The approver is never the payer
Releasing a payment will be its own action, held by someone other than the person who approved the invoice. It's the first control an auditor asks about. It has been part of the design from day one.
Coming soon
Bill pay software for scheduled supplier payments
After approval, bills are ready for the payment run you schedule. Supplier details stay on file, and a second person releases the payment.
Bill Pay will release scheduled supplier payments from Smartbills, on the same audit trail as the approval.
See the whole run before you release it
Before anything moves, one screen shows the bills selected, the run total, each supplier's payment method and the balance you'll have left. You review the run as a batch rather than approving payments one at a time.
- Every bill in the run listed with its supplier, amount and method
- The remaining balance shown before release, not after
- Planned: releasing payments is not enabled in the product today
Bill payment runs on your schedule
Set up a weekly run for anything due within seven days, a month-end run for everything approved, and on-demand runs when something can't wait. If a supplier offers an early-payment discount, the run is designed to take it.
- Recurring runs on your own cadence, plus on-demand runs
- Bills selected by due date, supplier or approval state
- Designed to pay early when a discount applies
Each supplier paid the way they asked
A supplier's payment method (EFT, wire, cheque or card) and terms are set once on their record and every run uses them. A rushed month-end doesn't send anyone money by the wrong rail.
How bill pay works
Approve the invoice
Accounts Payable captures it, codes it, matches it to the purchase order and routes it through your approval rules.
Add it to a payment run
Approved bills join a scheduled or on-demand run, using the payment method saved on each supplier.
A second person releases it
Releasing payment is its own permission, so whoever approved a bill can't also send the money.
Recorded and posted
The result is logged on the invoice and posted to your ledger, ready for reconciliation.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What people ask us before they sign up.
Bill pay software pays the supplier bills you've approved: you pick what to pay and when, release the payment run, and each supplier is paid the way they asked. Smartbills Bill Pay, coming soon, also keeps the person who approves separate from the person who pays.
No. Bill Pay isn't available yet and has no public launch date. This page describes how we intend it to work. Teams evaluating Smartbills know what's coming and can tell us whether it fits the way they actually pay suppliers.
You release the payment through your own bank, and Smartbills handles everything up to that point. Accounts Payable takes the invoice from arrival through capture, coding, three-way match and approval, then produces a scheduled payment with the supplier, amount, method and date already set. Once it's paid, the payment status is recorded back against the invoice.
There's no published date yet. Payment rails involve regulatory and banking-partner work whose timing we don't fully control, and we'd rather give you an honest answer than a date we might miss. Join the waitlist and we'll contact you before it opens.
Join the waitlist. Access will open to a small number of customers at a time, with priority for teams already running Accounts Payable in Smartbills, since Bill Pay is most useful when the invoice has already been captured, matched and approved in the same system.
Yes. Keeping the person who approves an invoice apart from the person who releases its payment is a design requirement rather than a setting, because it's the first control an auditor checks. When that separation gets bolted on later as an option, most customers end up leaving it switched off.
Bill pay is the payment itself: selecting approved bills, batching them into a run and releasing the money. Accounts payable covers everything that has to be right before that, from reading and coding the document to matching it against the order and collecting the right approvals. They are separate products because accounts payable is useful on its own.
No. Most of the work in paying suppliers happens before the payment, and that part is available today. Waiting only postpones the biggest time savings. Teams usually start with Accounts Payable, keep releasing payments through their bank, and move that last step over when Bill Pay reaches them.
Get started
Be on the list the day Bill Pay opens.
The first places go to teams already running Accounts Payable in Smartbills.