“The first thing I did after adopting BILL was head to Waxahachie, open up a burn barrel, and fill it with two filing cabinets worth of pre-printed check stock.”
Now Director of Finance, Josh Hull started at Mark Cuban Companies in December, 2021. That burn barrel was a key step on a career path that has made him the longest tenured accountant with the organization at present.
“We were writing a lot of physical checks before BILL,” Hull remembers, “across maybe 75 different checking accounts. Each account had its own pre-printed check stock, so we had thousands of pre-printed checks just sitting around. It was a terrible security risk.”
But printing their own checks was just the tip of the iceberg. There was a lot more that needed to change — and fast.
“The team was keeping track of our monthly AP by sheer willpower,” Hull says. “There were a lot of cracks in that system for things to slip through. We had good clerks, but we were relying on them to be perfect. That’s not where I want my control sitting.”
“The team was keeping track of our monthly AP by sheer willpower. There were a lot of cracks in that system for things to slip through.”
Today, the Mark Cuban Companies umbrella includes around 100 entities and hundreds of investments, all of which run through Hull’s department.
“When I first came on board, every emailed invoice across all those entities ran through one inbox that was monitored by hand. We had two clerks who would troll the inbox every day. They would forward new invoices to managers for approval and follow up if they didn’t hear back. Out of a 40-hour week, those two clerks spent at least half their time in that inbox. That’s before they entered a single bill or made even one payment.”
The team also saw a lot of paper bills coming in by mail, often arriving after the due date had already passed. Paying those bills was a highly manual process that took four people about four days.
“We would key the invoice data into Intacct by hand. Then, to pay the bill, we logged into our bank and keyed it all in again — amounts, date of release, and invoice number. Each payment would then be reviewed by one person and released by another.”
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The toughest challenge they faced, according to Hull, was tracking.
“When I started, every checking account was 22 months behind in reconciliations. But that was just a symptom. The real problem came down to tracking. Did we get the invoice? Has it been approved? The tracking bottleneck was so big it overflowed into all our other practices.”
“The real problem came down to tracking. Did we get the invoice? Has it been approved? The tracking bottleneck was so big it overflowed into all our other practices.”
When the organization brought in a new CFO in 2023, one of her first priorities was to speed up the team’s AP processes with a modern bill pay automation platform.
“A close confidant told us that BILL is the gold standard for financial operations automation. We decided to try it — the savings in both time and money were immediate.”
“A close confidant told us that BILL is the gold standard for financial operations automation. We decided to try it — the savings in both time and money were immediate.”
The team moved their manual email inbox to an automated one with BILL.
“This is where the time savings really hit for us,” Hull says. “BILL’s OCR and AI are spot on. They’re 90% to 95% accurate in the info we need off the invoices.² The changes we have to make are so minimal that we only need one AP clerk now. I’ve saved an entire full-time employee.”
Since implementing BILL, that one AP clerk now handles AP for all 100 entities.
“I can easily say we’ve reduced manual AP work by 50%. In fact, the real percentage is higher than that. Our AP clerk hasn’t worked even one hour of overtime. Even covering 100 entities, she doesn’t feel stressed at all because so much is being handled by BILL’s AI and all of its tools.”
And their tracking problem? That’s solved too.
“The audit trail is all in BILL. I can see who entered each bill, who changed it, what was changed, and when it was approved. I used to have to slog through that packed inbox to figure out who did what, when. BILL has saved me so much time, and the data is much more complete. When it's just an email thread going back and forth, you lose so much data.”
“BILL’s OCR and AI are spot on. They’re 90% to 95% accurate in the info we need off the invoices.² The changes we have to make are so minimal that we only need one AP clerk now. I’ve saved an entire full-time employee.”
“On our very first call, we knew we wanted AP automation, but when we heard about BILL Spend & Expense, we realized we needed that first. And we weren't even looking at cards at the time.”
As tough as it was to manage AP for 100 entities before switching to BILL, budgeting for those 100 entities and managing expenses wasn’t any easier.
“We had something like 10 VISA credit card vendors — 5 master accounts with numerous subcards beneath it. Plus half a dozen American Express accounts. And some with Mastercard too. Each had its own login. It was a lot to manage.”
With so many different cards, keeping charges separate was almost impossible.
“One of our biggest spenders had eight different cards in her wallet. We used to write on them with Sharpies. Use this card for this entity; use that card for that one. But of course charges got crossed all the time. We had to fill out forms all over the place to fix those.”
And then they had to be uploaded into Intacct from an Excel spreadsheet. “The uploading process routinely didn’t work. We’d have to tweak each file multiple times.”
Hunting down receipts? “Hassle beyond words,” says Hull. “Most of our employees are remote. Getting receipts from them was time consuming at best. Most of the time, we just didn't get them, so there was no way to know if the spends were legitimate.”
“When we heard about BILL Spend & Expense, we realized we needed that first. And we weren't even looking at cards at the time.”
“The first savings were immediate and obvious,” Hull recalls. “We were paying for 30 licenses for [another software system] so people could enter expense reports. Overnight, I saved 30 users.”
Thanks to the control offered by BILL Spend & Expense, Hull was able to give a card to every employee who needed one.
“We made it a company policy to use the BILL Divvy Card powered by Visa1 and had all other cards turned in. We had zero pushback. Our end users were happy to try anything that would make this process easier,” says Hull.
“If they need money, they can ask for it through the app. Their manager can approve it, or I can. It’s immediate. We have a single account, and each company gets its own budget group. One card across 100 entities. The time savings are astronomical and employees say they love BILL Spend & Expense.”
But easy budgeting is just the beginning.
“We rolled it out to the aviation team first. Every one of them reported success in terms of time saved. They take a picture of their receipt right at the register, and they’re done. They might be gone for a week and then fly right out again. They’re not holding onto receipts, afraid of losing them. The Director of Aviation reported a full-time employee's worth of time saved.”
Hull has seen those savings for his own team, too.
“In receipts alone, I would get a FedEx once a month with a stack of receipts I almost couldn’t wrap my fingers around. I had to flip through them by hand, comparing each one to the right statement. We don't have to do that anymore. And we aren't paying FedEx to send me the receipts either.”
For Hull and his team, the efficiency savings are all across the board.
“We’re saving time and money hand over fist. We’re not chasing receipts. We’re not messing with spreadsheets. BILL Spend & Expense syncs directly to our software. Approvals are handled through the app. Between the time savings and the cash back, we’re saving enough to cover the salary of an entry-level accountant.”
And then there’s the added security of automatic activity tracking.
“Unfortunately, we had an employee who was committing credit card fraud. Because we had all the receipts in one place, we were able to filter them to see just her charges, click one button, download all her receipts, and look at them together — all 340 transactions. We never could have done that in the old system, hunting them down and clicking into them one by one. With BILL, I was able to prove very fraudulent activity in just a few hours.”
“We’re saving time and money hand over fist. We’re not chasing receipts. We’re not messing with spreadsheets. BILL Spend & Expense syncs directly to our software. Approvals are handled through the app.”
“The audit trail itself is amazing. BILL syncs to Intacct, and I can just leave it alone. When a bill is marked paid, it hits cash like that. It hits the journals and the ledgers. It hits everything. And on the rare occasion when it doesn't, it tells us it didn't, and it tells us how to fix it.”
What would Hull tell other family offices?
“BILL has been so good to us. It’s light years ahead. A lot of family offices have very antiquated processes and procedures. That’s a definite growing pain. I would encourage anybody to try it because it’s worth it. You will see results.”
1 The BILL Divvy Card is issued by Cross River Bank, member FDIC
² Data validated based on 1 year of invoices for key extraction fields (invoice date, invoice number, and amount) where the field was contained in the invoice.
Mark Cuban Companies is the family office of Mark Cuban, managing hundreds of investments and organizations across a diverse portfolio of companies and industries including bakeries, bikes, basketball teams, consumer and more.
60
Family office, Venture capital
Sage Intacct
2023
