How Bill is Redefining Financial Automation

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Doug Lewis: Well, Emily. We're back.

Emily Madere: We are back.

Doug Lewis: The arguably arguably the most official unofficial Sage Intacct podcast on the market, one could say.

Emily Madere: I, I would agree. We're like we're like branching like so close to like, official but still unofficial. So I guess that's a good thing. We can we can kind of say what we want.

Doug Lewis: It is and and it's an exciting day because we have a real expert. Um, you [00:00:30] know, for this, this round through which we normally don't get. It's usually just the two of us or the three of us. But the third amigo isn't here, thank God. So this will be a great episode. I'm actually really excited about this one. Richard Corn, director of Product Management at Bill, not Bill.com at Bill. Be very clear about that, for there's no confusion out there in the marketplace.

Richard Corn: Information has happened. Right. We dropped the DC.

Emily Madere: Yes.

Doug Lewis: You did.

Emily Madere: It. Still, I catch myself all the time. I'm like, oh Bill.com. Oh, Bill.com. [00:01:00] Like, no.

Richard Corn: It rolls off the tongue.

Emily Madere: Yeah, it does, it does.

Doug Lewis: It it does, it does. Actually, I think at this point everyone's pretty used to it. There was that transition period where everyone's like, who is it? Is it a guy? I don't I don't understand what.

Emily Madere: Is it, a 45 year old like CPA? Like, who are we talking about here?

Doug Lewis: There you go. There you go. Speaking of who we're talking about, Richard. Richard, director of product management at Bill, can you can you give the the Richard in a box the little 62nd two minute. Who are you? What [00:01:30] do you do? Why should anyone care what you really have to say?

Richard Corn: Yeah, for sure. Doug. Well, uh, I'm a CPA. I spent about ten years practicing accounting between public accounting, doing all variety of audits, uh, governmental, closely held corporations, all the way up to. For about five years, I worked in corporate accounting at a large SEC company. So I've kind of seen both sides of it. And in that kind of experience, I just saw a lot of opportunity in the space. I saw what accountants were doing that made [00:02:00] their lives so hard. So I took the jump to product. I've been here at Bill for a little over four years now, and it's just a fantastic place to be. This company that's focused on accountants. Um, so it's been amazing to see so many practitioners and work with them to make solutions that actually change the way they do their workflows. That just gives me excited these days. Um, and that's kind of where I was from.

Emily Madere: It's the simple things in life.

Richard Corn: It is. Right. I mean, those of us that love accounting at our core, [00:02:30] we understand the why. That's exciting.

Emily Madere: So where are you? Where are you located?

Richard Corn: Yeah, I live in Reno, Nevada. Actually, my family, um, we've been here for, like, five generations. Came up with the railroad. You know, really old time, 1800s.

Emily Madere: Oh, wow. Yeah, like robbers. Robbers and guns and gold.

Richard Corn: Like like wild, wild west, right?

Emily Madere: Yeah. That's crazy.

Richard Corn: The gold rush. I think we all know about the 40 niners. That was mostly most of that gold was in Nevada, not California.

Emily Madere: You learn [00:03:00] something new every day.

Doug Lewis: So how'd your family do in the gold rush? Judging by the fact that we're talking today, I'm guessing. Yeah.

Richard Corn: We are not miners. We're not gold miners. I'll say that much. Uh, railroaders at best. But the. You know, that's the fun fact about Nevada is it's the largest gold producer in the United States. It's not California, the Golden State. You wouldn't have thought that. Yeah, no.

Doug Lewis: It's weird. You know, I didn't expect to learn anything today, but here we are.

Richard Corn: So gotta have some random facts. Yeah.

Doug Lewis: I [00:03:30] like that. That's that's enjoyable. And, uh, Richard, I want to get into kind of your role at Bill and really what you do in a minute here. But, uh, just to give the people a little flavor on who you are as a person, right? Yeah, obviously.

Emily Madere: You're a cowboy.

Doug Lewis: Well, of course you're a cowboy, obviously. But what's what's something about you? People wouldn't guess. They wouldn't guess. Do you wrestle alligators? Do you climb mountains? I don't know, what do you do.

Richard Corn: Man? What's something people wouldn't guess? Well, you know, I, I spend a lot of time thinking about finance, thinking about all those sort of workflows in accounting. So [00:04:00] if you took me out of that one thing I grew up doing that I love is woodworking. We had an awesome wood shop in my hometown of Elko, Nevada, very small town, kind of a lot of vocational, uh, specialties at that high school. And so never thought I would be, uh, you know, working in tech, having come from a tiny town that still has, like, eight megabits per second internet to this day. So, uh, on my free time, I like to do a little woodworking, you know, build some home furniture, shelving. So that's a pretty fun little [00:04:30] hobby that probably not many people know. Maybe more now.

Emily Madere: Okay. That's cool. Now, Doug, you you, like, were really confident when you asked that question. So, like, what's one thing people wouldn't realize about you?

Doug Lewis: Uh, my family also has a woodshop in Nevada. You know, rural Nevada. Yeah. Yeah. No, not at all. Um, I would say one thing they don't know about me. Uh, I mean, we've talked about it a couple times, but, uh, I come off very confident, but I am extremely colorblind.

Emily Madere: Oh.

Doug Lewis: You're blind [00:05:00] as a bat? Yeah. Can't tell. No clue. Everything's great to me. It's amazing. I see 50 shades of gray. That's it. All the time.

Emily Madere: So you don't know. Like I see, like your picture in the back of you. The visionary group. Like you can't tell what colors those are.

Doug Lewis: I know what they are because I have to know what they are, but. Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Corn: I mean Excel. Excel doesn't need much color, right? You can just do it in black and white. You're right. That's true.

Doug Lewis: You know, ones and zeros, they don't lie. You know, it's easy. It's it's really easy. But, Richard, want to get into your role a little bit more at Bill before [00:05:30] we kind of talk about some broader industry topics if that works. So director product management, what does that actually mean? What do you do? What is it day to day look like? Understanding? I'm guessing every day is a bit of a different battle for you, but can you give kind of the listeners just a flavor for what that role really entails?

Richard Corn: Yeah. If you're outside the tech space, I would say product management doesn't make a lot of sense. Some people think about program management or all these other like portfolio management, all these PM roles. But product management, uh, [00:06:00] kind of at the individual contributor level is really about talking to customers. I'd say is like the secret weapon that many don't deploy getting in front of problems and watching actual pain in processes and workflows. So for me, I have a team of product managers, and what it looks like for me is let's bring customer stories, customer problems to the company. It's not just for you to understand. You have a team of software engineers that need [00:06:30] to deeply feel why the work they're doing matters, and it's your job to help tell that story. A lot of people think that product managers, they call them like the CEO. It's so much more than not just making decisions. It's not even really you don't get to say what everyone's doing. People think like, oh, I'm product manager. I'm in charge of the roadmap. You are in charge of helping to create a vision and selling people on why that matters and why it's going to solve a problem, because that's going to help them get focus on the work. Feel like there's meaning in the work. And [00:07:00] then of course, you have some some process around actually executing a roadmap. Right? There's a little bit of day to day in that, but it really just comes down to finding where you can make people's lives easier. So I manage a team of folks that go across accounting firms, like we're talking about now, how we can partner with firms that's been in Bill's DNA since we were founded, you know, almost 20 years ago. But also Bill's working on a lot of mid-market initiatives. So that's, you know, moving up from SMB. I'm sure we'll talk about that later. So [00:07:30] in my world, I kind of span those two areas and kind of help bring that that new flavor to Bill.

Doug Lewis: So you kind of an ambiguous job if you will. It's not it's not like it's somewhat defined, but not not like clearly Bucketed here's exactly what you're doing on a day to day.

Richard Corn: Which is, you know, compared to coming from accounting or the finance department, which is very clear. Maybe you're closing the books, maybe you're doing a forecast. It's very clear what the deliverable is. It's a lot more soft skills in product management. I would definitely agree with your your [00:08:00] thought there.

Doug Lewis: Yeah that's that's interesting. So you talked to a lot of different finance teams across a lot of verticals. It sounds like not only the accounting firms themselves, but I imagine some direct consumers as well, uh, throughout this process kind of relaying that information back to your team. So just from broad industry strokes, right now, everyone's talking about transforming finance, modernizing, modernizing, modern, modernizing the finance function, whatever the heck you want to call this thing. In your opinion, what's kind of the the [00:08:30] most common shift you're seeing from a mindset perspective amongst most finance teams there is.

Richard Corn: That's a fantastic TF for what we can think about as the broader finance industry. I would say it kind of comes from a few angles. Let me start with the talent side, and then we'll go to the kind of the value and the work I would say. So there's a huge shift in the way accounting and finance teams, what I've seen in the way that they are finding talent. We had a huge exit [00:09:00] of CPAs in the profession over the last couple of years. There are folks looking for different meaning in their work, different value. And this could be a very big threat to the finance profession if we weren't thinking about why they're leaving their jobs or why there's this talent shift. And I think with the newer generation, we see a lot of people looking for different kinds of meaning in their work. A little more, uh, partnership with, for example, if you're an outsourced accountant, partnership with your client. I think pre [00:09:30] 2000 and I mean, even now for finance teams that haven't embraced automation, they're spending a lot of time doing transactional work. They are doing things that don't feel value add. They're literally copying and pasting numbers between systems. It's just not as fulfilling as one might hope.

Richard Corn: And I think that's why we're seeing some of the people leaving the profession. Uh, so I think there's a one mindset shift. And how do we help practitioners feel more engaged with their clients, more like their partners not doing transactional work, but doing [00:10:00] strategic work advisory. And it takes a lot of tools to do that, right. To not have to deal with data movement and synchronizing. That's one thing I'm seeing and how how we can hire for talent that actually does work. They want to do the way that's being solved is with automation. I think every one I talk to is looking for ways to get more done with less staff, or they are very aware that the technology they're using is inefficient. Uh, in a recent survey, [00:10:30] Bill ran, I think it was 97% of accounting firms knew their tech stack was not was inefficient, not efficient, which great to have self-realization and great to be looking for resources in the market, like maybe this podcast to say, what can we do to actually derive that efficiency down. So I think that's kind of coming from the problem in two directions. What I hear the most from customers, I would say.

Doug Lewis: That makes sense. And you hit on a couple topics there [00:11:00] that I'd love to dive a little bit deeper into and just get some clarification on on my end, because I hear a lot a lot of jibber jabber, a lot of jibber jabber. Richard, about how artificial intelligence and automation, you know, workflow processes and all this is going to replace talent in the accounting profession. Now, I'm not a firm believer that, you know, accounting professionals, the need is going to go away anytime soon at all in any level. I think it'll help, you know, professionals leverage more and do more. But, you know, can you reflect a little [00:11:30] bit on that thought? Because I've seen that thrown around a couple times in the sense that, you know, how can we do more with less? And and from my understanding, the mindset isn't how can we? How can we do what we're doing now with less people? It's how can we have the same amount of people or more people and continue to leverage up?

Richard Corn: Absolutely. That is a great characterization of the problem. I would say that it's not about reducing the labor force, getting less people in the financial back office. [00:12:00] The way that I'm hearing it kind of come out in firms is that we don't want to be spending time doing non-value-added work for clients, things that aren't clear, evidences of how they are helping the client grow achieve their strategic outcomes. So if you I mean, there's always the critic. Go back to the 80s when we were maybe 70. We're doing it on paper and along comes desktop GL software. And it's like we're going to get rid of [00:12:30] so much work and the work changed. And then you went from desktop to the cloud and the work changed. And accountants always adapt. Small businesses always adapt. It's like to be in this profession, you are resilient. You're a business owner as well. Whether it's the SMB mid-market finance team, they got into business to do something they love. They are going to be resilient through these changes. Accounting firms are also businesses. So I there's always the naysayers. I never believe I'm on the same page as you Doug. This is a new face going from things [00:13:00] like online ledgers, you know, leading industry leaders like Intacct Sage Intacct to things that are augmented with AI. There's still going to be workflows, but they're going to be sped up. We're going to be adapting to a different way of looking at information. Hopefully we're going to be having faster decisions, faster insights. We're not going to wait till the month end. Close happens. We're going to have every day seeing new information coming in. So I my takeaway is accountants are always going to adjust. Finance [00:13:30] professionals are going to adjust. And it's going to be a way to leverage the talent more than it's going to be a replacement.

Emily Madere: And you're talking more, more established accountants. But I think we'd be remiss to talk about the, the the folks who are graduating college now, um, with so much robust knowledge of how to use AI. Bringing that into the accounting industry. Like, I don't think people talk about that enough.

Richard Corn: That's totally right. And that's where I think I touched on very briefly, like having more meaning in your work. That's what I hear [00:14:00] young professionals saying is I'm coming out of school with all this knowledge about technology, and I think I'm going to be a partner and I'm I'm doing very non interesting work and I'm going to leave the profession. So being able to adjust to that incoming labor force and say, like, we are going to let you use these tools, we're going to let you use that expertise. You're not going to be doing working 100 hours a week during month end close or during the annual audit to try and just make all these manual work papers. Right. Like those are things that don't feel great, [00:14:30] and those are things that should go away with the move toward talent.

Emily Madere: And let's be clear, the people graduating now, they don't want to do that like they don't. They don't want to work 100 hours like they. It's just that's not what they want. That's not what they.

Richard Corn: Especially when they don't like the technology is here. It's ready. It's they're ready to use it. And let's make the work a little more enjoyable and a little more advisory.

Emily Madere: You know, I can imagine, like, you know, like kids, uh, people who have internships in college, like, they're maybe like their internship, they're using, like, Sage Intacct [00:15:00] in a NetSuite or whatever it may be. And then they they graduate college and get a new job, and they're in, like, a Sage 50. And like, I don't see that going over well either.

Richard Corn: The way I would think about that is I completely agree. Having that kind of disparity, it would be difficult to work with. Um, I think I'm pausing because I remember actually, when I was in undergraduate, I think I was I think I learned Peach Tree in one of my accounting classes, which became Sage 50. Right. So I was thinking back to the [00:15:30] the funny times of the different accounting systems you learn in your undergrad. But that's true. Like you, the more advanced systems, along with more complex workflows, the ones that are actually putting automation in the software, it's just it's going to empower people so much and maybe make the the work a little more fun.

Doug Lewis: Well, you were talking about a lot of, you know, transformation amongst the finance team and tools and artificial intelligence, all this stuff, all these tools that people have that we just didn't have [00:16:00] even a couple years ago at this point. Uh, one want to move into a little bit of actual kind of your role, the bill product itself, Richard, anything that you really want to highlight from an innovation standpoint that has recently come to market in the last year or two, that maybe not a lot of people know about, you know, something inside the product line that isn't getting enough love, uh, that people should really understand how you're approaching this market and helping a lot of these finance teams transform.

Richard Corn: It's been a huge year at Bill. I'm I'm excited about what we launched and [00:16:30] even more about our roadmap. But let me tell you what's come out recently. Bill has massive scale in bill pay, right? We move $1 billion a day. It's 1% of GDP. A stat that I really like that gets tossed around is that's more money than Airbnb and Uber combined in money movement. That's what Bill moves. So we have a really awesome bill pay scale product. But that starts when the bill arrives, right? Like when the bill arrives. A lot has happened before that. We know that [00:17:00] in the full source to pay workflow there's vendor onboarding. There is things like W-9 collection. If you're big enough to have a control environment that supports that, there is all of the scope of work and contract negotiation. There's a purchase order with units and line items and so much detail before you actually get a bill. And so Bill has known that we're not in that first half of the source to pay workflow. And we actually are launching we have launched a procurement solution and I'm super [00:17:30] excited about it. It's something that huge effort across the company as part of our shift to slightly larger businesses, ones that want the control, the visibility and to spend before it happens. So we're actually taking on that full workflow now, full source to pay inside of the build platform and just really kind of doubling down on the controls that Bill has always had around approvals. Now you can put it ahead of the bill.

Richard Corn: You're not kind of reactive when the bill arrives. That's the procurement piece. Something else in the more [00:18:00] a little bit above SMB market is our multi entity offering. So you can imagine as a business grows maybe they acquire smaller companies. Maybe there's some M&A activity Doug like you mentioned even family offices. We see a lot with just a lot of LLCs being um held underneath kind of one common umbrella. What we have delivered that is in market now is a really nice solution to help those finance teams look across bill accounts at a multi entity level, speeding up the workflows. Kind of that controller, [00:18:30] that CFO persona getting in and saying I want to see all the bills across all 50, all 100 of my LLCs. I don't want to have to look through accounts. I sort of like the way that Sage does and does the top level. I love that top level view. Bill has a top level, if you're thinking of it that way, and you can look down across all of those entities and see what's happening, you can see the reporting that one has been super well received by our customers. And I mean, there's lots more that want to come on and use it. But even our current base is saying just the visibility and control that [00:19:00] I have from this new top level is is game changing. So I love that one. A few more. I mean, I could go on this roadmap in the last six months has been mind blowing. We had here.

Doug Lewis: Maybe let me maybe I could I could help shape the question a little bit further now without violating your employment agreement, getting yourself in trouble. Is there any kind of teaser that you can toss out about some type of service, some offering something that's coming down the pike and kind of just a flavor of what that might be.

Richard Corn: Well, I [00:19:30] can put it this way.

Emily Madere: You're like, I gotta check with. I gotta check.

Doug Lewis: With. Yeah.

Richard Corn: Yeah. Who's listening?

Doug Lewis: Three cell phones for those. Just listening right now, asking what he can say. Yeah.

Richard Corn: The, um, you know, I mentioned bills almost 20 years old. So you think about the amount of data we have. It is amazing. It's mind blowing, right? If we're if we're moving $1 billion a day, 1% of GDP, there's a lot we can do. We can train a lot of systems to make bills smarter. Uh, there's a lot of work going [00:20:00] into how Bill is going to be smarter, what you're going to see coming in terms of more advanced automation, more done for you work in the product without getting too specific, you can kind of see that bill is going to evolve into an offering that lets you spend less time in the in the details and more time in the insights, more time in the completed jobs. That's all the way from like your AP clerks who are doing daily bill entry. There's a lot of automation we're introducing there. A lot [00:20:30] of new ways we can take some of that work off their plates, basically, possibly even replacing the whole AP staff and letting them do something more. Value add. Similar to when Bill basically defined outsourced AP or defined AP, uh, as a digital space, I'm seeing Bill doubling down to redefine that and take a lot of manual work out of that, out of the product. That's what I'd.

Emily Madere: Say redefine the redefine. That's what you're.

Richard Corn: Saying. Well, you have to disrupt yourself to be innovative, right? If you if you define a category and [00:21:00] do nothing for 20 years, you're going to get overtaken. And that's something I love about the founder of Bill. He's still the CEO, Renee Lasser, kind of like an OG in the Bay and fintech early fintech guy. He started off building a software purpose built for accountants and accountants are evolving. Like we said, the thing the the space is changing for accountants. So we have to disrupt and innovate on their behalf and bring them, meet them where they're at with those solutions. That's what I see [00:21:30] coming from Bill.

Doug Lewis: So all this data, artificial intelligence coming to play here. You know, you work with a lot of kind of interesting things here. Can you make a public promise that this isn't going to turn into, like a Skynet situation, in the sense that we're going to have Terminators running around here.

Richard Corn: Terminators, little AP Terminators coming in and paying bills without looking, um.

Doug Lewis: With the bill logo on their forehead. That's not going to happen.

Richard Corn: All the, I guess, anthropomorphic the person. I'll leave all of the [00:22:00] projections about AI taking over the world to, I don't know, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, but I know what Bill will have is very.

Emily Madere: Legos, especially after meeting y'all at transform. Definitely. Legos.

Richard Corn: Legos.

Doug Lewis: Yeah.

Richard Corn: Um, I would say that Bill is going to be very intentional. So the Skynet situation, there won't be rogue agents running around in the bill. Software. We take it very seriously the way we think about rolling out functionality. [00:22:30] So in our space, we'll do our best to avoid Skynet. It won't happen.

Doug Lewis: Feel a little better. But you just said in our space. Which made me concerned.

Richard Corn: Yeah, I.

Doug Lewis: Mean, but I guess that's a.

Richard Corn: There's a lot of, uh, interesting AI out there. I'm sure there's others that want something like that to come.

Doug Lewis: Topic for a different day, I suppose. Offline non-recorded topic that we can talk about, uh, separately. So you mentioned it a couple times now, uh, you know, enabling finance teams to really focus on kind of the aftermath of the product. [00:23:00] So not really getting bogged down in the day to day manual process of getting bills, invoices collected, all that fun stuff, really focusing more on higher level, higher value adds to the client base. Can you give me a couple of real life examples that you've seen where okay, we've helped this team transformed their entire workflow process. Here's what they're doing before. Now that they have this in place. Here are the real life cool things they're able to do with their clients to add some of that value.

Richard Corn: Oh, absolutely. [00:23:30] I make it a a non-negotiable to talk to at least one customer a week. I have the same for all my teams. Like you have to get in front of the customers to see what's happening. So I can think of a lot of examples, but one that comes to mind that's kind of a notable name people have probably heard of is Mark Cuban companies. So we've worked a long time with, uh, the finance team there, I think nine years on our platform. Josh Holt as the leader of that team, he [00:24:00] has been a great evangelist for Bill, and I love to tell his story because they had over 100 entities on Bill. So all these variety of LLCs, whether it's sports teams or other investments, right. There's a lot of complexity when you have all of these companies kind of a little bit.

Doug Lewis: I've seen Shark Tank. Yes.

Richard Corn: Yeah. You understand?

Emily Madere: Yeah.

Richard Corn: Um, thank you for grounding me on that, Doug. And we came in when Bill first started helping Mark Cuban companies. [00:24:30] They were. They still had paper. Ap. They were still signing checks with ink. They had a file cabinet full of invoices. It's like. I'm so glad.

Doug Lewis: What year was this, roughly? I mean.

Richard Corn: Well, they came in in 2016, So.

Doug Lewis: Okay.

Richard Corn: Not that long ago. But this is not an uncommon story. This isn't like a slight on on Mark Cuban companies. This is this is what I hear every day. It's it's shocking how many people are still doing the workflows on paper in Excel, tracking down approvals in email, putting things in a file cabinet. [00:25:00]

Emily Madere: I hear it every day as well. Like, yeah, it's it's baffling, especially with all the resources that are available now.

Richard Corn: Absolutely. Um, and so one one thing that was amazing is they had a two person AP team just doing the AP, and we were able to let them redeploy that into more of that, get rid of the data errors, getting rid of the delayed reconciliations, and actually give clarity across those 100 entities as to what was going on. That's part of the multi [00:25:30] entity product feature I was talking about a minute ago. At the end of the day, I think it cut. I'm trying to remember exactly what Josh was saying, but a more than cut their work in half to have this automation. And so that story goes across. We have 500,000 customers that build. That's not an uncommon story like I was mentioning. That's actually where I get most excited. That's where my energy is around, is saying, let's give these people some time back, right? Let's maybe they can have a hobby now, you know, I don't know. They're not [00:26:00] they're not spending so much time just doing all this data transfer.

Emily Madere: They can they can go to their kids games. They can go start woodworking. They can, you know, you know, whatever it may be.

Richard Corn: Right?

Emily Madere: That's the talking point.

Doug Lewis: And that's, that's a that's a good name. Drop number one. Great client. Which leads me to another question that I have completely off script here. But I'm I'm very curious. You know, you keep throwing out that the 1% of GDP is is moved through bill, right. That which I love by the way. Phenomenal statistic. But you know in in all your time at Bill I'm, [00:26:30] I just want to know what's what's the oddest transaction that you've seen go through. I mean there had to be someone that tried to use you for some type of deal, some type of purchase, something that was just like, what I mean turned out to be legitimate.

Richard Corn: And and it turned out to be, sorry, the legitimate transactions that you said.

Doug Lewis: Yeah, of course it turned out to be legitimate, but, you know, it raised some, raised some questions, some red flags were raised throughout the process. I'm really curious to know what's what sticks out. [00:27:00]

Richard Corn: There are O mean, we I've seen I think the biggest one I've personally seen is $63 million. Um, it was a tax payment. Unfortunately for the entity that made the payment, I suppose, or maybe fortunately, because that means they had a lot of of income. Um, but yeah, we there are, I don't know, the scale of every transaction we look at. I know we have five nines accuracy on preventing fraud. So [00:27:30] your legitimate piece I don't know how many fraudulent ones we've we've blocked. I don't hear about all of them, but me personally, I knew of this one that was 63 million. Um, and that was actually on the, on the, the DV spending or, excuse me, the DV product that became spend and expense. Uh, so we we have the technology to move the money. We can we can facilitate large transactions.

Emily Madere: So let me ask you a question. We, um, I recently had a, like, a client event, and, uh, one of my good friends from Avalara came and he [00:28:00] shared an interesting fact, like about, like, taxes. And it was that in New York, if the taxes are different on a full bagel versus a bagel. They have to cut. What is one like? Kind of like off the wall like crazy fact.

Richard Corn: That is so funny. Like that sounds like. The classic collection of random laws that. How did those get that way? Um, a random off the wall fact that I should. Have come with some like fun facts about. [00:28:30]

Emily Madere: I know I.

Doug Lewis: Take your time. We'll we'll circle back.

Richard Corn: My favorite one is the Uber and Airbnb.

Emily Madere: That's that was a good one.

Richard Corn: I that was like a opener. Um.

Doug Lewis: Oh, you burning all your good material? Too early.

Richard Corn: I got ahead of myself before I knew what Emily was going to ask. Um. Okay, give me a second on that. And it's going. To hit me when we go to another question, and I'm going to interrupt myself and give you an answer.

Emily Madere: That's okay. The listeners will be waiting.

Richard Corn: Yeah, we'll keep them on the edge of their seat.

Doug Lewis: All [00:29:00] right. So let's move into something that's that's maybe a little more topical for the most official. Unofficial Sage Intacct podcast out there. Richard, you know your partnership. Bill's partnership with Sage Intacct can can you give me some history, what it looked like, how long that's happened, what you've evolved to really how deep the partnership is, what people can expect if they're on the Sage ecosystem to partner with somebody like Bill.

Richard Corn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Bill, as we have kind of established, has really deep [00:29:30] workflows. We have very advanced approval processes. And when we partner with someone like Sage Intacct, we take it very seriously the way the data flows between the systems. We have been spending more than a decade perfecting the integration and the sync. What that means practically for our partnership is data goes between our systems flawlessly. It's a two way sync. We move data from intact to bill, from bill to intact. We work with all of the ways that top [00:30:00] levels in intact work, which I love. That's like my favorite feature is the way you can drill into each level inside of intact. I actually, uh, earlier in my time at Bill, I helped to create the integration from the spend and expense product to intact. So I spent a lot of time in the credit card module in the in the AP module. Um, but, I mean, our partnership is just so durable and shows up for our mutual customers in a way that makes your life easier. They know the systems are going to talk well to each other. [00:30:30] We collaborate very closely with all the engineers that are working on on intact and the engineers that build, they know each other personally like these. These people have forged relationships over the many, many years we've been building together. And that relationship is invaluable to our our customers. It shows up in making their life easier.

Emily Madere: Well, and I think that's a test to, you know, Sage and tax philosophy to of having that open API and integrating into to other partners.

Richard Corn: Yeah. Exactly. [00:31:00] That's like the beauty of that, the way that partnership is structured and just being, you know, being a software. Oh, Doug go ahead.

Doug Lewis: Well, no, I want to I want to cue you up there before we just moved on from that topic of of your, you know, your partnership and your integration with Sage Intacct, uh, give you the opportunity to maybe dunk on some competitors, uh, that might exist in that ecosystem as well, without naming names. Why bill over anybody else?

Richard Corn: I challenge anyone listening to find a deeper integration [00:31:30] to Intacct than Bill. I will lay the gantlet down those finance professionals that are listening and understand how complex and how deep AP can go across so many variables, so many custom dimensions. I know we both do well with non-profits. All the ways you do grant tracking. No one can move data between intact and a solution. That's a financial automation solution, a PR spend, an expense. All the things Bill does Not [00:32:00] even close. It's like you said, without naming competitors. If you're looking at how the integrations work, just look at the list of fields that are connected between Bill and intact. Bill is going to blow your mind on the level of of depth of the connection.

Emily Madere: Mic drop.

Doug Lewis: That's fair, I like that. And just and just so people can respond to you directly, uh, your cell phone number, your home address. What are what are those? Just so.

Richard Corn: Linkedin. You know, my name is pretty [00:32:30] unique. There's not a lot of us, Richard Cornes. I'm sure you'll find me pretty easily, so. Or you could see me on X if you want to. If you're on that, I probably see on LinkedIn faster, but.

Doug Lewis: Well, you heard it. He's looking for the smoke. Everybody. Rich Richard wants the smoke. I am confident.

Richard Corn: In this statement. I will talk to anyone. I will talk to customers personally and show them.

Doug Lewis: I love that. I love that moving into kind of future future. Just looking forward, you know, finance transformation. Richard, [00:33:00] for those on the fence, because a lot of a lot of financial teams know that they need to undergo some sort of digital transformation, whether it's near future long term projects, whatever it looks like for those teams that are really on the fence, trying to figure out how to go about it, is now the right time to do it? I mean, what's what's your go to piece of advice for those that are on the fence about really taking on a digital transformation project?

Richard Corn: Yeah. Fantastic question, and I understand let me start by [00:33:30] saying I know why it's challenging. I understand there's internally maybe you have leadership that says the process works. Why change it. Maybe you have talking points like we had a process, a journal entry that took five hours and now we've refined it over multiple years. It takes one hour, and I kind of want to disrupt the thinking it's going to be uncomfortable. But imagine those manual processes don't happen at all. Not just that you've optimized them over several years and they take half [00:34:00] a quarter a third of the time. What if you got rid of them? This sounds a little future y, but like first principles, do you even need to be doing that manual work? Does that journal entry have to happen? Can it not automatically flow between systems? It's not an easy pitch, to be honest. There's a lot of comfort in that same kind of workflow month over month, quarter over quarter. Especially when it seems to be working. But that's when if you take a step back and look at what our other [00:34:30] peers in the industry doing, whether it's from the accounting from space or those of the in-house finance team, and see where they're getting that value and that leverage and see how they're eliminating processes.

Richard Corn: It'll get you more excited for the transformation. It'll make some of the change management worth it in the end. So I would say my advice is just take a step back, get out of the weeds of the process. Don't have any sacred Excel files. The one that has to stay. Start with [00:35:00] a clean slate. And maybe, you know, build up with what you want a tool to do for you. And what I would say also is what I've seen maybe over the last 5 to 7 years in these financial back office solutions. We were very unbundled as a financial back office industry. There were point solutions for AR and AP and payroll and spend and banking. There's so much bundling happening. I'm actually really excited about embedded banking. A lot of apps are doing this. The the way that we can kind of disintermediate [00:35:30] traditional old banks that don't have a lot of tech forward thinking. We need the banking charter, we need them to have FDIC insurance. And that's that's all great. But let's put that tech layer on top. That really helps put everything in one place. Those are the kind of things that I think are exciting and can change the work and change the make the case for that finance transformation.

Doug Lewis: It was much more thought through than I envisioned it being. Which is.

Emily Madere: Yeah, you definitely practiced that.

Doug Lewis: Yeah, I like that.

Richard Corn: I just get so excited about it. But I appreciate [00:36:00] that. Emily.

Doug Lewis: You can't tell that you're excited. Yeah. I mean.

Richard Corn: There's no question that I have found the right company for my inner finance nerd. Like, purpose built software for people like us. Can't go wrong.

Doug Lewis: I love it. So you're. You're deep in Bill. You understand it. You're passionate about it. A couple quick questions to just wrap things up here, Richard, to be respectful of everybody's time. What what in your opinion the your favorite bill feature that just [00:36:30] people aren't talking about enough. They either don't know it exists or it's just not utilized enough.

Richard Corn: You're going to drop that as a rapid fire question.

Doug Lewis: Oh, absolutely.

Richard Corn: That one's not. That's a hard, rapid fire. But my favorite one.

Doug Lewis: You can have 20 minutes. Oh thank you 20 minutes to to answer.

Richard Corn: Let me do two I'm going to do one on spend and expense and one on AP because they have very unique value props right on spend and expense. The most underutilized feature, in my opinion, that is the coolest is the unlimited [00:37:00] free virtual cards. Those of us that sit here in tech and think about it probably all know virtual cards are. But for the listeners, I hope I can, you know, help some people understand the value here, the how crazy it is. Imagine you could issue any amount of cards for any reason instantly. Don't have to worry about mail, don't worry about plastic printing. Don't have to worry about who is going to physically have the card in their desk drawer. If I want a card for every single [00:37:30] vendor that I pay so that that way I can control exactly how much is on the card every month. Virtual card if I want to give someone who's traveling a specific per diem, or maybe I have a very strict grant requirement and I have to spend money a certain way. Virtual card. The virtual cards can be pushed to your, you know, mobile device. They can be managed by the finance team. Centrally. You can see what all the cards are doing. You have a vendor that goes rogue, raises your price, does something wrong? Double charges [00:38:00] you. First of all, there won't be money on that virtual card to let double charging happen. Second of all, you want to turn the card off. Boom. Done. Instant one click. You don't have to go and redo your whole corporate card program.

Richard Corn: It's just like mind blowing how long it took to get to virtual cards from, like, the genesis of credit cards in the 50s to now. But it is. I think it's the coolest thing. It's so helpful. Um, and I think it just helps give that visibility of what's where is money leaving [00:38:30] my company or my, you know, my purview of spend. Love virtual cards. That's the spend and expense. I'll be faster on AP. Since I don't run a small business. This might be a little bit consumer y, but I just love it. We have, um, Recurring bills with vendor specific autopay. So if you have a rent payment at your business building, you have a some sort of any, any recurring amount and you're like property tax bill. I can never miss this. [00:39:00] Even if it doesn't get bill approvals, this has to be paid. Uh, boom. Add it to the vendors recurring bill profile. It'll always get paid. If the approver is out of the office, you set it up as recurring. You know it's going to get paid. All the headache is gone. All this work about the completeness check at month end where you're going. Did all the are there any missing bills? Did all the ones that I have to pay get paid? That's all gone because you're like, yep, they're all in the vendors. Recurring profile. Done. I love that one. That might [00:39:30] be a little bit personal since, like, I replace all my mortgage payments with with Bill. Uh.

Doug Lewis: You're projecting. You're projecting.

Richard Corn: I know.

Emily Madere: But you are. You are very excited about it.

Doug Lewis: Yeah, I love that.

Emily Madere: So let me ask you, what is a piece of career advice you'd give to to someone maybe just starting out in the industry for a while.

Doug Lewis: Ooh. Or you could, you could do the the patented Richard two parter. Those just entering their, their their careers at that level and then maybe those kind of mid-level professionals, you know, [00:40:00] in kind of the finance technology world, different, different pieces of advice to advance their career, what they should look for, how they should approach things. Anything that comes off the top of your mind for someone who's made it to your position and is very passionate.

Richard Corn: Or early career finance professionals. As you are perfecting your craft, you are learning the rules of business. You learned them probably in undergraduate. You're getting better at it at your first job. [00:40:30] Recognize the power you have in understanding the way a business, the profit margins work, the spending and revenue are related. The overall understanding of the way the inflows and outflows of money in a business works will serve you in any future profession. So all the learning you're getting, don't take it for granted. Realize it is going to serve you. If you move into product like me, into marketing, into sales, because you understand the actual growth levers, you'll have the business acumen that no one else really has. It's like [00:41:00] a little bit of a secret weapon. So just remember, like, you're going to have this foundational knowledge that will serve you well for the rest of your life. That's how I feel about my time in accounting. Someone that's in, I guess, further on, maybe has transitioned out of finance. Let me let me just hit back on kind of that. The question you asked around transformation, I would say it's a tough one, but stay awake in terms of industry trends, stay ahead of the new tech. It's [00:41:30] like I kind of had my monologue a minute ago on look for where it's inefficient. If you find yourself protecting the process because you've gotten it down to be what you think is perfect, that's the first place you should look to see if there's tech disrupting that process, because maybe we can completely eliminate it. That's how I'd say kind of the two.

Doug Lewis: It honestly seems like you're you're getting more passionate the more you talk. And it's it's contagious. Like the energy is just just contagious, which I love. Um, [00:42:00] Richard, uh, really appreciate your time today, my friend. Uh, thank you for joining us. Richard Korn, director of product management at Bill. Hope to have you back in the near future. Richard Big Four working cowboy. That's right, that's right. You have to show off some of your woodworking on the next episode.

Richard Corn: That'll be my my. When you bring it back on the woodworking cowboy returns, no one will understand the episode title. It'll. It'll be.

Doug Lewis: Okay. That's fine. That's why we are the most unofficial. The most official, unofficial Sage Intacct podcast. Uh, your your wisdom has been, uh Sage. I [00:42:30] can say that. Maybe. Oh, bring it full circle. So, Richard, for better or for worse, to end these things, to cap these things, we always just like doing a terrible dad joke. And I mean, just awful, just awful dad joke. And based on our discussion, I'd like to throw the offer out to anybody who joins us. Do you have just an awful dad joke on standby?

Richard Corn: Oh, man. Well, I am a dad. I didn't mention that in my intro. I have a two year old and a new baby coming in three weeks, so I better.

Emily Madere: Oh, congratulations.

Richard Corn: Thank you, thank you. I better brush up on my dad [00:43:00] jokes. Do I have one off the top of my head? My daughter really likes this green dinosaur, so I, um, I'll make a dinosaur one. What do you call a dinosaur? That's good with finance?

Doug Lewis: Hmm. It's a.

Emily Madere: Sellosaurus.

Doug Lewis: Yeah.

Richard Corn: I was going to say. I was going to say an investorsaurus.

Emily Madere: Oh, that's good to. [00:43:30]

Doug Lewis: Okay.

Richard Corn: I think excelosaurus. Is good too, though. It's got to be one

Doug Lewis: It goes both ways. But that's actually that's good. That's good. Most people dog.

Emily Madere: Is said the same thing at the same time.

Doug Lewis: Actually. Really weird. Yeah.

Richard Corn: That must be the actual punch line then. I think you guys actually finished. This is a writing a writer's circle. So now we all working session.

Doug Lewis: So just started to do list. Richard, for the next episode we have you on the future. We have to have some of your woodworking to show off to the listeners, right? Yeah. And then you also have to have [00:44:00] a couple more dad jokes.

Richard Corn: In front of my fireplace I just.

Doug Lewis: Built, yeah.

Richard Corn: Seven foot long floating shelves by my fireplace. So I'll put those in the background next time.

Doug Lewis: There you go again. And your list of dad jokes. And we'll just do a full 35 minutes. Just you doing dad jokes.

Richard Corn: Oh, man.

Doug Lewis: With with your with your beautiful woodworking behind you. That's what the people want to hear. That's what people.

Speaker7: Want.

Richard Corn: The comments, they're all asking for it.

Doug Lewis: That's it. Well, Richard, thanks for joining us, my friend. I look forward to having you back in the future.

Richard Corn: Absolutely.

Emily Madere: Thank you, thank you.