Syncing your bills
Overview
If you use NetSuite, Quickbooks Online, Sage Intacct, or Xero as your integrated ERP, you can set up your bills to sync to your accounting platform. Brex syncs the various fields depending on the ERP depending on your selection, either once the bill is approved in Brex or at bill creation, including bills that are marked as paid externally. See the section for your respective ERP below for a complete list. We do not retroactively sync past bills – any bills that were submitted for payment prior to the integration being enabled or fully set up will not be synced. If a bill is canceled and sent back to the draft state, any changes to the bill will not be synced until the bill is resubmitted.
How it works
Syncing a bill is different from syncing a card expense or reimbursement in that other expenses always populate in the accounting journal. In Accounting, you must prepare, review, and export them manually to your ERP or as a CSV file. Bills, however, are not populated in the accounting journal. Instead, they’re automatically synced to ERP directly without any intermediary steps. You can enable automatic bill synchronization in either the bill pay settings or the integration settings. When enabling this, you must specify at which point in your workflow bills should be synchronized. The available options are:
- Submitted: Bills will be synced as soon as they are submitted by an user. Any updates to the bill information prior to the scheduled payment date will be updated in real time.
- Approved: Bills will be synced as soon as they are approved and queued for payment. Any updates to the bill information prior to the scheduled payment date will be updated in real time.
Vendors and bills are initially synced one-way from Brex to your ERP as soon as the bill is fully approved. Changes made to bills are continuously synced as long as the accounting period is still open in your ERP. The following are the editable fields that trigger a re-sync:
- Invoice attachment
- Invoice number
- Spend limit
- Memo
- Due date
- ERP posting date
- GL accounts
- Accounting fields
Syncing Bill Payments
Brex supports syncing payments made in Brex back to your ERP. The payment syncs automatically and closes open bills that were created from Brex. If you enable automatic syncing, this feature is turned on by default.
To successfully sync bill payments, you will need to set payment mappings to your funding account. You can do this by going to your Accounting > Integration Settings > Payment Account mappings.
It is recommended that you set a mapping to all the funding accounts you use for bill payments. The mapping determines the General Ledger that will be used for the payment information.
NetSuite
Note: For information about paying bills with Brex cards directly within NetSuite, see this article. The NetSuite integration with bill pay is a one-directional sync from Brex to NetSuite. This means that bills created in Brex will sync over to NetSuite. We sync both a bill and payment entity to their system and automatically link the two. If a bill is in the payment processed state, we’ll create an associated vendor payment for that bill. After the bill has synced successfully, you can open the bill’s details pane and go to Accounting. Here, you can click View bill in NetSuite or View payment in NetSuite to view the corresponding bill/payment in NetSuite. We won’t sync edits made in NetSuite back to bills in Brex. When you edit in Brex and sync them over to NetSuite, it will overwrite the corresponding bill data in NetSuite. Please make sure you set the Standard Vendor Bill and Standard Bill Payment forms in NetSuite’s Custom Transaction Forms setting as preferred to avoid potential sync errors.
Fields synced
- Vendor
- If vendor name matching doesn’t detect an entry in NetSuite, we’ll create a new vendor with that name.
- Bill
- Invoice attachment
- Invoice number
- ERP posted date
- Auto-populated from invoice date and synced as posting date of the bill
- Due date
- A/P account
- Memo
- Payment account
- Line items:
- Amount
- Description
- GL account
- Location
- Department
- Class
- Payment
- Entity
- Amount
- Currency
Setup instructions
Step 1: In your dashboard, click Accounting. Step 2: If you haven’t set up NetSuite yet, click your name in the top right > Integrations > click Connect on the NetSuite and follow the prompts. See this article to get set up. If you see Manage instead of Connect, you can skip to Step 4. Step 3: If you’ve already connected to NetSuite, click NetSuite settings. Step 4: Under Bill pay configuration enable Sync bills automatically. Afterward, click Refresh integration to sync your latest account categories. Note: Once enabled, when adding a new vendor, suggestions will populate from your ERP. More details can be found here.
Step 5: Select the timing for syncing your bills:
- Bill creation
- Bill Approval
Troubleshooting
If one of your bills has an error, a banner containing the error message will appear in Bills > Sync errors. Follow the provided steps to resolve the issue and resync the bill.
QuickBooks Online
We sync bills to QuickBooks Online, as their bank feed integrations pull transactions from your connected Brex accounts and match them against the bill. After the bill has synced successfully, a customer can open the bill's details pane and go to the Accounting section. Here, they can click View bill in QuickBooks Online to view the corresponding bill in QuickBooks Online. We won’t sync edits made in QuickBooks Online back to bills in Brex. When you edit in Brex and sync it over to QuickBooks Online, it will overwrite the corresponding bill data in QuickBooks Online. Note: Bills for child entities in QuickBooks Online don’t automatically sync to QuickBooks Online if assigned to be paid by the child entity. You must manually upload these bills to QuickBooks Online via CSV. Bills assigned to be paid by the parent entity will sync to the parent entity in QuickBooks Online.
Fields synced
- Vendor
- If vendor name matching doesn’t detect an entry in QuickBooks Online, we’ll create a new vendor with that name.
- Bill
- Invoice attachment
- Invoice number
- ERP posted date
- Auto-populated from invoice date and synced as the date of the bill
- Due date
- Location
- Memo
- Line items:
- Amount
- Description
- GL account
- Class
Setup instructions
Note: Bills sync is available only to users of the QuickBooks Online Essentials plan or higher (Plus/Advanced). Step 1: In your dashboard, click Accounting. Step 2: If you haven’t set up QuickBooks yet, click your name in the top right > Integrations > click Connect on the QuickBooks card and follow the prompts. If you see Manage instead of Connect, you can skip to Step 4. Step 3: If you’ve already connected QuickBooks, click QuickBooks Settings. Step 4: Under Bill pay configuration, enable both Sync bills automatically. Step 5 (optional): Under Bill pay configuration, you can choose to export vendors to QuickBooks Online when they are created in Brex. If you don't enable this feature, a new Brex vendor will be created or matched in QuickBooks Online when a bill for that vendor is exported.
- Sync bills automatically: Bills and vendors will export when scheduled for payment.
- Export vendors on creation: Vendors will export as soon as they're created. To enable this setting, turn on Sync bills automatically.
Note: Once you've enabled bill sync when adding a new vendor, suggestions will populate from your ERP. More details can be found here.
Troubleshooting
If one of your bills has an error, a banner containing the error message will appear in Bills > Sync errors. Follow the provided steps to resolve the issue and resync the bill. Stale data is a common bill pay error. When data is modified on QuickBooks, syncing will halt for that bill. To continue syncing the bill changes to QuickBooks, go to the specific bill and click Resync this bill.
Sage Intacct
New for Spring
The Sage Intacct integration with bill pay is a one-directional sync from Brex to Sage Intacct, where bills created in Brex will sync over to Sage Intacct. We sync both a bill and payment entity to their system, then automatically link the two. We’ll create an associated payment record for bills in the payment processed state. You can open the details window of a successfully synced bill and go to Accounting > View bill in Sage Intacct or View payment in Sage Intacct to view the corresponding bill/payment in Sage Intacct. We won’t sync edits made in Sage Intacct back to bills in Brex. When you edit in Brex and sync them over to Sage Intacct, it will overwrite the corresponding bill data in Sage Intacct.
Fields synced
- Vendor
- If vendor name matching doesn’t detect an entry in Sage Intacct, we’ll create a new vendor with that name.
- Bill
- Invoice attachment
- Invoice number
- ERP posted date
- Auto-populated from invoice date and synced as posting date of the bill
- Due date
- Memo
- Payment account
- Line items:
- Amount
- Description
- GL account
- Location
- Department
- Class
- Payment
- Entity
- Amount
- Currency
Setup instructions
Step 1: If you haven’t set up Sage Intacct yet, click your name in the top right > Integrations > Sage Intacct > Connect and follow the prompts. If you see Manage instead of Connect, you can skip to Step 4. Step 2: Go to Accounting and click Sage Intacct settings. Step 3: Under Bill pay configuration, enable Sync bills automatically. Step 4: Click Refresh integration to sync your latest account categories. Note: Once enabled, whenever you add a new vendor, suggestions will populate from your ERP. More details can be found here.
Troubleshooting
If one of your bills has an error, a banner containing the error message will appear in Bills > Sync errors. Follow the provided steps to resolve the issue and resync the bill.
Xero
The Xero integration with bill pay is a one-directional sync from Brex to Xero where bills created in Brex will sync over to Xero. We sync both a bill and payment to Xero and automatically sync the two. We’ll create an associated payment record for the bill. After the bill has synced successfully, a customer can open the bill's details pane and go to the Accounting section. Here, they can click View bill in Xero to view the corresponding bill in Xero. We won’t sync edits made in Xero back to bills in Brex. When you edit in Brex and sync them over to Xero, it will overwrite the corresponding bill data in Xero.
Fields synced
- Vendor
- If vendor name matching doesn’t detect an entry in Xero, we’ll create a new vendor with that name.
- Bill
- Invoice number
- ERP posted date
- Auto-populated from invoice date and synced as date of the bill
- Due date
- Memo
- Line items:
- Amount
- GL account
- Location
- Department
- Tracking categories
Setup instructions
Step 1: In your dashboard, click Accounting. Step 2: If you haven’t set up Xero yet, click your name in the top right > Integrations > click Connect on the Xero card and follow the prompts. Bill sync will be enabled automatically after connecting Xero. You can switch this off later on the Xero settings page. Step 3: If you’ve already connected Xero, click Xero Settings. Step 4: Under Bill pay configuration, enable Sync bills automatically. Note: Bills sync is only available for five bills per month with the Xero Starter Plan.
Troubleshooting
If one of your bills has an error, a banner containing the error message will appear in Bills > Sync errors. Follow the provided steps to resolve the issue and resync the bill.
Unsupported ERPs
If you don’t use NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, or Xero as your ERP, you can make custom fields that are visible for bills. You can then enter those fields while submitting the bill and export them into a CSV file, which you can import into your ERP.
Import purchase orders
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When you make a purchase, some vendors might issue you a purchase order, which is a legal document that outlines the purchase’s details. It’s normally issued upon purchase initiation but can be used to trace the entire lifecycle of the purchase, all the way up to payment and delivery.
If you use Netsuite or QuickBooks Online, you can import approved purchase orders from your ERP into your Brex account. Upon import, these purchase orders will be matched to incoming bills. If there are any billing discrepancies, we’ll automatically inform you. Should that user or an admin make any changes to the purchase order’s information, these changes will be reflected in your ERP.
To enable this feature, follow the steps below. Step 1: Go to Accounting > ERP Settings > Bill pay configuration. Step 2: Next to Import purchase orders, click Enable.
Purchase orders can now be matched to new bills.
Troubleshooting
NetSuite import purchase order set-up failure
Your customer integration role must have currency access. You can update this by going to Permissions > Lists > Currency (view).
Canceled bills
When you cancel a bill on Brex, we move the Bill to Complete in a Canceled Status.
You should make sure to delete the bill in the ERP, as Brex does not automatically delete bills in the ERP.
Syncing issues
If you’re having trouble syncing a bill payment, please note the following:
- We do not retroactively sync completed bills created before the integration is set up.
- This is a one-way sync, meaning we only sync data from Brex into your external accounting platform.
- Marking a bill as paid externally will sync the payment back to the ERP
If a bill sync outright fails, you’ll see a banner at the top of the Bills page with some information as to why it failed, and often a suggestion for how to fix the issue. You will also see a resync button once the issue blocking the sync has been fixed.