SmallBizResource Blog -- Internet

BillFLO Takes The Tedium Out Of Invoice Entry

Posted by Gayle Kesten Monday, May 4, 2009, 01:54 PM ET

So many tasks, so little time. Aiming to automate one that small-business owners know all too well, a startup in San Francisco has introduced a hosted service that eliminates the need to manually enter invoices into your accounting system.

Simply put, BillFLO is an electronic invoicing network that sucks in the data from PDF-like invoices, which means no more stack of bills piling on your desk, according to Ian Sweeney, CEO of Anoowa, the company behind the free (for now) software-as-a-service (SaaS). "BillFLO creates a digital bridge between two accounting systems," says Ian Sweeney, CEO of Anoowa. "We think of PDFs as the human-readable version. This release of BillFLO is based on what we call a bill-flow invoice, which is really a machine-readable invoice that they can import straight into their system."

BillFLO integrates with a handful of invoicing and accounting systems that include FreshBooks, QuickBooks, Less Accounting, Harvest, and Blinksale. Those solutions aggregate the information you need to create an invoice. "We pick up from there," Sweeney says. "We help the buyer who receives that invoice get that data into their accounting system."

Sweeney cites benefits for both sides of the transaction:

• If you're on the invoice-sending/vendor side, you're limiting the transmission costs of mailing or faxing.

• You get paid quicker because the buyer doesn't have to manually type in the data. Sweeney says it takes on average of 10 days of from physical invoice receipt to getting the data into an accounting system. "That's 10 days the vendor could have been paid," he says.

• On the invoice-receiving/buyer end, you save time/money by eliminating all of the manual handling of data entry -- whether by you or someone you pay. "From a strategic point of view, a small business may be able to take advantage of a 2% discount on a big invoice if they pay within 10 days," Sweeney says. "But they may not be able to take advantage of that if the piece of paper is sitting on their desk."

• Human error is all but eliminated, plus BillFLO can tell whether an invoice was already imported.

Sweeney showed me how the FreshBooks-integrated BillFLO works, and it's as straightforward as he says: As a vendor, you create an invoice the usual way, then you click the BillFLO tab and see a list of the invoices you created in FreshBooks. You select the one you want to send, and then off it goes. BillFLO creates an email and attaches two invoice versions: one that's PDF/human readable and a BillFLO version, which is computer-readable.

Here's a demo:

On the buyer side, the person who needs to pay up receives that email, looks at the PDF version to make sure it's OK, and, if so, then imports the billFLO version into his accounting system with a simple click.

Like so:

BillFLO will remain free of charge while Sweeney and Anoowa co-founder Alec Kercso see how the service takes off and what other features customers might be looking for. Sweeney hinted at a pricing model based on the number of invoices a small business sends per month, "what we call value-based pricing," he said. "It's fairer to say, 'If I only do 50 invoices a month, I should only pay for 50.' You use it for five minutes a day, and then you're done. The rest of the day you run your business."

Freelancing | Internet | Productivity | SmallBizResource | Software | Startups