What to export before you cancel BILL (or any AP tool)

1. 1

   Settle what is in flight

   Let scheduled payments clear or cancel them, and void payments that will never clear, so the record you export is final. BILL will not process a cancellation while payments are still processing.
2. 2

   Order the documents

   Request the copies of the bill PDFs and other source documents first, because they can take the longest. BILL’s historical data download typically takes 14 business days.
3. 3

   Export the bill list

   Export every bill, vendor credit and payment with all columns showing, for the full period you need to keep.
4. 4

   Export the approval history

   Download who approved each bill and when. It is the record an auditor asks for, and it usually lives only in the AP tool.
5. 5

   Export the vendor records

   Export the vendor list last, after the final bills and payments, so it reflects the last state of each vendor.
6. 6

   Check the files, then cancel

   Open each export, check the row counts and dates against the tool, and store the files with the client’s records. Then submit the cancellation.

A payment that is still processing when you lose access is hard to trace. In BILL this is also a hard stop: BILL says all payments must be cleared, and all financed invoices fully paid, before it processes a cancellation request. Cancel scheduled payments or wait for them to clear, and void payments that have not cleared.

BILL also says cancellation is not instant: an account cancels on the next available billing date once nothing is pending, and only administrators or users with Manage Company permissions can request it.

BILL says its Bills page export does not include the values for associated documents, notes, checkboxes or actions. For the files themselves, BILL offers a historical data download: a zipped folder of bill and invoice files, vendor credit files and cashed check images, with an index.

• BILL lists the cost as $50 per account and says orders typically process within 14 business days.
• A bank-authorized Administrator must request it, the account needs multi-factor authentication, and BILL phones the requester to verify identity before sending the link.
• The link expires seven calendar days after it is sent.
• Before ordering, BILL asks you to process everything in the BILL Inbox and confirm that check payments have cleared and their images are uploaded.
• It is not available on subscription-free Basic accounts, so request it before any downgrade.

In BILL there are two routes. On the Bills page, show the columns you need, scroll until every record is loaded (BILL says to select “load more” until all records show), then use the Download icon and choose Export .CSV or Export to Excel. For a fuller extract, BILL’s Legacy Import & Export (under Settings) exports bills, vendor credits and payments as transactions, and vendors, accounts, departments, classes, locations and jobs as records. Your user role needs Sync with Accounting System permission, and past exports stay available under Export history.

Before you rely on the file, compare the row count and the total for each month with the tool. A filtered view exports only what it shows.

Once you have the bill list, it is a good moment to look for bills that were entered twice. The free duplicate bill checker reads a bills CSV in your browser and lists likely duplicates to check.

Accounting systems usually receive the approved bill, not the approval trail behind it. In BILL, the Bill Approval Audit report (Reports, then Bill Approval Audit) lists bills created or paid in a date range, filtered by transaction date or created date, with Last Approved By, Last Approved Date, Next Approver, Approvals Requested, Approvals Completed, Last Payment Date and Last Payer. Choose Download for a CSV.

Run it for every period an auditor or the client might ask about, not just the current year.

The vendor list is what the next tool needs first, but exporting it last means it reflects every change made before you leave. In BILL, vendors are one of the records in Legacy Import & Export. If any export includes tax IDs or bank details, store it as you would any other sensitive client file, and do not email it around.

BILL lists what cancelling removes: a linked BILL Spend & Expense account, bill and invoice history, payment history, sending and receiving payments, vendor and customer contact information, unlimited document storage and accounting system sync. BILL says it retains records as required by law, but that is not the same as you having access to them.

Firms that manage clients from a BILL Console have one more step: BILL says it cannot cancel a Console while active client accounts are linked, so cancel or unlink each client account first.

If the client’s books are in QuickBooks Online, the vendors and bills that synced there are already in the ledger. In Aequo AP, connecting QuickBooks Online brings vendors and existing bills across without changing anything in QuickBooks; a bill or vendor credit is written back only after a person approves it. Keep the exported documents and approval history with the client’s records rather than loading old, paid bills into a new approval queue. See how firms move one client at a time.