Hospice innovator BetterRX leverages BILL to streamline their finances

The BetterRX mission is as bold as it is compassionate: to radically change patient care in the hospice setting. “Everybody, at some point in time, will experience having a family member or a friend in hospice,” explains Mandy Stroup, Accounting Specialist at BetterRX. “We want to stop needless suffering caused by long waits for pharmacy medications.”

BetterRX uses advanced technology to deliver the world’s first Connected RX (CRX) platform, which has transformed the pharmacy process for hospice through efficient ordering, medication tracking, and utilization optimization technology. So far, the company has facilitated ordering 2.4 million prescriptions for more than 200,000 patients.

Empowered by advanced technology, BetterRX sought to modernize their accounting processes with a digital, automated solution for streamlined, cost-effective accounts payable (AP) and expense management. With BILL Accounts Payable and BILL Spend & Expense, BetterRX was able to optimize their financial operations with a single integrated financial operations platform.

Relieving suffering for the most vulnerable patients

Pharmacist Jared Strong founded BetterRX after his own life-changing experience with hospice, when one of his family members experienced significant pain and suffering because the right medications could not be filled on time.  

This led Strong on a journey to develop innovative technologies that could make medication ordering more efficient. These efforts culminated in the launch of CRX, which provides speed, transparency, and ease of use for hospice clinicians, prescribers, and pharmacists alike. 

For Accounting Specialist Stroup, operating a lean and efficient AP process is important to manifesting the company’s overall mission. “We're a growing company, but we're also scrappy and financially savvy,” she says. “We always consider our return on investment when we purchase software.”

For BILL to demonstrate value to Stroup and her team, the platform needed to solve certain business challenges that the company was experiencing. Specifically, they often paid invoices with paper checks, which meant that accounting staff and approvers had to physically travel to the company’s office, sign checks, and then put them in envelopes to mail out. With BILL, they were able to eliminate these manual processes—and the need to be tethered to a physical office. 

“We've been fully remote for years, thanks in part to BILL,” says Randi Letendre, CFO of BetterRX. “We're a technology company, and having the right accounting tech stack is important to us. Having BILL—which lets our people work from literally all over the world, accessing the platform anywhere, from phones and other devices—is fabulous.”

“We're a technology company, and having the right accounting tech stack is important to us. Having BILL—which lets our people work from literally all over the world, accessing the platform anywhere, from phones and other devices—is fabulous.”  

Simplifying vendor payments

Now, BetterRX uses BILL to pay almost all of their vendors. “A lot of our bills are for the contractors who build out our software platform and keep it HIPAA-compliant,” says Stroup. BetterRX also pays for medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees, as well as for some software licensing.

“In essence, for anything that is ACHed out of our bank account to a vendor, we prefer to put the invoice into BILL,” Stroup explains. “The ease of having vendors be able to ACH between connection IDs or send out checks makes BILL a no-brainer. BILL has definitely been worth it for us.”

“The ease of having vendors be able to ACH between connection IDs or send out checks makes BILL a no-brainer. BILL has definitely been worth it for us.”  

BILL also makes it easy to send international payments. “For overseas vendors, we can wire funds through BILL, which has been super nice. I don't have to go in and set up wire templates at the bank,” Stroup says.

Improving efficiency and saving time with integrations

The BILL integrated financial operations platform has helped to save BetterRX time. “BILL cuts down on our paperwork flow,” says Stroup. “And it eliminates the need to have a filing system—you have that digital copy stored within BILL. That's a time saving in itself, including the ease of getting the invoices into BILL.” 

“BILL cuts down on our paperwork flow. And it eliminates the need to have a filing system—you have that digital copy stored within BILL.” 

With BILL, Stroup can copy a section of an invoice and drag it over to save it within the platform, which saves her from having to type in a description. Getting invoices imported into QuickBooks is simple with BILL’s quick sync function, and the finance team appreciates how seamless it is. “Without BILL, I would literally have to download every single invoice, copy it, paste it over on a drive on the desktop, and then upload it into QuickBooks,” Stroup says. “BILL gives us an easy way to store those digital hard copies.”

BILL also makes it easier and more efficient to manage their cash flow. “We utilize BILL for pulling down and seeing which invoices or payments are due,” says Jordan Thompson, Controller at BetterRX. “My open payables report through BILL gives me much better visibility into what invoices need to go out that week, what can be put on hold, what's going out next week, and what's due by the end of the month.”

Better control and visibility of expense spend with BILL Spend & Expense

BetterRX transitioned to BILL because they wanted better control over their expense spending and reporting. Previously, every employee in the company had a corporate credit card without any spending limit. “We really didn't have any control over how much each employee could spend against their department’s budget,” says Stroup.

Since moving over to BILL Spend & Expense, they have assigned each employee to a departmental budget. “Employees are given a Bill Divvy card, but they have limits on their spending based on the budget. Now we can regulate and manage the funds that are available to them,” Stroup says.

BILL Spend & Expense has also given them more visibility. “If a department is over budget for the month and an employee needs to use their Bill Divvy card, they have to reach out to the Finance team to actually move funds over to their card. This enables us to see where the miss was in the budget,” Stroup says.

“BILL Spend & Expense has given us better control and better budget management,” Letendre concurs. “BILL Spend & Expense makes it so easy to send funds to a card when needed. It's kind of ridiculous actually, how quickly we're able to add funds and it's immediate—I mean instantaneous,” Stroup says.

Virtual cards make it much easier for BetterRX to handle lost cards and potential fraud. “With Divvy, if the wrong person gets hold of a credit card, we can just cancel it,” says Letendre. “I've had pain points in the past where one card gets compromised and now all of a sudden you're having to go and reset card payment methods at 15 or 20 different vendors.”

“On top of that, you can also predetermine where that payment gets coded in the accounting system, so you don't have to come back and do that later. BILL Spend and Expense saves a lot of time in that regard,” Letendre says.

“You can also predetermine where that payment gets coded in the accounting system, so you don't have to come back and do that later.  BILL Spend and Expense saves a lot of time in that regard.”  

“I would say the biggest impact of BILL Spend and Expense is that we don't have to spend as much time with things like expense reporting or tracking down receipts,” says Thompson. 

“BILL Spend & Expense makes the process simple, easy, and seamless, and really helps reduce a lot of those tasks that would take up our time. It really helps save money and we definitely love the pricing level of BILL,” Thompson says.

“BILL Spend & Expense makes the process simple, easy, and seamless, and really helps reduce a lot of those tasks that would take up our time. It really helps save money and we definitely love the pricing level of BILL.”  

Better together

The integrated financial operations platform of BILL Accounts Payable and BILL Spend and Expense has proven to be a winner for BetterRX. The platform has enabled them to go remote, simplify vendor payments, and find efficiencies in their financial operations. You might say that BILL has been a prescription for financial success. 

“BILL is our go-to tool. We use BILL Spend and Expense to manage all of our credit cards and BILL AP to pay all of our bills. I love the integrated platform,” says Letendre.