Bill pay

• Vendor
• Amount
• Due date
• Source
• Invoice
• Purchase order
• Memo
• Method
• Spend limit
• ERP effective date
• Payment date
• Entity

• General
• Amount
• Spend limit
• Submitted by
• Duplicate bills
• Vendor
• Source
• Compliance
• Memo
• Invoice
• Bill invoice number
• Date
• Payment date
• Due date
• Accounting
• Billed entity
• GL account

ERP fields can help categorize and codify bills, saving time, reducing sync failures, and ensuring proper data capture. These fields, whether standard or custom, are imported from your ERP and made available for use on the bill pay form.

Admins can configure which ERP fields are visible on bills directly from the Fields Library using the visibility settings for each field. For more information, see this help article.

In Bills, all submissions will take on one of four states:

• Drafts: Drafts are bills that need to be reviewed and submitted for approval before you can send the payment.
• For approval: Bills awaiting approval require you and anyone else in the approval chain to okay them before you can send the payment. Once fully approved, the payment is automatically initiated on your specified payment date.
• For payment: Bills awaiting payment are fully approved, but the payment has either not been made or is still processing.
  • Scheduled: Bills scheduled for payment will automatically initiate on their payment date.
  • Ready for payment: Bills without a payment date
  • Card ready: Your card is ready for payment (full card details are only visible to the cardholder).
  • Card sent: Your card has been sent to the vendor (full card details are only visible to the vendor via secure portal and to the cardholder in Brex).
• Processing/Complete: Complete bills have reached the final state as of the completed on date and can no longer be modified.
  • Processing: You’ve initiated the payment but it isn’t complete.
  • Processed: We’ve successfully completed the payment.
  • Paid by card: A one-time virtual card paid the bill.
  • Marked paid: The bill was marked as paid externally (i.e., paid outside of Brex).
  • Canceled: The bill has been canceled. A new draft can be copied/created from a canceled bill.
  • Denied: The approver has denied the approval request.
  • Payment failed: The payment has failed. A Retry payment banner and button will appear with remediation steps.

For more information on the status of the bill payment, select the applicable bill, and view the Status section in the detail pane.

To fund bill payments you can use your Brex business accounts or connect an external bank account via Plaid, from which we’ll pull funds to pay your bill.

If you haven’t already connected to an external bank account, you can do so as you go through the process to pay a bill. When choosing a funding source from the Account dropdown, click Add external account, instead.

Once connected, you can choose it from the Account dropdown when you pay a bill.

Instantly connect through Plaid

You must establish a direct connection with your bank by entering your sign-in credentials when prompted. Our partner, Plaid, will connect to your new bill pay funding source immediately.

You can make spend limits required for bills in Company settings > Expenses. Enabling this feature makes a spend limit mandatory for bills. If disabled, the spend limit becomes optional. When a bill is submitted, users can associate the expense with a spend limit. If no limit is selected by the submitter, approvers can choose one during the review process. Regardless of whether a bill has a spend limit, it will always be visible in Expenses.

Step 1: Go to Bills > Pay a bill (individual bill) / Add invoices (bulk upload drafts). Step 2: Under Create new bill, fill out the following information:

• Vendor
  • Legal name: The legal name of the vendor you want to send payment to.
    • If you have bills data sync enabled for QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, or Xero, this name will be used to determine whether the vendor already exists in your ERP or not, and we will either create a new vendor or sync to your existing vendor accordingly.
  • Email: (Optional except when sending a bill to a vendor) The email address of the person you want to notify when payment is initiated. Toggle the button on or off to enable or disable this setting.
• Bill details
  • Memo (optional)
  • PremiumEnterpriseSmart card Purchase order (optional): The unique identifier used to trace the entire lifecycle of purchasing from request > purchase > payment and delivery > QuickBooks Online or NetSuite.
  • Entity: The entity that will fund a bill payment. We base your default funding source on your entity configuration.
  • Spend limit (optional): This is the spend limit from which we’ll pull the vendor’s payment.
  • ERP posting date (optional): The invoice date on which the bill will be posted to the ERP.
  • Due date: The date the invoice is due for payment.
  • ERP payment account (varies by ERP): The bank account that needs to be synced to NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, or Xero.
  • Invoice number (optional)
  • Bill amount
• Line items: An invoice’s individually detected line items can be coded for the GL account or added to custom fields.
• Payment method: The payment type you’ll use to pay the vendor. Payment methods available include:
  • One-time virtual card, which generally processes the same day
  • ACH, which has a variety of processing times based on funding source, transaction amount, and other factors.
    • ACH transactions funded by your Brex business account are estimated to process same-day, subject to cut-off times.
    • ACH transactions funded by your external bank account are estimated to process in 2-5 banking days.
  • Domestic wire is estimated to process in 0-1 business days.
  • International wire is estimated to process in 1-2 business days.
  • Local rails are estimated to process in 2-5 business days.
  • Checks are estimated to reach the vendor in 7-10 business days.
    • The check processing time is determined based on when the beneficiary deposits the check, which can vary.

Note: If you fund the payment with an external bank account, the payment by domestic wire, international wire, local rails, or check can take an additional 1-2 banking days.

• Schedule Payment (optional):
  • Send payment on: This is the date you choose for Brex to pull funds from your account. Note, this is not the date the funds will reach the vendor.
  • Account: The Brex business account or external bank account that will fund the vendor’s payment.
    • To send a bill in local currency, select a local bank account. For more information on how to set up the bank account, refer to the section on global bill pay below.
  • Repeat this payment: Toggle on or off whether this payment should be repeated in the future.
  • Auto-approve future payments: Toggle on or off whether to automatically approve future bills in the series.

Note: When you upload an invoice, we’ll use AI to pre-fill the text from the invoice to the fields. If AI reads these fields incorrectly, you can manually adjust them to reflect the correct information. It is your responsibility to make sure the fields are filled out correctly. Step 3: Once these fields are filled out, click Next. Before submitting a bill for approval or scheduling an outgoing international wire, you have the option of adding principal protection, a paid service and fee that protects an outgoing international wire from reductions due to correspondent banking fees so the full amount is received by the recipient. Step 4: (Optional) To save and return to this bill, click Save and leave. This creates a draft bill that you can revisit later in Bills > Draft. Step 5: You’ll see a confirmation window summarizing your input. If you need to make any changes, click Back. If all the information looks correct, click Submit for approval/Schedule payment to schedule the invoice for payment. Note: You can only schedule a payment if it’s eligible for self-approval by no more than one approver. For more information on tracking your bill payment, refer to this help article. If you’ve established an approval chain, the approver will be notified to sign off on the bill. Until fully approved, you can find the bill in Bills > For approval. Once fully approved, you can find all of your scheduled payments in Bills > For payment.

You can send an email invoice to your Brex account by using a unique Brex email address assigned to your account. Any users with bill drafting permissions can find this email address in Bills > Upload invoices. You can also email invoices to bills@brex.com to have them prepared as draft bills in your account from a registered user email on your Brex account. You can then forward emailed invoices from your inbox to this address or provide this unique bill pay email to your vendors so they can send the invoice to Brex directly. The invoices should either be an attached file (PNG, PDF, jpeg, txt, docx, or JPG) or described in the email body. Invoices added from emails will go directly into Drafts. A new bill is drafted with complete or incomplete information based on AI accuracy and required details, which you can then submit by clicking on the bill then click Review and pay.

By default, account and card admins receive a notification whenever a bill is created from email. This lets you know that the bill is ready to review, or notifies you if the bill is missing information. You can click Review draft from within the notification to finalize your bill.

Here are some tips to help make sure that your bill submission is successful:

• Only attach one invoice per email.
• Do not add any other recipients to the email (including in the CC or BCC field).
• Add the invoice as an attachment, as opposed to pasting directly into the email.
• The invoice needs to be in English and denominated in $USD.
• Make sure that you’re the appropriate role type and you have the required permission for the action you’re trying to take.

To pay your entity’s bills with a local bank account, follow the steps below: Step 1: Connect a local bank account to Brex. Note: If you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to verify your non-US entities before you can connect your local bank account. For more information, please read this help article. Step 2: Go to Team > Entities > [your entity] > Bill pay settings.

Step 3: When creating the bill, select the Local transfer for the payment method and your sub-entity.

Step 4: Select your local bank account for bill pay, and the corresponding GL account. You can now pay your bills with your local funding source. When asked to specify your bank account under Payment details, you can select your local bank account. If your EU-based entity uses a local funding source, an account or card admin must authorize any vendors via Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) before they can be paid from this funding source. You can click on the vendor from Vendors to see whether they’re already verified. If any of your vendors have outstanding local transfer rails information, a prompt will ask you to enter a one-time password and click Authorize.

Supported Locations

• Andorra (EUR)
• Austria (EUR)
• Belgium (EUR)
• Bulgaria (EUR)
• Canada (CAD)
• Croatia (EUR)
• Cyprus (EUR)
• Czech Republic (EUR)
• Denmark (EUR)
• Estonia (EUR)
• Finland (EUR)
• France (EUR)
• Germany (EUR)
• Greece (EUR)
• Holy See (Vatican City) (EUR)
• Hungary (EUR)
• Iceland (EUR)
• Ireland (EUR)
• Italy (EUR)
• Latvia (EUR)
• Liechtenstein (EUR)
• Lithuania (EUR)
• Luxembourg (EUR)
• Malta (EUR)
• Monaco (EUR)
• Netherlands (EUR)
• Norway (EUR)
• Poland (EUR)
• Portugal (EUR)
• Romania (EUR)
• San Marino (EUR)
• Slovakia (EUR)
• Slovenia (EUR)
• Spain (EUR)
• Sweden (EUR)
• Switzerland (EUR)
• United Kingdom (EUR, GBP)
• United States (USD)

If you upload an invoice in a foreign currency, you can pay that bill from your Brex business account the same way you’d pay a bill in USD. Because we lock in an exchange rate once the bill is approved and ready to be paid, the USD amount debited from your Brex business account may fluctuate, even if the amount of the wire in local currency stays static. The payment will be accounted for in the local currency within your connected ERP. You can find a comprehensive overview of supported locations in this help article.

You can also pay an international bill with a wire denominated in USD, but please note that the receiving financial institution may convert your wire into local currency at a rate of their choosing. You can find a comprehensive overview of supported locations in this help article.

If you would like to pay your bill with a one-time virtual card, you can choose the Payment method of pay by one-time virtual card, and Brex will generate a virtual card available to the selected cardholder on the bill's scheduled date within your Brex dashboard. This option allows you to earn Brex rewards points and take advantage of faster payment processing. Before selecting this method, we recommend confirming with your vendor that they accept Mastercard for invoice payments.

All bills follow the approval flow outlined in the selected spend limit’s policy, or the default policy if none is selected. Once the bill with the Payment method of a one-time virtual card is fully approved, the one-time virtual card is issued and becomes available on the scheduled payment date to be used to pay the bill. If the bill is approved earlier, the cardholder will still only gain access starting from that scheduled date. There are two options for cardholders:

• Send to team member: Assign an internal cardholder to enter the details in a vendor portal or forward them to the vendor.
  • If a team member is assigned as the cardholder, the bill submitter will see the card details in three places on the scheduled date:
    • Wallet – Under View all limits and cards > Bill payment cards, the cardholder can view all cards created for bills.
    • Cards & limits – The Cards tab lists all one-time cards created for bills.
    • Bills – For bills with a Card ready status, card details can be viewed in the details pane (right-hand side window when the bill is selected).
• Send directly to vendor: Card details are sent securely by email to your vendor to the default vendor email on file or the email you specified when drafting the bill.
  • If you’ve chosen to send the card to the vendor, they’ll receive a secure email with a link to access the card details via the vendor portal. The vendor must then use those details to process the payment. Brex does not support re-sending card information via SMS or other channels.
  • The vendor portal link can be continually accessed until the token either expires after 72 hours, or a card transaction is cleared (3-5 business days of card swipe), or access is revoked (i.e., card locked, bill cancelled).
    • To learn more about the security details, please see the Security section in this article.
  • Blocking vendor payment link: If you wish for the vendor(s) not to have access to the link with the one-time card details, you can lock the virtual card created via their dashboard. This will block the vendors from being able to access the link to the card.
    • If you wish to re-enable the link with card details, you can simply unlock the virtual card, which will make the vendor link accessible again.

Note: The card transaction will only be approved if the amount is within a small margin of the bill total and the currency matches the bill to account for other fees incurred by the vendor and to prevent fraud and overspending.

When a bill being paid by a one-time virtual card has been approved and reaches its scheduled payment date, it moves to Card Ready status. Unlike wire transfers and ACH payments, one-time virtual card bills are not processed automatically. Either the designated cardholder or vendor must manually process the payment using the provided card details.

One-time virtual cards automatically expire under these conditions:

• The card is not used within 60-90 days of card issuance (i.e., bill is fully approved).
  • For example, a card issued on June 15 will have an expiration month set to August and will expire on September 1.
• Cards expire once the bill has been fully processed (either fully transacted or reversed)
  • If a bill is reversed, subsequent attempts to process, the virtual card will be declined as the virtual card allows only one transaction. In this case, cancel the current bill and create a new one from the draft to generate a new card.

To reissue the card, click Resend in the bill details pane. This will retain your existing bill approval and create a new virtual card for vendor use.

Virtual card bill details can be edited by account admins, card admins, and by users with bill drafting permissions (for their own bills). While a bill is in draft, all fields can be edited. Once a bill is fully approved, the bill amount can no longer be changed, and card recipients cannot be updated after a card has been created. If you need to update the bill amount or assign a different recipient to the card, you’ll need to cancel the existing bill and copy it back to draft to make changes. See Edit a bill for more information.

Account and card admins can cancel any bill, and any other users with bill drafting permissions can cancel their own bills as long as the card hasn’t been used and no transaction has occurred. To cancel a bill, see Cancel a bill. This will immediately terminate the associated virtual card.

One-time virtual cards can be issued in non-USD currencies, as long as the currency selected when creating the bill matches the currency the vendor will charge.

Once the card is used for payment, the bill’s status becomes Paid by card, and the payment record automatically syncs to your ERP (applicable to NetSuite only).

• After a vendor charges a one-time virtual card, Brex automatically matches the cleared transaction(s) to the bill.

If the charges equal the bill total, the bill is marked as paid in Brex and synced to accounting.

Depending on your notification settings, you’ll receive an email notification when a bill needs to be actioned, which you can click through to approve the bill right away. Step 1: In the email, click View payment.

Step 2: Click Approve or Deny.

Step 3: If you choose to deny a payment, you’ll need to provide a reason for your denial of the bill payment and select whether you’d like to notify the submitter.

To review multiple bill payments more efficiently, sign in to your Brex dashboard.

Bill payments can be approved in bulk or individually.

Step 1: In your dashboard, go to either Bills or Tasks.

Step 2: Click on a single bill or select all/ multiple bills via the check box to the left (those labeled with For approval will be displayed at the top).

Step 3: Select Approve, Approve selected (for bulk approvals) or Deny.

When an account or card admin uses our bill pay feature to pay a bill, they’ll be asked to choose an account for the payment.

This can be a Brex business account or an external bank account. However, when choosing a bank account, you might notice that your bank of choice is grayed out and has an Unsupported status. There can be different causes for this, some examples of which are outlined below.

Insufficient funds

When using a Brex business account to pay your bill, accounts that don’t have enough funds to cover the payment will be marked as Unsupported. External bank accounts with insufficient funds might still be selectable, but choosing one without the funds to cover the payment will ultimately lead to the failure of the payment. Please add funds to the external account before creating a new bill to retry the payment, or select a different payment source. Failure to have sufficient funds to pay a bill may result in the loss of the ability to use bill pay.

Recently failed collection

If we’ve recently attempted to debit funds from this account and it has failed, we’ll mark the account as Unsupported. Please address the original reason for the failure and contact us to ask us to reactivate it.

Unverified account

Your account needs to be verified before you can use it as your bill payment source. You can connect your bank account directly by signing in through Plaid. In most cases, this verifies your account instantaneously.

Note: We may need you to upload additional documents, such as a bank statement, to verify your external bank account. If this is the case, you’ll see a prompt to upload in your dashboard.

However, if you’d rather not sign in with Plaid, or if Plaid doesn’t support your bank account, you can choose to complete a micro-deposit to verify your bank account. Even if you’ve already connected a bank account in the past, it may not have been successfully verified, in which case you can reconnect your bank account to initiate the micro-deposit process. Note, we may require additional documents, such as a bank statement, to verify the accountholder. If this is the case, you’ll see a prompt to upload in your dashboard.

Micro-deposits can take 1-3 banking days, so if you’ve only recently connected, you’ll need to complete the verification process before using the account to fund a bill payment.

For the fastest turnaround time, please also make sure Brex has been added to your bank's allowlist.

Other

If none of the above scenarios apply to you but your bank is still Unsupported for bill payments, please reach out to our support team.

In order to mark a bill as paid, it must have all of the following assigned:

• Bill/payment amount
• Payment date
• Vendor name
• (If auto-sync for bill is enabled for supported ERPs) GL accounts

If you have issues forwarding an invoice to Brex, make sure that your role type supports creating bill drafts. Before forwarding an invoice, optimize the email body by removing any unnecessary attachments, such as company logos, photos, etc.

Pay outside of Brex allows you to track Bills paid externally. To get started, select the Payment method > Pay Outside of Brex.

Note: The Record payment on date is optional:

• If you set or update the payment date in the future, it will transition to the For Payment tab as Scheduled.
• If it was created in the past or the date approaches, the bill will transition to Paid.
• If you click Mark as paid, the payment date becomes the day you clicked Mark as paid, and the bill transitions to Complete (with a status of Mark paid).

If your bill payment fails, you'll immediately see a payment failures banner on your Bills page and receive an email notification. To understand why, simply click View payment failures on the banner, which will take you directly to the For payment tab, where all failed payments are listed. The instructions in the bill details error banner will help you resolve the issue.

If the payment fails due to an issue outside of Brex, like insufficient funds in your bank account, you'll first need to resolve that external issue. Once you have, click the Retry payment button in the error banner within the bill's details. A new payment will be initiated immediately, without any need to update the bill.

If the payment fails due to incorrect bill details, such as wrong vendor payment information or an issue with the selected source account, you'll need to update the bill first. You may need to confirm the bill details with the vendor. Click the Edit button in the bill's details pane. The bill payment form will open, showing only the fields that can be edited. After making the necessary changes, click Update and retry payment.

Once you initiate a retry, you'll be automatically redirected back to the Bills page. The bill's status will update to processing (unless you specified a future payment date), and the payment will then proceed according to standard processing times.