Smart Bill has revolutionized invoicing in Romania. Its solution works for businesses of every size when it comes to issuing, sending and collecting invoices, delivery notes, pro forma invoices and receipts, as well as managing inventory. All online. So adding it to the partners in BT Store, the online hub of solutions that complement banking for entrepreneurs, recently launched by Banca Transilvania, came as naturally as could be.

Let’s start at the beginning

The idea for this business came at a meeting with a client for whom Smart Bill had developed a website. Because issuing invoices and receipts was extremely cumbersome, they were looking for a way to simplify the whole process. Starting in 2007, with EU accession, invoices and receipts were no longer fiscal documents and could therefore be issued on a computer and sent by email. That’s how it all began: from a context and a solution to a problem.

“The name is a play on words: Bill means an invoice, but it’s also a character we use in our communications; it brings a human, warm touch to a piece of software dealing with something often perceived as cold and rigid. Bill is smart. :)” says Mircea Capatina, co‑founder and business development manager.

The road to success

The road to success is generally arduous, but when you have a product built by experts and your focus is on making your customers happy, you can’t help but get where you want to go. “The seed was the most important thing, and I believe its DNA said that we care. We truly cared: to build a product we could be proud of, to make customers happy, to succeed. From that seed came a platform created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, not by programmers for experts—a platform that truly makes the work easier. From there, a customer‑centric culture was born,” Mircea Capatina tells us.

Some good ideas from Smart Bill’s management

• Technology is changing our lives and it’s not optional. It works either for us or against us.
• The biggest challenge for people—and for businesses—is staying relevant. We must constantly adapt to change, because most industries are influenced by technology.
• Entrepreneurship is a team sport, so the team matters enormously.
• It never becomes easy. Maybe easier, but still hard.

Smart Bill by the numbers

BT + Smart Bill

The BT–Smart Bill partnership started in 2017 and is still underway: newly incorporated companies that open an account with BT get 12 months free on Smart Bill.

More recently, through BT Store, Smart Bill takes day‑to‑day bookkeeping off entrepreneurs’ shoulders—whether that means issuing 2-3 invoices a month and sending them to customers and the accountant, or tens of thousands of sales with receipts, invoices and goods receipts, by any number of users, from any number of locations. On top of that, they offer preferential pricing packages.

Smart Bill’s smart plans

Smart Bill has big plans. They want to turn Smart Bill into an ecosystem at the core of a business’s operations: “We’re talking about multiple versions of Smart Bill—for the client, for the accountant, for the field sales rep—versions connected to online stores, to marketplaces and, who knows, maybe even to a bank. :) Everything will be interconnected, eliminating manual work and enabling real-time data transfer between various entities,” says Mircea Capatina. So they are pursuing their mission to reinvent the financial accounting software market, something they set out to tackle in earnest starting in 2019.

Instead of a conclusion, Smart Bill in three words: 100% about customers.