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Overview

Rather than waiting for a vendor to email an invoice, Smartbills can sign in to that vendor’s billing portal and collect invoices itself. Connect the account once, set a schedule, and bills arrive without anyone forwarding anything. Connections live on each vendor’s detail page. Finance Admins and Administrators can manage them.

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How a connection works

1

Connect the account

You supply the credentials the portal needs. Each vendor declares its own required fields, so the form matches what that specific portal asks for rather than a generic username and password.
2

Smartbills runs a retrieval

A run signs in, locates invoices, and downloads them. Runs happen on a schedule you set, or on demand.
3

Invoices become bills

Retrieved documents are read and turned into draft bills, ready for your normal approval and payment process.

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Credential handling

Credentials are handled by a secure third-party connector and are never stored by Smartbills. Treat any spreadsheet you use to import them as sensitive, and delete it once the import is done.
Each connection has an owner, which you can reassign. Some portals also support token-based linking instead of stored credentials, which avoids holding a password at all where the vendor offers it.

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Connect a vendor

Open the vendor and choose to add a connection. The form is generated from that vendor’s credential schema, so fill in whatever it asks for. Portals commonly need a login URL and an account identifier in addition to the username and password.

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Runs

Each connection keeps a history of runs. Opening a run shows what happened, which bills it produced, and screenshots captured during the session. The screenshots matter. When a run fails, they show you what the portal actually displayed, which is usually enough to diagnose a changed password, a terms-of-service prompt, or an unexpected verification step without contacting support.

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Responding to a run in progress

A run can pause and ask for something only you can supply, such as a one-time verification code. Runs accept interactions while they are open, so you can answer the prompt and let the run continue rather than starting over. A run that is stuck or no longer needed can be cancelled.

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Scheduling

Each connection carries its own schedule that controls how often Smartbills checks for new invoices. Set it to match the vendor’s billing cycle. Checking a monthly invoice daily adds load without adding value.

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Connecting accounts during import

Vendor import accepts credentials alongside the vendor record, so you can onboard a list of vendors and connect their portals in one pass. Add these columns to your spreadsheet: Import accepts CSV, XLSX, and XLSM. Download the template from the import dialog rather than building the header row by hand.

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Reading the import result

Import reports each row separately, and the outcomes are worth understanding before you run it on a large list:
  • Created: a new vendor was added.
  • Already existed: the row matched a vendor you already had, by website or name. The existing vendor was reused and its details were left untouched. Import will not overwrite existing records.
  • Connected: the credentials were accepted and the account is live.
  • Login rejected: the vendor was created but its credentials failed. Connect it from its own page.
  • Login skipped: that vendor already had a connection.
Because matching is by website or name, a vendor you have under a slightly different name will be created a second time rather than matched. Review the created list after a large import and merge any duplicates.

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Disconnecting

Removing a connection stops future runs and discards the stored credentials. Bills already retrieved are unaffected.

Manage vendors

Edit, merge, and import vendor records

Bills

What happens to retrieved invoices