What is Budgetly Bill Payments?
Budgetly Bill Payments is an automated accounts payable service fully integrated in the Budgetly platform. Bill Payments allows users to automate bill intake and capture, with one-click payment and robust inbuilt spend controls for automated approvals.
Benefits
What are the benefits of Budgetly Bill Payments?
Budgetly Bill Payments reimagines the bill paying experience with effortless, time-saving bill management, fraud protection, and regulatory compliance controls.
- Save 90% on the cost per bill: Achieve significant efficiency and time savings with automated bill capture and approvals, utilising Budgetly’s built-in spend controls.
- Prevent fraud, paying the wrong accounts, and duplicate payments: Identify and flag new suppliers and payment details for review, helping to prevent fraudulent transactions and safeguarding your organisation’s money.
- Elevate the employee experience: Empower employees to swiftly and seamlessly pay bills to their suppliers without putting them or your business out of pocket.
- Maintain supplier relationships and continuity: Ensure timely payments to build trust and cooperation with your suppliers, minimising supply disruptions by consistently meeting payment schedules.
- Gain control and save time with centralised spend management: Seamlessly manage budgets across both card and bill payments in a single platform.
- Reduce payment errors: Minimise the risk of errors with manual entry.
- Enhance security and regulatory compliance: Automated compliance checks verify that bills are paid to a compliant supplier business and account, meeting AML regulatory requirements and preventing payments to fraudulent businesses.
- Automated notifications and alerts: Send notifications for successfully paid bills, remittance advice, and alerts for unsuccessful payments, keeping bill owners and suppliers informed of their payment statuses
Availability and Getting Started
Is Budgetly Bill Payments available on all plans?
Absolutely. Bill payments is available to all customers on Essentials and Premium plans.
What payment methods does the Budgetly Bill Payments support?
Budgetly Bill Payments currently supports AUD Bank transfer, PayID - Email, PayID - Mobile, PayID - ABN and PayID - Organisation ID.
What do I need to get started with Budgetly Bill Payments?
You need to open a Budgetly Bills Account and provide your business information, including ownership details and signatory information for regulatory compliance.
After your application is processed, deposit funds into your Budgetly Bills Account before making bill payments.
What’s the difference between Bills and Cards accounts?
- Bills Account:
- New account that funds bill payments.
- Requires initial deposit to enable bill payments.
- Cards Account:
- Existing account that covers card purchases.
- Continue depositing for card expenditures.
Key similarity: Both accounts draw from your allocated budgets.
Main difference: The type of spending they support (bills vs. card purchases)
Who can pay a bill?
Budgetly admins and users with a budget can pay bills. Admins need to grant users access to bill payments by assigning them the Bill User role.
Is Bill Payments available on the mobile app?
Not currently, it is only available on desktop web-app.
Where do I find my paid bills?
By visiting Bills in the Budgetly web-app, you can find paid bills by filtering by “Paid” status. You can also see paid bills by visiting Transactions and filtering by payment type. Bill payments is only available in the web-app, currently not available in the mobile app.
What do I need to pay a bill?
To pay a bill, you require, at the very least, the following essentials:
- Supplier and bank details.
- Bill amount; and
- Sufficient funds in their Budgetly account and budget.
Both Admins and Bill users can pay bills within their allocated budgets. If a user doesn’t have enough budget, they can request money so that an Admin can top-up their budget balance to complete the payment.
How will I be charged for Budgetly Bill Payments?
Bill payments will be itemised at $2 per bill created each month and included in the monthly invoice.
Features and Functionality
How does bill data extraction work?
Budgetly Bill Payments automatically extracts key information from customers bills, including the total amount, GST, issued date, due date, paid date, reference, currency, supplier and payment details.
Key data is captured and presented on the bill record and bill transaction details.
What measures are in place for fraud detection?
Budgetly Bill Payments uses advanced fraud detection mechanisms to identify any new suppliers or alterations in payment details. Alerts are promptly generated for any discrepancies, enabling you to review and verify them before proceeding with payment.
Moreover, creating new suppliers notifies all admins, providing added oversight and peace of mind.
What should I do to prevent fraud for new supplier and/or payment details?
At Budgetly, we highly advise you to review the supplier details thoroughly and contact them directly to verify their payment details. Moreover, sourcing the contact number from publicly available and reputable sources is recommended, especially for new suppliers.
What are the statuses for Bill Payments?
Bill payments can have the following statuses:
| Bill status | Description |
|---|---|
| Draft | Saved and unpaid bill. |
| In progress | Payment initiated and being processed. |
| Unsuccessful | Payment failed (eg due to low company balance, or declined by the supplier’s bank). |
| Paid | Payment made. |
How and when are transactions created when a bill is paid?
A transaction is created when a user clicks “Pay” in the final step of the bill process.
| Bill status | Transaction status |
|---|---|
| In progress | Pending |
| Unsuccessful | Declined (eg incorrect payment details) |
| Paid | Pending ⇒ Settled |
When can a bill record be edited?
A bill can be edited when the status is Draft or Unsuccessful. This allows users to make any adjustments before making or retrying payment.
What approvals are in place for bill payments?
Approvals are automated through our in-built budget controls, ensuring all payments stay within the allocated budgets for Bills users and admins.
What happens if I upload a replacement bill document to an existing record?
Uploading a new bill document to a saved bill record will not trigger automated extraction. You will need to add bill information manually.
Can I pay a bill without having a bill document?
Yes.
How are suppliers managed in the system?
Suppliers are added during the bill creation process. Existing suppliers are detected, and new suppliers are flagged for review. Each payment method creates a new supplier record, with their business and payment details captured.
How can I see if a previous payment has been made to a supplier?
You can view and report on all suppliers found under the Suppliers menu - there is a label to indicate whether a previous payment has been made to them and via their recent transactions.
What information is extracted and recorded for each bill?
For each bill, the Budgetly extracts and records the total amount, GST, issued date, due date, paid date, reference, currency, and payment details.
Will Internal Notes added to a bill show up in the bill transaction details?
Yes, adding an internal note to a bill record will sync to the bill transaction.
Are there any scheduled payments or alerts based on bill due date?
Not as part of the first version. Supplier relationships are very important, and paying bills on time is crucial. In the future, we will look into scheduling payments so they are auto-paid by the due date. Additionally, for irregular invoices, users will receive alerts. These features are on the roadmap.
What is a bill transaction?
A bill transaction is a record of payment. Bill transactions are created once a payment has been initiated.
What information is sent to a bill transaction?
Supplier, payment method, total amount, GST, user, budget, internal notes, link to the bill and the uploaded bill file. Users are required to enter the notes, category and tags to the transaction, the same way as card payments.
How are receipts added to bill transactions?
The uploaded bill document is automatically attached to the bill transaction.
Is Budgetly automating receipt capture for bills?
Yes, uploaded bill documents are automatically attached to the bill transaction once payment is initiated.
How are settled bill transactions reconciled?
Bills transactions follow the same reconciliation process that cards do, with manual or automated synching to your accounting software.
What notifications are sent for bill payments?
Remittance emails and notifications are sent to both the bill owner and the supplier for successfully paid bills.
For unsuccessful bill payments, emails and notifications are sent only to the bill owner.
What is the refund process if a client pays a pro-forma invoice and the actual invoice amount is less? Will it be similar to the card solution?
Currently, there are no partial refunds. A full recall and full refund are required, and the bill must be paid again. Another alternative to discuss is providing credit rather than a full refund. Please refer to Budgetly’s Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) for recalls, returns and cancellations fees and charges.
Where are remittance emails sent?
Remittance emails are sent to the supplier’s billing email or as entered at the time of payment.
Can I send the remittance email to another supplier contact?
Yes, you can enter a different recipient at the time of payment.
Can I update supplier details?
No, supplier details cannot be updated. A new supplier must be created and the old one deleted.
Are my bills accessible across my multiple Budgetly accounts?
No, bills are contained within each individual Budgetly account and are not accessible across multiple accounts.
Can an admin pay a bill on behalf of a user?
Yes, admins can pay bills on behalf of users, but the user’s budget controls and limits still apply.
Can I pay bills in foreign currency?
Not yet. Only domestic bills in Australian dollar are possible at the moment.
Do I get charged if a bill payment is unsuccessful?
Yes, a $1 decline fee applies for unsuccessful bill payments due to incorrect payment details or if the supplier’s bank rejects the payment.
Future Enhancements
What are the future enhancements planned for supplier management?
Future enhancements include adding supplier limits, improved supplier management, supplier cards, and additional fraud prevention mechanisms.
What upcoming features can we expect for Budgetly Bill Payments?
- Supplier management expansion: Future updates will include supplier limits, management, and supplier cards for enhanced control.
- Advanced bill intake and capture: Upcoming features include forwarding inbox, drag and drop multiple bills, mobile bill pay, and sharing to app functionalities.
- More payment methods: PayTo, BPAY, SWIFT, Pay by Card, and Pay to Supplier Budgetly Card.
- Multi-currency accounts and international payments: Pay supplier bills using accounts in the same currency to minimise conversion fees and reduce overall transaction costs.
- Enhanced fraud prevention: Additional fraud prevention mechanisms and duplicate detection to further secure your payment processes.