What Experts Say About AI and Financial Automation with BILL

Having traveled in the past, I used to travel a lot with my job, was, you know, at the end of the day you got to put all these receipts together, an expense report, and you've got the accounting team waiting for that information. You know, the ability to just snap a picture of a receipt and say which category it belongs to and I'm done. I don't have to build that expense report anymore. Well, thanks for having me today, folks. It's nice to be here and present to you today. My name is Curt Acker. I'm a Sales Engineer here at Bill.com, or as we're known today as just Bill. You can see the logo on my shirt here. So, um, I'm going to go ahead and start presenting, but, um, just a little bit about me. I started my career in public accounting with KPMG quite a few years ago, and from there I went into the technology space. So I've been working with software companies ever since about 2000. So it's been exciting for me to see how technology has, has really influenced decision-making and the availability of information to key stakeholders across companies of all sizes. So, so now what we're going to talk about today is the future of managing startup finance with AI, artificial intelligence, and automation tools. So let's go to the next slide. Okay, so that's me on the left there. And later, Andrew Crawford is going to join me for some Q&A where we can get his perspective from the, from the Founder Institute. So here's our agenda for today. So we got 3 things to do. First, I'm gonna talk with you about 20 minutes or so about top financial management trends that people like you, controllers, accounting managers, CFOs are looking at and what's influencing their decisions and how they're going to manage their business going forward. With a, with kind of a highlight on technology and how that can enhance their business operations. Then, oh, and by the way, you'll have the opportunity to participate today. So we based this conversation based on a study, a survey that we did with people like you, controllers, and we asked them a series of questions and we'll be able to ask you some of those questions today too. So be on the lookout for a couple polls where you can go in there and vote. And then we'll actually share with you toward the end the actual report that Bill put together based on these conversations in the survey with, with controllers. So with that, then Andrew will join and we'll do a little Q&A with Andrew talking about how to get his perspective on what these trends mean. And then we'll all break out for some networking. So let's get started. Now, to base this or frame this conversation, we at BIL surveyed 346 controllers. This happened back in September of 2023. And of those controllers, we asked them, hey, what are the main trends that you're seeing? What are the things that you're highlighting? And what are your priorities? And how do you plan to manage your business moving forward through 2024. 70% of those were from small and mid-sized businesses, which we're calling between 10 and 200 employees. Another 18% of them were from companies larger than 200 employees, larger businesses, and about 12% were from really small businesses, 10 or less employees. So we're going to share with you and use the results of the survey to frame our discussion today around the top trends that came out through that survey. All right. So let's start with a poll. Same questions we were asking the controllers. Now we're going to ask you, and in a moment you'll see on the screen where you can vote for what you consider your top priority for finance heading into 2024. One, proactively managing spend and cash flows, or B, implementing financial automation tools. C, addressing— there we go— cybersecurity and fraud. And then lastly, attracting and retaining talent. So we'll just give it a few seconds here. You guys vote and we'll show you the results here in just a moment. All right. And the survey says 65% so far, or roughly around 60%, is proactively managing spend and cash flows. And that mirrors exactly what the survey that Bill conducted, where most of the respondents in our survey said the same thing. The top, uh, um, top of mind as far as, um, controlling their business was controlling costs, spend, you know, spend management, and monitoring and controlling cash flow. So that was the number one trend. But the other three, we'll, we'll talk about those other three as well here, here today in the, in the webinar. Implementing financial automation tools, that was number two. That's one of the big things. A lot of people are going to continue their investment in technology to help automate so they can gain efficiency, save costs, save time, etc. Also cybersecurity, you know, that continues to be a trend. So we're going to talk about cybersecurity and fraud and how you can help protect you and your company from that. And then finally, attracting and retaining talent. That was another big thing. So we'll talk about that one last. Okay. So first top efficiency challenge was closing the books. Average of 7 days spent on closing the books each period. So I've heard this throughout my career, and it's always been a goal to try to make that as much of an efficient process as possible through automation. Now, 25%, as part of closing the books, you've got gathering receipts and expense reports, very manual processes. And 25% of the people said they found that the most time-consuming activity during the close process. So how do we address this? So the top efficiency automation for this was automation. So 46% of the people said they were going to start automating with a— well, different ways, but 46% are going to automate budgeting and financial planning tools, 45% reporting tools, 34% for automating the close process and expense management. So, those— that's what's happening here over the next 3 years. Now, let's talk a little bit about some of the technology that people are going to be using to address these issues. 36% say they're going to increase their direct application of AI, meaning AI tools specifically. But most people, almost double that, are going to invest in tools that already have AI embedded within them, such as Bill.com. That's something that we do, and we're going to talk a little bit about what Bill.com does and how it can help automate your financial operations as well. But that's the way people are planning on using technology with AI. So One other fun fact here was over 50% expected their business to have full financial automation within the next 5 years. That's an exciting fun fact for me. So a lot of technology adoption here in the next 5 years is what we're hearing. All right, so next slide, next poll. How close do you think your organization is to achieving full financial automation? You're already there, 100%? In the next 5 years? It's gonna take you more than 5 years? Or you're not quite sure? All right, let's give that a few seconds and we'll take a look. All right, and you're, you're, um, Your answers are just what we're seeing in our, in our survey of controllers. So 64% roughly are saying that you think you'll have financial automation within the next 5 years. That's fantastic. Okay, so let's head to the next section here. Let's talk about cybersecurity and fraud. And, you know, I talk to controllers CFOs, accounting managers every day, and I keep hearing this check fraud, people's systems being hacked. You know, there's a whole industry devoted to preventing fraud and maintaining cybersecurity. So what we're seeing, what we're hearing is 1 in 4 controllers, 25%, report that they have encountered cybersecurity breaches. And the top 3 types of fraud are emails being compromised, phishing attacks, check theft and fraud. I hear that more than I expected to when I got into Bill.com. And vendor fraud or erroneous invoices. Those are the top 3 that we're hearing. Now, to combat these issues, there's a couple ways that people are trying to prevent this. Malware, virus protection, multifactor authentication, all technology applications that can help reduce cybersecurity issues. Internal controls, separation of duties. And I'd like to add just one more to this, that just working at Bill, we have ongoing training to prevent cybersecurity, to understand what phishing looks like and what to click on and what not to click on, who to contact when something suspicious happen. So I would add training into some of these other technology tools that are at your disposal to help control and prevent these cybersecurity breaches. All right, next poll. Has your organization experienced a cybersecurity breach in the past? Within the last year? 1 to 5 years ago? 5 to 10 years ago? Nope, haven't had a security breach, or you're not sure. Let's give that a few seconds to compile some results here. Okay, kind of split. Within the last year, in 1 to 5 years, um, we're seeing, um, a pretty even amount there. Pretty consistent with what we saw in our survey as well. Okay, terrific. Well, the very bottom is no, you haven't experienced a breach, and that's fantastic too, that hopefully some of those measures that you've taken on have resulted in you not having experienced a breach. So that's great. All right. All right, so next up, let's take a look at talent. Okay, so most of the controllers that we surveyed said that staffing is, is one of their biggest challenges. They— most of the people said, yeah, we're going to maintain staff or add staff in the next year to 3 years. So, but there's some challenges around getting staff. We've all heard in the US how tight the labor market It's hard to find people to be able to bring them into our organizations. So, how do we do that? What are the best ways of attracting and retaining talent? Number 1, no surprise, competitive salary. Pay people commensurate with what the industry's paying to bring them on board. Number 2 though, non-financial benefits and perks. Things that the company can do outside of financial reward, but including maybe the adoption of tools to to make their jobs more efficient so they can spend time doing more value-added activities versus non-value-added activities, chasing receipts and things like that. A flexible schedule, you know, work at home or hybrid work situations where you share between going to an office or working at home. That's another big one, especially as it dovetails into the last one, professional development. You know, the younger generation of workers are looking for a flexible schedule. And companies that are planning on adding people are looking for younger professionals to provide a professional development path, bringing them early into their career. So that's what we're seeing as far as ways to attract and retain talent. All right. So, let's go to our last poll. I believe this is our last poll. What's the most important attribute you look for when you're looking to hire new talent? So, let's go ahead and hit the poll there. Just cast my vote. Oh, wow. Interesting. It was evenly split. Now we're heading definitely in the majority of ability to quickly learn and implement new technology. Great. So, we know the new technology's coming. So, we need people that can adopt it, embrace it, use it, and really enjoy the benefits of this new new technology, such as Bill.com, for example. So let me take just a few minutes to tell you about Bill.com. So we have a financial operations platform that focuses on 3 major financial areas: accounts payable, number 2, accounts receivable, and number 3, spend and expense, or traditionally known as T&E. So we have 3 applications that we offer to our customers to help them automate, streamline, and add efficiency to all 3 of those different business areas. So let's talk about— let's break that down a little bit. So next slide. Increase efficiency. How do we do that? Well, we've— let's just take accounts payable as an example. We, we have brought all the things that happen in the bill pay process down into 4 steps: getting bills into our system, routing them for approval, paying those bills, and then syncing that information back into your ERP accounting system. So we add efficiency in all 4 of those steps, from automating the collection of bills tracking bills that are overdue, aging those bills, applying approval rules if you have business rules that dictate who should approve a certain bill based on certain conditions of the bill. And then finally, we can issue payments for you. We're an authorized— we're a licensed money mover in the United States. We can move money for you, stuffing envelopes, stamps, mailing, doing ACH, international wire payments, things that you won't have to do, saving you time, adding efficiency, putting more time in your day so you can concentrate on more value-added activities. You have visibility and control. So you know who's approving bills, where bills are stuck in the, in the logjam. If there's an issue going on within approvals, you also have visibility across your cash flow. How much money is coming in? How much money is going out based on invoicing and bills coming in from your vendors? And then finally, we set— we send all of this information back into your back office accounting system so you don't have to double enter any data. And using our AI, we've coded the bills automatically, saving you time on the very front end. So We're adding efficiency in every single step of the process of paying bills, getting paid, as well as our, our spend and expense application, allowing you to set up guardrails around how people spend money, where they spend money. You can set up budgets by any activity your business does, whether it's by individual, by department, by event. Would love to be able to show you what these solutions look like. So if you're interested, please let us know and we can set up a meeting. Couple fun facts about Bill: 4.7 network members. So we invite people to come in and get paid using bill.com where they can maintain their own banking information so you can send them ACH payments seamlessly. Most people are saving about $10,000 in average monthly savings. By our surveyed users. Saves about 12 hours of people's time every month. So they can spend that time doing, doing other activities, adding more value to the organization. And Bill.com, we've been around about 18 years, publicly traded company. We're moving a lot of money for companies and individuals, $225 billion in total payment volume annually. So just a little bit about Bill.com. And now get out your phone, scan that little, little symbol there, and you can take home a copy of the 2024 Corporate Controller Outlook, that survey that we put together that we discussed today. So go ahead, snap a picture of that. That's your take home. And hopefully that will provide you with some good information about what what some of your peers are saying through our survey. Okay. So now— next slide. Now we're gonna invite Andrew Crawford over to join us, and we're gonna talk to him and get his perspective on how some of these trends are affecting his organization, get his perspective, see what Andrew's priorities are. Welcome, Andrew. How are you doing? Can you hear me? And Andrew, it looks like you're—

hey, Kurt. Yep. Let me just turn on the video real quick.

Great, Andrew. Nice to have you. Andrew, please take a moment to introduce yourself, and then we'll get into a little bit of Q&A. And I'm going to get my notes ready while you're introducing yourself.

Perfect. Yeah, thanks, Kern, for having me on. My name is Andrew Crawford. I am the head of finance at Founder Institute, um, where I help manage our global operations for our accelerator program. We have operations in over 50 countries, uh, around the world. Um, so yeah, excited to, uh, to chat some more.

Excellent. And Andrew, I understand you guys have adopted, uh, the Bill platform to help achieve some efficiency within your organization. So hopefully, you know, you can weave in a little bit about how you're using Bill to address any of the priorities and challenges that maybe, maybe you've had in the past. Question number 1, how are you prioritizing those strategic areas we talked about before, like controlling costs and cash flow, implementing financial automation tools, cybersecurity and fraud, and then the attraction and retainage of talent?

Yeah, so I would say number one is for any startup or small-medium businesses is cash flow and controlling costs. First and foremost, a number— I like to think of those in kind of two buckets, like short-term, immediate-term, priorities and then more like long, medium, long-term priorities. And so a number of ways we do that, you know, number one is, is expense management solutions. We actually, we actually use Divvy. That's, that's a Bill product. I believe it's called Bill, like expense, expense now. That, you know, that allows us to do a number of things. We can create and disable physical cards, virtual cards. We can distribute those to people on our team. We can create, tie those to certain budgets. So for example, if we want to have like a marketing budget for $25K a month, we can tie all the cards on the marketing team to that budget. So we don't, you know, as we close the books at the end of a month and look at a quarter, all of a sudden we don't just say blow through that, right? We can set up certain rules. With those budgets. We also, you can set up spending limits, controls. You know, if you have a sales team or people that travel a lot, you can issue them cards. You don't have to deal with a crazy like reimbursement type of policy. That's always, I mean, that's just reimbursements are a pain both on the employee side, you know, taking pictures, collecting receipts and the employer. Side. And so that really helps streamline that. And it can help with like vendor management too. If you have a number of large vendors that you want to tie certain budgets to, it can help kind of control those costs. Sometimes those costs can come in, you know, say it's like a MailChimp or an AWS, it can be, you know, multiple, multiple charges. And so it can kind of help streamline all of that. The, I'd say the flip side to that, that's more on like the expense side is just accounts receivable. And so depending on your business, you know, accounts receivable, the payment terms can vary, obviously, you know, a subscription business can be much different than if you're invoicing on receivables. Uh, and so just like a constant monitoring of that, making sure like you're, you're on top of that prompt payment so you don't find yourself in, in sticky, uh, in sticky situations. Um, and then, you know, the largest— in my experience, the largest line item for any business is always going to be labor, right? Like, that's, um, and so this is more on kind of the medium to long term, but just Getting into proper, proper forecasting and budgeting and ensuring— I always lean towards staying a little leaner than getting overbloat on, on the labor side. That ties into the forecasting, right? Ensuring that you properly account for if your revenue's cyclical or, or seasonal, that that you're, you know, you have enough to service those times of years, but, but you're also not overbloat it, right? There, there's a train of thought to have more flexible solutions, but I, I lean, uh, I lean towards the more, you know, the more startup way of staying lean.

I love it. Hey, let me take you back to, uh, spend and expense. You know, that's great you guys are using that. Yeah, one of the Things that I love about that product, having traveled in the past, I used to travel a lot with, with my job was, you know, at the end of the day, you got to put all these receipts together, an expense report, and you've got the accounting team waiting for that information. You know, the ability to just snap a picture of a receipt and say which category it belongs to and I'm done. I don't have to build that expense report anymore.

Yeah.

And number 2, what I hear from prospects is that that program is completely free. You know, it's a free product for any company that's looking to take advantage of that, of that spend management.

So, um, yep, awesome. It's like I said, it's not— that's not a pleasant process on either, either side. Like, no one's having fun with an expense on that business trip where it's, you know, you can't, you can't find a receipt, you've got this charge, you're trying to get a reimbursement, you know, the accounting team is not going to reimburse you.

Yeah, it's not exactly. It's no party for anybody. I think question number 2, what about challenge? What have you seen as your biggest challenge in financial operations?

So, I mean, it's not to go back to what I just said, but really the cash flow management. Ensuring that that's just always top of mind. The second part to that, I guess, would just be making sure like your budgeting and forecasting is accurate, right? Because that can really affect that. Obviously, any sort of forecasting is going to take into account a number of assumptions. And so ensuring that you've got a couple of different scenarios that you, you know, ensuring that you're tracking to that so you don't end up in a cash flow crunch, right? That's—

that's visibility, right? Like, like visibility into cash inflows and outflows. So for example, with Bill, you can see, okay, we've got this number of checks or payments going out over whatever time frame. And the converse of that is is through receivables and seeing what inflows are coming in to be able to manage that cash flow.

Yep. And I guess in our— this is a little unique to our business just because we have, I think it's 16 or 17 entities right now. Just the compliance and regulations depending on where your business is located. If you have a small team, it's just staying on top and compliant and all that, whether it's HR-related, having employees in various jurisdictions or sales tax-related, VAT, things like like that is, that can be complex depending on where you are. And so that can always be a challenge.

And having a single sign-on experience with Bill to go across that multi-entity environment, it's got to save some time in just being able to access the information easily and get in there and do your business and get out.

Yeah, I mean, I guess to that note, you know, we have, hundreds of vendors globally, right? And so the ability to send, you know, have— send secure links, get secure banking information— this gets back to like your fraud question earlier— put the burden on the vendor, right? Like, it just reduces errors, reduces, uh, you know, and the time needed to get banking information, schedule payments, having that be able to sync with the backend accounting system is pretty nice.

Absolutely. And you know, we talk about 4 steps of, you know, shrinking AP down into 4 steps, but there's so many other little things, dominoes that are falling within those 4 steps. And to be able to automate it and streamline it really does end up saving everyone a lot of time. Third question, 2 more questions for you. What about your journey with AI? You know, how does that— what does that look like for you guys?

Yeah, so, uh, I mean, we do this kind of— we do this a few ways. Um, we have built some internal tools to, uh, help like just streamline, uh, processes that are just tedious processes, right? That— and the reason I guess the goal behind those internal tools on these operational type of tasks are, you know, a cost reduction, right? Rather than have an employee do this, you can have an AI tool or a service do this, reducing errors. It's more efficient. And it also, from, from just like an HR perspective, if you can take a tedious task away from an employee, and allow them to focus on more strategic type of things, they're going to be happier. And they're also— it's going to be more fulfilling for the business if they can work on these strategic type of initiatives versus some mundane operational tasks that you can have an AI tool do.

Absolutely.

You know, the second part to that would be, you know, Things like we were talking about earlier, like the reimbursement policy, you know, or procedure, right, on expense management type of service. You know, something like invoice processing. Bill's pretty nice where you can, I can get an invoice. I can even have a vendor forward the invoice to an email address for me. I don't even have to forward that email. I can, you know, either set up rules or it can be coded automatically to certain categories in our, in our, you know, accounting software. We'll obviously have to approve that. We have multi, multi-approval process just to reduce errors and have, you know, checks and balances. Internally, but then that syncs with the backend accounting system, right? And just all those different steps previously, you know, everything from setting up a vendor to getting that invoice in there, getting that, you know, put— going into the accounting software, then closing the books at the end of the month, reconciling everything like that, that just takes time. Right. It's hard to pinpoint, you know, how much each invoice would take, but it's saving hours upon hours of time each month and reducing errors too. Like, that's one of the biggest things on my end is outside of the streamlining and the cost reduction is just reducing the ability for errors. If you can, anytime there's a human, you know, input, there's there's a risk for that. And so if you can have this reduce that, that, that's a tremendous help.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah.

So the, the, the bill entry and routing process becomes more of a verification process than a from the ground up reinventing the wheel every time. And, you know, like you said, prone to error. Yeah, all those are efficiency gains. For sure. One last question for you, um, how are you guys addressing any cybersecurity or any kind of fraud issues? Hopefully you haven't encountered that, but just curious how, how you guys are looking at that.

Yeah, I forget the exact three you, uh, you, you pinpointed, but I think I've experienced all three of those at one point in time. Not nothing, nothing bad, thankfully.

Good.

But I mean, I've definitely seen checks stolen right? Uh, you know, so we don't, we don't do those anymore. Um, you know, it's pretty common to get emails, whether it's phishing emails or masking emails, you know, from asking for wire requests, or I mean, wire fraud is just so common these days. There's— so there's, I guess, a few things we do is, I mean, we have multi-factor authentication on any— everything in our financial tech stack. So that's, I mean, that's like the most basic, basic level. We have a multi-approval process. There's, you know, some of with our financial institutions, if we're actually sending something through them, they require verbal approvals. You know, there's checks and balances within the team where we're regularly monitoring everything. Uh, and so there's not, you know, we're not going to go 7 days or a month and, and realize that there's some kind of wonky, uh, transaction.

Um, I think our biggest customer base is that, Bill, is not-for-profits. And, um, you know, not-for-profits, um, have regular audits. And, you know, being able to establish those internal controls and monitor things with a full audit trail, you know, gives you that kind of backend compliance assurance that everything is flowing correctly.

Yeah, and just like educating everyone, it's not necessarily that there's like a massive training or we haven't done a massive training for our organization, but understanding that, you know, when you receive an email from, the CEO asking for a wire, like, that's probably not the, right, you know, not the real thing. And just, just educating, uh, people on the team who would have access to that, that, you know, these are— there are these phishing and masking scams out there, and, and to be on the lookout for them.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's real. It's, it's out there. And I still hear about check fraud, which is amazing. But it's there and, uh, we're trying to help you and everybody avoid that with our tools.

Yeah, just on like the— I guess the last point would just be like on, on vendors, um, you know, using Bill is pretty sweet because you can send them a link to set up their banking information. You don't ever have to share banking information over the phone or over email. It's actually from like my perspective, it's really nice because it puts the burden on them. So if there's an error, it's, it's their fault, right? Like, you know, they input the wrong banking information. Um, you don't have to deal with, uh, you know, sending checks or things like that. It's actually cheaper than sending, you know, a wire, a wire transaction at a bank too, which is nice.

And we even help kind of behind the curtain help ensure by vetting that information to make sure and assure people like yourself that you really are paying who you want to pay, you know, because that, that vendor is maintaining their information and we're helping vet to make sure that's correct. So, uh, well, Andrew, it's been great talking with you. Um, thanks for doing this Q&A. I think at this point, Ahan, um, we're ready to to break out, do some more Q&A, go back into the networking rooms. Eihan, I'll turn it over to you to—

Yeah, perfect.

Take us off.

No, thanks so much for that presentation, Kern, and the Q&A, Andrew. There are some questions from the audience I just want to make sure we do address. So let me switch back to the speaker view and then I'll bring up a question then. This first one is for you, Kern, and then Andrew, feel free to chime in, but Uh, Kate from Boston's asking, like, can you tell us a little bit more about Build's tools for startups and small businesses? Because again, we're Founder Institute, a lot of our majority of our audiences are startups or growing businesses. So I know you guys have a startup package, but I'll kind of let you talk a little bit more about that.

Yeah, we do have a variety of different packages for different back office accounting systems like QuickBooks. If you migrate from QuickBooks to go to an Oracle NetSuite or a Sage Intact, for example, Microsoft Business Central 360. We have out-of-the-box syncs with all of those different accounting systems. Now, you may, like a startup, that may be pre-revenue. Well, we offer accounts payable and accounts receivable and spend management, but you don't need all three of those maybe on day one. So you can add these as you need them, as your business grows. So maybe you have bills to pay, but no revenue to really need to streamline yet. So we can just do AP and add AR later. I mean, it's, it's a very flexible system and it's based on users. So you tell us who needs to be involved. We can help define what the roles are for each of those people to make sure everyone's staying in their swim lane during those processes. And, and Yeah, even multi-entity. So as your business grows and if you do an acquisition, then we can fold other parts of your business into the platform as well.

Okay, great. Andrew, anything to add to that? I think we had a few of our alumni also use bill.com. I can't remember.

No, I mean, no, I mean, we've, yeah, we use spend and expense and AP. And it's, yeah, it's really nice 'cause you can, I mean, you can add, like you said, it's different products. You can add it when it's needed for you. You can kind of scale up. So yeah.

Cool. Let's take the next one. So Jay from the UK, I believe he also is using Bill or he was just like asking more questions. There's like, I think there's a typo, it's like, looks like ERP system system providers are bundling AI within their software. Can you see this trend growing? And like, what are your views? So I guess specifically, how's AI going to be utilized in these different providers? Um, Colonel, we can start with you and then kick it over back to Andrew.

Yeah, I'm absolutely seeing that too. And, uh, you know, I do some trade show events, uh, with, with NetSuite, with Sage Intacct. They're building these tools into their ERP system. You're exactly right. They're in the beginning stages of doing that. Bill's been doing it for 18 years now. So we were kind of first to the market. But yes, it's a growing trend that ERP companies will continue to build that out. You know, fintech businesses are— it is becoming a competitive space and we continue to refine our platform. While the ERP systems are starting to add these technologies in too. So hey, we're looking forward to seeing how this thing evolves as well.

Awesome. Uh, we can move on to the next question. I just had, uh, I guess this is more of a product question, I guess. Is there any API that can integrate with your data and generate insights?

Absolutely. We have a We have a full API platform if you'd like to check it out, developer.bill.com. All of our endpoints and our documentation is there. It's a great website, you know, and if you would like to have more information and talk to someone, we have API specialists here at Bill. So absolutely.

Okay, a few other questions that I can bring it up because I was asking in the chat, um, was, uh, we have some founders that are international-based. Obviously some of them have operations in the US and stuff. So I saw someone in the chat between France and Germany. So how does Build.com work for like, I guess, international entities or international entities with offices in the US? Can you just briefly comment about that?

Yeah, that's a great question, a very important question, because, um, Right now, as I mentioned before, we have— we are a licensed money mover in the United States, but only the United States. So for us to move money, it has to come from a US-based bank. Now, if you're paying international vendors, we can do that. We can pay international wires across 138 countries around the world, either in paying that vendor in US dollars or in their local currency. But the money, if you want us to move the money for you, we need to pull that money from a US-based bank.

Okay, got it. Um, let me bring up this one. Mark from Oshawa is asking, can you maybe give a couple use cases on how Bill can address fraud and perhaps cybersecurity? I think you briefly talked about this, but it'll be good to kind of revisit it.

Yeah, just as an example, in AP, for example, so if a, if a mysterious vendor sends a bill into the bill platform and that vendor is not an authorized or approved vendor in your vendor master list, then we will notify you that on the screen. You can't just pay a vendor because— or a so-called vendor— because they sent a bill into your email address. So you can go through the process of adding that vendor if you have the permissions and authorization based on how you're set up to use Bill.com. So that's one example. Another example is what if a— what if a a vendor were to send you multiple bills trying to get paid more than once, right? We have duplicate bill detection through the, through the AI. So as we're scanning that bill, we're looking for matches across other bills in the system to help prevent duplicate bill payment. So those are just a couple examples of how we are addressing potential fraud or fraudulent activity. On the very front end of the platform. So there's a lot of mitigating factors that, that we can use to, um, to stave away those issues.

Okay, cool. I think, uh, now's a good time to kind of— we have about just shy of like, I guess, 14, 15 minutes left until the end of the hour. Uh, Curt and Andrew, thank you so much for taking the time and and educating us all about financial automation, AI, and talking a little bit about the Build.com platform. What we're going to do now is we're going to break up for networking. What I'm going to do, folks, I will end this session. You will be transported to a bunch of virtual tables. You know, Karen, if you have some time, Andrew, if you have some time, just jump onto any of the tables. I think we have 5, 6. You can create your own table if you want as well. Go network with each other, talk to each other about some of the findings, talk about the reports. I threw out some blog articles as well. So, you know, this is where the magic happens, where you all can interact with each other. Before I wrap up, Andrew and Kern, any last words for the audience or parting advice?

I'll go, I'll go real fast. I think we were going to provide the recording, make sure you could hopefully take a copy of that survey from our report controllers. And then lastly, there was a link for me, or if you need to contact Bill, if you're interested in talking more. So thank you very much, Eihan. It's been a pleasure. Over to you, Andrew.

Yeah, just say thank you, everyone. I hope this was beneficial for everyone, and it's, you know, just always staying on top of the latest trends in and your financial tech stack and how to improve efficiencies and streamline everything are going to be top of mind as you kind of go forward in your company's journey.

Awesome. Well, thanks for taking the time. I'm going to end the session and we'll kind of go into the networking. I did share the link, Karen, earlier with everyone, so And I did also share the first link about the report, and everyone will get the recording of this within 48 hours. So yeah, so not to worry. All right, I'm gonna end this now and then we'll break out for networking. All right, thanks everyone. See you in our next session.