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If you're using BILL for AP and running into its limits, or evaluating it alongside alternatives, this is written for you.
BILL works. For businesses with straightforward AP (a single entity, a manageable vendor list, bills that don't need to be coded at the line-item level), it does what it promises. You capture a bill, route an approval, make a payment. The process moves.
The problems start when the business gets more complex. It’s because BILL wasn’t built for them.
What BILL was built for
BILL is a general-purpose AP tool. Its core workflow (capture a bill, assign a GL code, route for approval, pay) works well for businesses where that is all AP needs to do. Professional services firms, simple retail operations, and businesses with a flat chart of accounts and a low vendor count are the buyers BILL was designed around.
What it was not designed for is job-costed businesses, like construction companies running 20 active jobs or HVAC contractors with bills that split across multiple service agreements. For building automation companies receiving bills with 150 line items from a single supplier or bookkeeping firms managing AP across ten trade clients, each with their own QuickBooks file and job structure, BILL’s limit is data quality at the point of entry.
Where BILL falls short for job-costed businesses
Line-item capture stops at the header
BILL captures bills at the header level: vendor, amount, due date, and a single GL code assignment. For a business that needs to code bills at the line-item level (quantity, unit price, cost code per line, job assignment per line), that is where the manual work begins, not ends.
A construction company processing a subcontractor bill that covers work on three active jobs has to manually split and code that bill in QuickBooks after BILL has processed it. The AP tool handled the document. The job cost data still required a person.
QuickBooks sync does not carry line-item detail
BILL syncs to QuickBooks, but the sync carries the bill at the header level. In QuickBooks, the result is a vendor entry with a total instead of a line-by-line cost record. For businesses where job costing depends on granular data flowing from AP to QuickBooks, that sync creates a gap that has to be filled manually.
Per-approver pricing creates friction at scale
BILL charges per user for approvers. For a construction company where approvals need to reach project managers, superintendents, and finance staff, the per-approver cost grows with the number of people in the process. Businesses with complex approval chains end up managing access tightly to control costs, which means limiting who can approve and creating bottlenecks.
Multi-entity and multi-client management is limited
For bookkeeping firms managing multiple client entities, or construction companies with subsidiary structures, BILL requires navigating between separate accounts per entity. There is no unified view across clients, and the manual overhead of managing multiple entities scales with entity count.
What trade and construction businesses need from AP
The requirements for a job-costed business are specific:
- Line-item extraction that captures quantity, unit price, description, and any reference data that maps to a job or purchase order - from every bill, regardless of format.
- Coding that maps each line item to the right cost code, job, and QuickBooks class automatically, based on the business's existing chart of accounts structure.
- A QuickBooks sync that writes line-item data back to the accounting file, not just a total, so job cost reports reflect actual transaction detail.
- Approval routing that reaches the right people - project managers, field supervisors, finance - with enough context per line item to approve accurately without sending the bill back.
- Pricing that does not penalize businesses for involving the people who need to be in the approval process.
What the switch looks like in practice
Zoar Finance, an outsourced accounting firm managing AP for clients across construction, nonprofits, and professional services, had been using both BILL and Hubdoc before switching to MakersHub. Their clients needed job-level cost accuracy that neither tool was delivering.
After switching, Zoar achieved a 10x improvement in job costing accuracy. The line-item detail that previously required manual re-entry now flows directly from bill capture to QuickBooks. Deirdre Otto, founder of Zoar Finance, described the QuickBooks sync directly: bills post at the line-item level without a second entry step, and the data that reaches QuickBooks reflects the actual transaction, not a summarized version of it.
For Outsourced FinOps, a finance operations firm serving architecture, engineering, and construction clients, the move away from BILL was driven by the per-approver pricing model and the data quality gap. Michael Newberger, founder of Outsourced FinOps, described the BILL limitation plainly: the tool handled payment but did not solve the data problem that job-costed clients required.
After switching, Outsourced FinOps achieved a 10x improvement in bill processing efficiency and eliminated manual data entry from the AP workflow entirely.
Before and after: BILL vs. MakersHub for job-costed businesses
What to ask before switching
Is the current tool's data quality the problem, or is it the workflow?
If bills are processing but job cost data is consistently inaccurate or incomplete, the issue is data capture, not approval routing. No tool change fixes a data quality problem unless the replacement captures line items.
Does the replacement sync line-item data to QuickBooks, or just totals?
Confirming this before committing avoids replicating the same gap with a different tool.
How does approval routing work for field operations?
For construction and trades businesses where approvals need to reach people who are not in the office, routing needs to work on mobile and without requiring a dedicated login for every approver.
What does the pricing look like at the approver count the business needs?
A tool that prices per approver will become expensive for any business where meaningful approval involves multiple project-level stakeholders.
Frequently asked questions
What is the main difference between BILL and MakersHub for construction companies?
BILL captures bills and handles payment but processes data at the header level. For construction companies that need line-item cost data flowing to QuickBooks at the job and cost code level, BILL requires manual re-entry after the fact. MakersHub captures every line item automatically and syncs the detail to QuickBooks without a second entry step.
Does MakersHub replace BILL or work alongside it?
For businesses whose primary AP need is job-costed line-item data flowing to QuickBooks, MakersHub replaces BILL. For businesses using BILL primarily for card controls and expense management alongside AP, the two can coexist: MakersHub handles payables, BILL handles card-based expenses.
What happens to QuickBooks data when switching from BILL?
Historical bill data in BILL does not automatically migrate to MakersHub. Most businesses run both systems in parallel for a short period during transition. Bills from the switchover date onward are processed through MakersHub. QuickBooks history from before the switch remains unchanged.
Is MakersHub only for large businesses?
No. O.Z. Enterprises was a 22-person building automation company when they switched. The deciding factor is bill structure rather than size, and specifically, whether the business needs line-item data from vendor bills to flow accurately into QuickBooks for job costing. That requirement appears at businesses of all sizes in construction, trades, and the accounting firms that serve them.
How does MakersHub handle multi-client AP for bookkeeping firms?
Each client operates as a separate workspace within MakersHub, with their own QuickBooks connection, job structure, vendor list, and approval chain. A bookkeeping firm managing ten trade clients processes each client's AP independently but from a single platform, without switching between accounts or re-entering data between systems.