s
Scaling spend management
If expense management feels like a tangle of lost receipts, card chaos, and reimbursement delays, it’s time for a smarter system. Without automation, firms risk inefficient approval cycles, hidden overspending, lost receipts, and overworked staff. BILL Spend & Expense simplifies everything by combining corporate cards and expense management in one platform. It offers:
- Free automated expense management software
- Instant mobile receipt capture and uploads
- Automated expense policy enforcement—no confusion, no loopholes
- Real-time spend and budget visibility with dashboards and live tracking
- AI-powered auto-categorization and receipt matching
- Credit lines that can scale with your firm and clients
- Points you can redeem for cash back, statement credit, gift cards, or travel
Resources to help you expand expense management with BILL
- A customer’s guide to success with BILL Spend & Expense
- The benefits of pairing your business card with spend management software
- Here’s how to move one step closer to continuous close
- The definitive guide to spend management CAS
“Thanks to BILL Spend & Expense, closing the books for a client, regardless of their size, takes five minutes. Whether you have a hundred or a million rows of transactions, Spend & Expense does it all for you.” (Steve Chaney, Managing Partner, Chaney & Associates)
A better tech foundation, a better future
A resilient technology foundation isn’t a luxury for huge firms with mammoth budgets—it’s an essential shift for every firm ready to compete for the future.
Smart investment in AP and spend and expense management sets the stage for continuous, client-focused growth and scalability.
Take the first step toward a stronger foundation and a brighter future for your firm:
- Audit current systems for process gaps and inefficiencies.
- Explore automation and AI opportunities, especially where friction is highest.
- Partner with technology providers that offer support, training, and strategic guidance, not just software.
- Treat every technology choice as a deliberate part of your firm’s service design, mapping it to the impact clients and staff will experience.
As the accountant’s role shifts from doing to designing business systems, building a strong tech foundation becomes the key to growth, scale, and happier teams and clients.
Build a foundation your firm can grow on
Here are two ways to get started:
Already a customer? Thank you for trusting BILL. To learn more about how we can help scale your firm and expand client services, contact your account manager.
1 BILL Holdings, Inc. (BILL) Q3 FY2025 earnings call transcript
