Integrating BILL product offerings in the Accountant Console
Product Designer @ BILL • March 2023 to July 2023
Objective
Accelerate BILL Spend & Expense adoption with accounting firm partners
Impact
+3.5% product adoption
Bringing BILL Spend & Expense to accounting firms
I led the design for initiatives that integrated Spend & Expense into BILL’s Accountant Channel, a key segment made up of accounting firms and representing over 40% of the company’s business.
In October 2023, my team launched a unified Accountant Console, allowing thousands of accounting firm partners to manage clients' payables, receivables, and spend in one place. This update accelerated cross-sell and streamlined BILL's product offerings, giving accountants better control over client account setup and management.
Accounting firms want centralized tools
“The types of words I want to hear for my technology stack is streamlined, centralized, single, you can do everything from one place.” —- A BILL Customer, 1,000+ employees
Before the refresh of the BILL Accountant Console, accounting firm partners faced challenges when onboarding their clients to BILL’s product offerings. The BILL AP/AR solution and the BILL Spend & Expense solution were hosted on two separate platforms. This made the client onboarding process cumbersome, requiring multiple logins across both platforms, numerous interactions with BILL's sales team, and difficulty in tracking account setup progress.
In one of our UX research studies, we found that while many participants were familiar with Divvy (now BILL Spend & Expense), they weren’t fully aware of its full capabilities. The growth of the Accountant Channel segment has been largely driven by the sales team, particularly on the Spend & Expense side. Although the Accountant Console is moving toward a more self-serve growth model, some users may still encounter the Spend & Expense product for the first time through our platform.
Impact: distribution wins!
Within 3 months of launching the refreshed Accountant Console, we surpassed our target number of credit applications started by 115% for the first half of the year. Despite launching the refreshed Accountant Console one month after the stand-alone BILL AP/AR product integrated Spend & Expense account set-up, we have witnessed the Accountant Channel working its magic in distribution, quickly surpassing the number of credit applications started in the direct channel by 7%.
Our team's work has helped pave the way for future cross-selling initiatives. We took the first step by opting into these products across all BILL offerings to explore cross-selling at scale and the idea of a unified experience beyond the direct product.
Key flows
Adding a new client to the accountant console
Previously, accounting firms had to go through a lengthy process to join the partner program before offering BILL Spend & Expense to their clients. This included contacting a sales representative, engaging in multiple back-and-forth communications, and signing an electronic agreement due to specific legal requirements. As a result, 50% of firms dropped out between the initial sales contact and program enrollment.
To simplify this, we integrated Spend & Expense into the client onboarding process. Now, when accountants add new clients to BILL, they can select Spend & Expense, and if they aren’t yet part of the partner program, they can agree to the terms directly within the product—eliminating the need for sales involvement.
Bringing existing clients onto Spend & Expense
We redesigned the client profile page to streamline the onboarding process for accountants, allowing them to easily enroll existing clients into Spend & Expense. By leveraging existing client data, we help jumpstart the BILL Divvy Corporate Card credit application process. If a client doesn’t yet have an active product, a tailored value proposition is displayed to encourage cross-selling.
Previously, accountants had to initiate credit applications using a unique referral link provided by their BILL partner manager – a process prone to lost emails and difficulty in tracking application status.
Manage access to client accounts
With the inclusion of Spend & Expense as a new product offering for clients in the Accountant Console, accountants can simultaneously manage the team and assign users across both products, maintaining control.
Manage client accounts
Once products were active, accountants assigned to the client’s team could dive into the client’s accounts. Accountant console users are typically working inside several client accounts, doing tasks like paying bills, entering documents, coding transactions, setting up sync, and more on behalf of their clients.
Reflection
The release of the revamped Accountant Console marked a massive accomplishment for our team. We navigated through numerous technical challenges in upgrading legacy pages and adapted our product strategy in response to shifting company priorities.
Want to learn more about this project and my process? Let’s chat!