BILL Spend & Expense (Formerly Divvy) Review 2024

BILL Spend & Expense is one of many business credit providers that helps small and midsize businesses tap cash when they need it most.

It goes a step further with powerful spend tracking and expense management tools, too. It’s an impressive tool that every growing business should think seriously about adding.

Oh, and BILL (formerly Divvy) is free for users, making it all the more impressive. I analyze business bank accounts and small business credit cards for a living. While I can’t say BILL is totally unique, the one-two-three punch of no fees, scalable business credit, and expansive money management tools legitimately set it apart.

See what to expect from BILL and decide whether it’s right for your company.

What Is BILL Spend & Expense?

BILL offers basic financial services to small and midsize businesses. At its core is a flexible business credit line that can scale with your business. It also has business budgeting and expense management tools that help simplify even the most complex commercial finances.

BILL doesn’t charge users any fees. It makes money through card interchange fees, which come out of the net received by merchants you pay with BILL. You don’t pay any interest on the float because you access your BILL business credit line through a corporate charge card that you must pay in full each statement cycle. 

BILL’s most notable benefits include a customizable card rewards program with qualifying spend, a powerful mobile app, and seamless integrations with external accounting software.

How BILL Spend & Expense Compares

BILL isn’t the world’s only business credit solution, of course. It competes against several small-business credit cards and loan providers, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

One of BILL’s better-known competitors is the Chase Ink Business credit card family, which includes three names: Ink Business Preferred, Ink Business Cash, and Ink Business Unlimited. See how BILL compares to Chase’s small-business credit card lineup.

What Sets BILL Apart?

BILL stands out for many reasons, but these four in particular stand out to me as someone who spends hours wading through financial fine print every week.

• No Interest. The BILL Divvy Corporate Card is a charge card, not a credit card. That means you must pay off your charges in full at the end of each billing period. While this isn’t unusual of business credit, it’s important because it means you’ll never pay interest on BILL draws.
• No Monthly or Annual Fees Fees. BILL is somewhat unusual among business credit providers in its total lack of monthly or annual fees to use the product. BILL makes money on the back end, through cuts of payments made to merchants.
• Appropriate for Businesses With No Credit History. BILL offers a secured credit line for businesses that don’t qualify for unsecured lines. Typically, that means new businesses with no credit history and businesses with limited or irregular revenue.
• Powerful Financial Software Built Into the App. BILL has extensive budgeting and expense management tools that integrate seamlessly with its credit services. It’s powerful enough to replace your current business budgeting software, for sure.

Key Features of BILL Spend & Expense

BILL has three core features: 

• A commercial credit line (technically, a corporate charge card)
• Business budgeting software
• Expense management software

The software is free for BILL users, regardless of business size, though BILL clarifies that its solutions are meant for businesses with fewer than 500 employees. BILL makes money through card interchange fees, meaning it takes a small slice of every transaction you make before passing the funds along to the merchant.

Business Credit

The BILL Divvy Corporate Card is the flexible credit line at the heart of the BILL ecosystem. It knits the other two main BILL features — budgeting and expense management — together.

These are the most important components of the BILL Divvy Corporate Card:

• Pay in Full. The BILL Divvy Corporate Card is a charge card, not a credit card. This means you must pay your charges in full at the end of the billing period. This shouldn’t be a problem if your business has a steady income, and it’s a blessing in disguise because you’ll never pay interest.
• Flexible Credit Line. BILL knows your business is more than a credit score. It considers revenue, growth potential, and other nontraditional factors in underwriting, which could lead to a higher initial credit line. And your credit line can scale as your revenue increases — you can apply for an increase with just a few taps in the app.
• As Many Virtual Cards As You Need. BILL generates virtual cards on demand whenever you need them. I personally love virtual cards — they’re clutch for one-time and recurring expenses where you don’t want the vendor to have access to your real card number.
• No Upfront Fees for Employee Cards. BILL doesn’t charge any upfront or setup fees for employee cards. No matter how many people are on your team, you can hook each up with an individual BILL Divvy Corporate Card. 
• Enforceable Budgets and Spend Controls. If you’re nervous about giving newer employees a card of their own, BILL has customizable spend controls that make it impossible for employees to overspend. I’d recommend setting spend limits based on role and seniority.
• Regular Credit Reporting. BILL reports your credit utilization and payments to the Small Business Financial Exchange (SBFE), a nonprofit business credit reporting agency. Use your card responsibly, and you’ll build business credit over time.
• Secured Credit Lines If You Don’t Qualify for an Unsecured Line. The standard BILL credit line is unsecured, just like a regular credit card. If you don’t qualify due to a limited business credit history or income, you can pre-fund a secured BILL Divvy Corporate Card and still benefit from the flexibility of a credit line.

The BILL Divvy Corporate Card has a flexible rewards program that earns up to 7 points per $1 spent (7x) on eligible purchases. You must draw at least 30% of your available credit to earn rewards in any given billing period, and your actual earn rate depends on your repayment frequency.

Here’s how that looks:

You can redeem points for travel purchases, gift cards, statement credits, or straight cash back. You get the most value for travel redemptions — $0.01 per point — and about $0.005 per point for all other options. So, if you or your team regularly travel for business, Divvy is much more rewarding.

Spend Management (Budgeting)

BILL’s budgeting tool makes it easy to create a tactical financial plan for your business. 

If your company is small and its finances relatively simple, you can stick with a single budget that covers the entire enterprise. Otherwise, create multiple budgets for departments or teams, adding or removing employees from each budget as needed.

Your BILL budgets link to your BILL Divvy Corporate employee cards. As the budget owner, you can require approval for every single employee card transaction or set preapprovals that allow small, routine transactions to go through without your say-so. But approval requests come straight to your BILL app, so it’s easy enough to approve a transaction without interrupting what you’re doing. You can delegate this responsibility to team leaders and department heads as your organization grows.

The hidden power of BILL’s budgeting tool is its ability to spot overspending in real-time before it becomes a serious liability. And you can generate monthly reports that provide a systematic, granular view of spending at an individual, team, department, and company level. That makes it much easier to adjust budgets on the fly.

Expense Management

BILL’s expense management tool is basically your budget or budgets in action. It automates much of the busy work of business accounting, like categorizing expenses.

BILL integrates with third-party accounting software. So if you use another program to track business expenses for tax or budgeting purposes, you can set up your Divvy account to mirror what you have there. That eliminates time-consuming duplicate entries and ensures your external accounting team works off the same information as the in-house folks responsible for your company budgets.

If you don’t use your BILL credit line for every business expense — and you probably won’t, at least not at first — you can use BILL to track what it calls “off-card” expenses, too. This is really important if your employees use personal credit cards to pay for travel, meals, and other incidental expenses — simply enter the reimbursement in Divvy to ensure it’s tracked along with everything else.

Advantages of BILL Spend & Expense

BILL is a comprehensive business credit and money management tool. The fact that it’s totally free to use grabs headlines, but there’s a lot more for business owners to like about it.

• No Fees or Interest on BILL Credit Lines. BILL Card credit lines don’t charge fees or interest. This is a big advantage over pay-over-time business credit cards that can charge interest at 20% APR or higher and often charge annual fees north of $100.
• Unlimited Virtual Cards. There’s no limit on the number of virtual cards you can generate with BILL. Use them for recurring subscriptions, one-off payments, and any other situation where you’d prefer to keep your real card number safe.
• Seamless Integration With BILL Tools and External Accounting Platforms. Your BILL Divvy Corporate Card account integrates seamlessly with BILL’s budgeting and expense management tools. If you use an external accounting platform, you can hook it up to BILL too. This is a big factor in why users surveyed by BILL said it saved them 12 hours per month on average.
• Flexible Spend Limits on Employee Cards. You have the final say over how much your employees spend (or don’t) on their employee cards. And you can approve or decline transactions with a few taps. If overspending is the norm for your business, maybe BILL is the answer.
• Flexible Rewards Program (Up to 7x Back). BILL has an unusually generous rewards program that incentivizes you to repay purchases faster. Repay weekly, and you’ll earn up to 7x on eligible purchases. That’s a 7% rate of return, which is better than most business credit providers.

Disadvantages of Bill Spend & Expense

BILL isn’t perfect, though I think it’s much better than the average business credit provider (and certainly better than the average business credit card). Here’s where it falls a bit short.

• Can’t Carry a Balance From Month to Month. If your business cash flow can’t support repaying your BILL charges in full at least monthly, BILL isn’t for you. The drawback, of course, is that traditional business credit cards charge interest at eye-watering rates.
• No Business Bank Account. BILL doesn’t have a built-in bank account, just a flexible credit line. You’ll need to keep your working capital elsewhere.

Is BILL Legit?

Yes, BILL is legitimate. It got its start as a budgeting and expense management tool for small and midsize businesses, then expanded into business credit lines. Today, it’s a powerful business finance package for companies that want to get a handle on their budgets and expenses — and tap a flexible credit line as needed.

According to a survey, BILL has the potential to save business users serious money: over $10,000 per month. BILL saves time, too, on the order of 12 hours per month for active users. And the vast majority of BILL users would recommend it to others.

Final Word

BILL offers a flexible credit line with employee subaccounts (the BILL Divvy Corporate Card), plus powerful budgeting and expense management tools. It integrates with third-party accounting software. It delivers outstanding rewards on eligible spend.

And it’s totally free for business users.

BILL sounds like a good deal, and in my educated opinion, it is. It really shines for small but growing companies with relatively steady revenues, hawklike attention to the bottom line, and an aversion to bureaucracy and busy work. If that sounds like your business, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better business credit partner.