Danny Goossens, founder and CEO of Translators USA, likes to joke that he’s a mail-order husband. A polyglot from Belgium who speaks French, Dutch, German, and English, Goossens was a special agent for DHL in 2004, flying internationally almost every week.
As he was hanging out in an airport lounge during one of those trips, a dating app popped up on his phone. To pass the time, he filled out the questionnaire. Three months later, he met a woman online. Ten days after that, he landed in Austin, and he never left. That whirlwind romance led to a new life in a new country, and to a whole new career.
“I needed help translating legal documents for the immigration process,” Goossens remembers. “Those services were really hard to find, and there were always problems. I knew there had to be a better way.”
He founded Translators USA to offer that solution. Today, the company works with over 19,000 translators globally as independent contractors—relying on BILL to simplify this massive payment volume. And the best part of automating AP with BILL? Goossens gets to cash in on all those miles earned through paying vendors with BILL Pay By Card.
From the very beginning, Goossens discovered that working with so many different vendors was going to be a huge challenge.
“We’re in 48 locations. We have 19,000 translators worldwide. Paying everyone by check was a nightmare. Our local post office didn’t have the staff to handle our growth. Something like 25% of our checks were lost in the mail!”
Besides the obvious time cost of writing, signing, and mailing that many checks, Goossens emphasized the social cost to the company from those lost pieces of paper.
“When a check goes missing in the mail, it doesn’t look good. Translators were calling and asking, ‘Did you really mail it?’ It was eroding trust, and those vendors are crucial to our business.”
And the problems flowed in the other direction too. “We have something like 1,600 clients, from Amazon to Nissan. That’s a lot of invoices,” Goossens said. “Getting paid by check, it once took 2 and a half months for payment to get here from Austin, and that’s just a 45-minute drive. A lot of our clients are overseas.”
Again, Goossens found himself thinking, “There has to be a better way.”
Determined to find a way to pay and get paid digitally, Goossens researched his options and discovered BILL.
“I did the risk-free trial to check out BILL. When I saw it connect to QuickBooks—one press of a button and it was done—I thought, ‘This is it!’ Now, translators and interpreters send me invoices and I finally know who’s paid. I don’t have to go digging to make sure we don’t pay things twice. I mean, tracking payments for 19,000 vendors? BILL makes that so much easier.”
For Goossens, tracking those payments easily was at least as important as eliminating physical checks when it came to the time savings he so desperately needed.
“With BILL, it’s one stop: click on a vendor, and it shows all the invoices that were paid. There’s no need to go to your bank, login, and follow up. It’s all right there. Plus, I don’t have to jump in my car, drive 7 miles, stand in line, mail this check, put a stop on that check. I don’t have to resend checks. It’s a lot of time.”
“BILL saves me a full day or more out of every week.” — Danny Goossens, CEO, Translators USA
Translators USA has been using BILL for their bill pay process since 2019, and Goossens couldn’t be happier—not just for his own company, but for their vendor relationships.
“Maybe 1 out of 100 interpreters still wants to get paid by check,” Goossens told us. “For them, BILL does that. But most of them are relieved to be done with the hassle of checks—and the delay of waiting 7-10 days to get paid. Instead, it’s just one click. Look in your bank account, and your payment is right there. Checks should be in museums.”
Better yet, BILL has made it easy for Translators USA to scale, streamlining the process of bringing in new vendors from onboarding them to paying them.
“Connecting with new vendors is great,” said Goossens. “I just click one button to invite them. They accept it, and we’re set. Plus, those digital payments are more secure. I don’t see the vendors’ bank info. I just sent them a link. And they don’t have to send an invoice because it will sync automatically if it’s on our platform.”
“Our vendors love BILL. I can even pay them faster when they need it. Want it expedited? I can do that. Overnight the check? Sure! I love the diversity of payment possibilities that I have with BILL.“ — Danny Goossens, CEO, Translators USA
Another payment possibility that Goossens takes full advantage of is paying vendors by credit card — even vendors who don’t accept credit card payments.
“Interpreters and translators don’t usually accept credit cards,” Goossens said. “They want checks or ACH payments. With BILL Pay By Card, I can make that happen.”
“I love the BILL Pay By Card service. I can pay everyone by credit card, and they get their money however they want to.” — Danny Goossens, CEO, Translators USA
BILL Pay By Card enables businesses to defer payments and free up cash flow by paying vendors via credit card. But Goossens favorite part of Pay By Card is the ability to collect credit card rewards for all those Translators USA business payments.
Goossens notes, “I’ve earned so many airline miles I can sit in first class and I don’t even have to pay for it. Thanks to Pay By Card, I’m a BILL client for life. I’m flying first class forever.”
As the digital age brings businesses around the world together more than ever, Translators USA will keep expanding to meet the challenge.
“We’ve seen the benefits of automation with BILL, and there’s no going back,” Goossens said with a grin. “It’s been a kind of enlightenment in terms of the time and stress it saves me. Because of BILL, there are all these ‘one more things’ that I don’t have to deal with anymore.”
As the next step in their expansion, the company plans to implement 3 new software platforms to automate the rest of their back-office operations, covering everything from event planning to translation to transcription.
“Linguists will have their own connected portal, and projects will sync with QuickBooks and BILL. Clients can order with a click. I can pay our linguists with a click. And we’ll be free to focus on our core business—providing the best translation services around the world.”
