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Setting Up Bill Pay

  • Updated

This Guide will walk you through the steps to pay your first bill on Float!

 

Overview

  1. Configuring your Bill Payment Setup
    1. Defining AP Clerk roles
    2. Using Approval Policies
    3. Set up your default funding source
    4. Setting up AP and Clearing accounts
  2. Adding your Vendors to Float
  3. Learning Bill Pay Statuses and Payment States
  4. Pro Tips for Power Users

 

Note: Multiple approval policies and certain funding sources are available only in the professional plan. Reach out by submitting a request from help.floatcard.com to upgrade!

 

Configuring your Bill Pay Setup

There are 3 important Bill Pay settings to review before you process your first bill: configuring users with the AP Clerk role, ensuring you have the required Approval Policies in place, and the correctly set up funding source.

 

Defining AP Clerk Team Members

We've introduced this role just for Bill Pay so that specific team members can use assigned cards, manage bills and schedule payments but cannot release funds; only Administrators can release funds for payments. Learn more about Roles on Float.

There are 2 ways you can configure a user as an AP Clerk: From Users > Edit Roles Or right from Settings > Bill Pay.

 

Using Approval Policies

A Default Approval Policy will be assigned automatically and can be edited. Customers on Float's Professional or Enterprise plans can configure additional Approval Policies by navigating to Settings > Approval Policies > Bill Approval. To learn more about approval policies, click here. 

 

If you've configured more than one policy, select a default policy for all bills from Settings > Bill Pay. Policies are selectable on each bill, allowing for complete flexibility for who and in what order a bill must be approved before it is paid.

 

Setting Your Default Funding Source

On the essentials plan, you can only pay bills from your pre-funded Float balance. On professional, you'll be able to select a pre-funded account or directly choose your bank account to pay a bill. 

 

Setting up AP and Clearing Accounts

If your Float account is connected to Quickbooks or Xero, you'll need to choose AP and Clearing accounts in order to export payments to those systems. Follow this guide to Setting Up AP and Clearing Accounts for Bill Pay.

 

Adding Vendors to Float

Adding Vendors is easy in Float, simply navigate to Bill Pay > Manage Vendors to start adding them. If you've connected QBO or Xero, Vendors will be synced from that system to Float. 

 

You can also modify your vendors by viewing each one in the slide-out menu. You'll need a mailing address for each vendor in order to make payments. 

If you sync vendors from another system to Float or create them in Float without adding the mailing address and payment details, bills created for that vendor will show an "Incomplete vendor record" error message. You can add the payment information from Bill Pay > Manage Vendors or by clicking the "Add Payment Information" highlight on a Bill for the vendor. 

 

Vendor Currencies

The vendor's currency when created (in Float or synced from your accounting system) will dictate the currency of bill payments that can be made to that vendor. USD bill payments can't be made to a CAD vendor and vice-versa. 

If you create the vendor directly in Float and haven't connected an accounting sync, you can change the vendor's currency later. 

If you sync the vendor to Float from QBO or Xero, it's currency in the accounting system will determine it's currency in Float and it will not be editable. To pay bills from a synced vendor in a different currency, create a second version of the vendor in your accounting system using the other currency (eg. "AcmeCo - USD" and also sync that to Float. 

 

 

Bill Pay States and Payment Status

Bills on Float can be in 1 of 5 states:

  1. Draft - Bill has been created, but does not have the required fields to submit for approval
  2. Pending Approval - The bill is currently being approved through the assigned Approval Policy
  3. Unpaid - Once Approved, a bill will stay in this state until a scheduled payment date is set.
  4. Scheduled - Once a payment date is set, Bills are batched into those dates. The Administrator must Authorize Funds Release before funds are drawn from your account.
  5. Paid - Once Funds have been authorized for release and there was successful payment, Bills will be marked as Paid.

Bills can be in a few states, once issued for payment:

  1. Initiated - The funds have been released, but the bill has not yet been paid
  2. Failed - Payment has failed to be deposited into your vendor's account

💡Pro Tips for Power Users:

  1. Automate Bill Intake: Bill Forwarding or Drag and Drop - Utilize your custom email address (found at the bottom of your Bill Pay page) and set up email forwarding rules in your email client to automate Bill intake. You can also drag and drop multiple Bills at once and we will scan and update the information in the Bill into Float!
  2. Share Payment Confirmation to Vendors - When a Bill is approved, click on the 3 dot option on the ball and click, "Share Payment Confirmation". This will generate a unique URL with timelines and confirmation of deposit for your vendor. Once a Bill is paid, it is sent to every vendor.

 

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