BILL vs. CCH® SureTax®

It depends, Bill.com certainly has a strong reputation and I agree it can be a great solution in the right scenario but I think the implementation and initial setup are critical and need to be well thought out based on the setup of the organization you are a part of.

Incentivized

I would put CCH® SureTax® at the top of the scale for any Telecom business or anyone with a known tax scenario that will be similarly sketchy. This software, while not always user friendly, can do amazing things to help you navigate the tax issues facing us all today. This would not be appropriate for a company just needing help gathering their sales tax information. There are plenty of other, friendlier solutions, possibly what they are already using for their accounting that will do it cleaner, easier and cheaper. You just have to ask an expert in that software.

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• The fact that bill.com automatically processes most information on the invoice is really helpful - leads to quicker processing
• The "to do list" feature ensures you see the tasks that need to be completed ASAP
• The reports section is very helpful in year end prepping for audits

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• Maintains Nexus nationwide.
• Implements all of the various sales tax rates nationwide automatically.
• Clean website that is very user friendly.
• Support is very quick to respond and always fixes any issues you may be having.
• We have had this since 2013, and not one time has a sales tax rate been wrong. We used to have Avalara, where we had 12 different overrides in their system just to calculate the correct tax. It is nice not having to maintain those.

Incentivized

• Currently, our company uses a different platform to submit expenses, we only use bill.com to receive them. So perhaps this isn't actually a place where bill.com could improve, but the expense submission process may not have been robust enough for our company.
• The bill.com platform wasn't the most beautiful or pleasing to use, but this is a minor fault.
• I'd love a way to set up recurring payments (e.g., my phone bill is reimbursed each month).

Incentivized

• We have participated in some prepayment testing so we know that functionality is being built out and what we saw looked really good. We're anxious to have that rolled out.
• We'd like a cleaner way to export documentation of what was paid and EXACTLY what was paid. Currently web fees and some small balances are not shown by the website and that means making journal entries is a more manual process than hoped.
• We've been working with folks at SureTax about discrepancies between CCH RADAR rates vs the rates which get used in SureTax. We have learned the 2 systems do not utilize the same data and we often find RADAR is more accurate.

Incentivized

While our firm does not use Bill.com internally, we know many customers that use Bill.com and are very happy with it. Based on the feedback from current users, I would say that the product should have a strong renewal forecast. Once customers move their AP to the cloud, they would be unlikely to move it back given a choice.

We switched our tax service from Avalara to SureTax years ago. Prior to this, we manually prepared the data and ran a report uploading and then got the tax result every time. With Suretax providing enough and flexable APIs, we redesigned and implemented our new application to communicate with SureTax seamlessly and automatically. This greatly reduced our workload, improves the system efficiency, and increased the data accuracy.

Bill.com continues to raise the bar with new features and improved interface. The Fast Pay option is another innovation that reduces administrative time when you have to get an overnight check out. The new Chat Support interface, powered by Zopim, which is world-class, adds to the responsiveness of Bill.com's support team and makes getting real-time answers that much easier.

Incentivized

SureTax is very reliable in with the integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP. It provides accurate tax calculations in accordance with tax updates. SureTax also has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to navigate. It is easy to add customers and also run reports on the website. The overall manageability of it is great!

Incentivized

The only time Bill.com was ever "unavailable" was then the Sync to Quickbooks function failed. That happened a time or two but was usually quickly remedied. I'm not sure if that's an issue with newer online versions of Quickbooks Enterprise -- at the time we were using a remotely hosted Quickbooks instance accessed via terminal server (vs a cloud offering like Bill.com is)

Load times can be slow after long use.

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I could not explain to them how I was trying to remove an old email account from my company page while granting the new email account access to the bank account that the first email account had added. The "set a bank account as inactive" button is labeled delete, but they don't seem to recognize that. I requested my Bill.com account be deleted on Wednesday so I could start all over with a fresh account; this seemed to be completed Wednesday night, but when I tried to create a new Bill.com account from the same email, it took me to my old bill.com account.

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It has taken much longer than we would like to get certain issues - and problems - resolved. And the initial product support as we designed the implementation left much to be desired

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The online training provided by Bill.com is concise and since the firm consistently improves the platform functionality, users are able to select the training for the modules they specifically need.

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I heard from my leadership that it went very well.

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1. Automation & Workflow Efficiency.2. Integration Capabilities with other softwaresWe needed a centralized, automated, and scalable solution for managing both payables and receivables. The strong integration with our existing accounting software was a key factor.The platform gave us better visibility and control over cash flow and approval processes.

100% better. Avalara is a self-starter kit where businesses are forced to create and develop their own bundles and product types. The support that you get from the AvaTax is not as user-friendly. SureTax is full of seasoned experts and full of industry leaders. Law firms that I have worked with in the past, as well as other CPAs, only recommend SureTax.

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None, all good.

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We have multiple locations, and everything works fine.

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• After receiving an offer to 'finance' outstanding invoices, I was enticed by the promise of a 3% total cost for a 60-day period, with the possibility of extending the financing for an additional 10 months (for an additional fee). Eager to access funds, I decided to finance an invoice worth $17,160.00. Within 24 hours, BILL deposited $16,645.20 (97% of the invoice amount) into my account.
• However, when the customer paid their $17,160 invoice four days later, instead of the funds being deposited into my checking account as I expected, BILL chose to retire the loan and retain my $514.80 fee for the 4 day advance period. This unexpected turn of events resulted in an effective interest rate of a staggering 273.75%. It was clear that this arrangement was far from what I had initially understood, and the financial impact was outrageously high.
• Frustratingly, my attempts to resolve this issue through customer service were in vain, as I spoke with three agents who provided no satisfactory solutions. To anyone contemplating using BILL's services, I strongly urge you to carefully scrutinize the fine print and consider opting for a more reputable finance company."

• Previously we paid $5,200 per year for a standalone telecom tax calculation program. The overall cost of the combined solution that we have is just about the same as the cost of everything that we have before adding that cost in.
• Once you add in the additional benefit of the API integration and the automation that's freed up employee time, I think it's fairly safe to say that as we've grown, the combined efficiencies have allowed us to operate with two fewer employees than we would have otherwise needed.
• Over past 4 years we have yet to be notified of any errors in our submitted regulatory taxes.

Incentivized