Find how much you have
Sign in with a role that has Sync with Accounting System permissions and the permission to manage each type you want to export. In Settings, open the Import & Export area. BILL's current export article calls the export page Legacy Import & Export, while its developer pages call the area Import & export with a Custom File Integration, so follow the label your own Settings menu shows.
If you are exporting transactions, set your export preferences first: in Settings, choose Preferences under Import & Export, click the edit icon, choose the accounts for each preference and save.
Choose Export next to Bills, then Export All, or Export with filters to limit it to a date range. When it finishes the file name appears, and you can reopen it later from Export history. Count the rows. Repeat for Payments, and for Invoices and Payments Received if you use receivables.
As a cross-check, the Bills page has a Download icon with Export .CSV and Export to Excel for the filtered list. BILL says to load every record before you export, by scrolling and selecting 'load XXX more' until all records are shown, so do that first.
If you use BILL Spend & Expense, open Transactions in a web browser, set the transaction display to All transactions, which shows every transaction you have permission to view, filter by date range or statement period, and use the Export icon for .csv, .xlsx, .ofx or .qbo. BILL says exports can take several minutes, and you cannot export from the mobile app. Count card transactions separately from the bills and payments.
Decide whether archived records count. BILL lets you find archived vendors, customers, invoices and credit memos, and inactive bills, with a status filter, and says deleted or inactive vendor credits cannot be restored. Say in your description whether your total includes them.
Take the start date from the oldest bill or payment in your export files. BILL's list API documents no total-count field, so the export files are the reliable way to count.
What to put on your intake
Your intake has five boxes for each system. Here is what goes in each one for BILL (Bill.com).
- What does it hold?
- Your payables and receivables trail: vendor bills, vendor credits, payments, customer invoices, credit memos and payments received, plus the vendor and customer lists. Something like: AP bills and payments by vendor, with AR invoices and payments received. Say whether Spend & Expense card transactions are in scope.
- Data types
- Structured records. BILL says its Bills page export leaves out associated documents, notes and checkboxes, and the original bill documents come through a separate historical data download. Add Image or Text only if you plan to license bill documents or notes, which are excluded by default.
- How big is it?
- Choose Transactions and enter the combined row count of your bills, payments, invoices and payments-received exports. Put vendor and customer counts, and the Spend & Expense count if any, in the description.
- Verified or estimated
- Verified when the number is the row total of Export All files covering your whole history. Estimated when you scaled up from a filtered date range or a partly loaded Bills page.
- Records start
- The date of your oldest bill or payment in the exports. If you moved from another payables tool or changed accounting systems, say so, because earlier history may live elsewhere.
Exporting the full history
If a buyer licenses your records, this is how the full history comes out of BILL (Bill.com).
A buyer export happens only after a license is signed and the scope is agreed: which record types, which years, and whether documents are in. Separately, BILL says cancelling removes access to your bill and invoice history, payment history, vendor and customer contact information and unlimited document storage, and that downgrading to a subscription-free Basic account keeps some access instead, so take your own copy before you change anything.
Records and transactions come out as CSV. In Settings, open the export page, choose Export for the item, pick an Export Profile or select Modify to choose which headers to include, rename them and reorder the columns, then select Export All or Export with filters. BILL lists vendors, customers, accounts, departments, items, locations, classes and jobs as records, and bills, vendor credits, payments, invoices, credit memos, payments received and funds transfers as transactions.
For a recurring pull, BILL's developer documentation describes Settings, then Import & export, then Custom File Integration, then Create Schedule. You choose a record type and template, a frequency, CSV with a delimiter, and the Download delivery method, and BILL then generates export records you can retrieve through the API.
Developers read exports with GET /v3/exports, which lists them 20 at a time by default and up to 100 with max, and GET /v3/exports/{exportId}/download-link for the file. List operations return at most 100 results per request and page with a nextPage token. BILL's limit is 20,000 requests per developer key per hour and 3 concurrent requests per developer key per organization, and the Spend & Expense API allows 60 calls per token per minute.
The CSV exports cover records and transactions. For the original bill documents and cashed check images, a bank authorized Administrator can request BILL's historical data download. BILL delivers it through Box as zip files in a documents folder, a cleared checks folder and a searchable index, after identity verification by phone. It needs multi-factor authentication on the account, is not available on subscription-free Basic accounts, and BILL's article lists a fee and a processing time to check first. These documents are excluded from a license by default.
Under the license, vendor, customer and employee names, addresses, tax IDs, and bank, card and routing details are removed before anything reaches a buyer.
We only ask for an export after you sign a license and agree the scope. Sizing your data for the intake never needs one.
Limits to know
- BILL's own pages use different labels for the export area: Legacy Import & Export, Import / Export with an Export history, and Import & export with Custom File Integration. Menus also differ between products and accounts, so match what you see.
- The Bills page export leaves out associated documents, notes, checkboxes and actions, and BILL tells you to load all records, through 'load XXX more', before exporting so the file matches the filtered list.
- Export files have limited lifetimes in some places. Spend & Expense says a successful export download is available for only 24 hours. BILL says you can reopen past exports from Export history at any time, yet the API's export statuses include EXPIRED without saying when that applies, so re-run an export rather than assuming an old file is still there.
- The API documents no total count and no HTTP 429 handling. BILL's rate-limit page reports hitting the hourly limit as error code BDC_1144 and the concurrent limit as BDC_1322, so a client should watch for those codes and slow down rather than wait for a 429.
- Deleted and archived records behave differently by type. Vendors and customers are archived and can be restored, bills are marked inactive and can be undeleted, invoices can be undeleted, and deleted or inactive vendor credits cannot be restored. Count deliberately.
- The historical data download needs a bank authorized Administrator, multi-factor authentication, processed Inbox documents and cleared check payments first. BILL says the Box link expires seven calendar days after it is sent, and that the password comes in a separate email.
- BILL says it retains records as required by law, including for security, fraud prevention, anti-money laundering compliance and sanctions regulations. It publishes no retention period in the pages we reviewed, so removing a record in BILL does not tell you when it is gone.
- If you are an accounting firm that manages clients' BILL accounts, those records belong to the clients, and a firm can license them only with each client's specific consent under the AICPA Code (1.700.001). Income tax return information is never licensed (IRC §7216, 26 U.S.C. 7216). This is general information, not legal advice.
This guide isn't legal advice. Check your contracts, and any recording-consent rules that apply, with your own lawyer.
Why buyers value it
BILL is where payables and receivables actually move. Vendor bills arrive, get coded and approved, and get paid, and customer invoices go out and get collected. Years of this show how bills are coded, how long approval and payment take, how often exceptions occur and how collections run, for a company in any industry.
Buyers building payables and receivables automation, and finance assistants that handle invoices, want real invoice-to-payment trails rather than synthetic ones. The records are most useful next to the ledger they post to, such as your NetSuite or QuickBooks account, because then each bill has the coding that came out of it.
What stays private
Vendor and customer names, street addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and tax IDs are removed from bills, invoices, payments and the vendor and customer lists before delivery under the license, along with names typed into descriptions and memos. Bank account, routing and card numbers and any payment account details are excluded.
The original bill documents and cashed check images are excluded by default, since they carry names, signatures and account numbers. Your logins, user list, approval settings and bank connections are not part of the license. If you manage clients' BILL accounts as an accounting firm, those are client records and need each client's specific consent under the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct (opens in a new tab). Income tax return information is never licensed under IRC §7216 (opens in a new tab), and 26 CFR 301.7216-2 (opens in a new tab) bars selling even anonymous statistics built from it. This is general information, not legal advice.
Common questions
Sources
Vendor documentation, checked . Screens and plans change, so if a step looks different in your account, check with BILL (Bill.com).
- BILL Help: How to export records and transactions using .csv files (opens in a new tab)
- BILL Help: How to customize and export the Bills page (opens in a new tab)
- BILL Help: How to filter and export transaction data in BILL Spend & Expense (opens in a new tab)
- BILL Help: BILL Historical data on digital download (opens in a new tab)
- BILL Help: How to cancel your BILL account (opens in a new tab)
- BILL Help: Find and restore a deleted record (opens in a new tab)
- BILL Developer: Export BILL records (opens in a new tab)
- BILL Developer: New endpoints for the BILL export operation (opens in a new tab)
- BILL Developer: Get list of exported BILL records (opens in a new tab)
- BILL Developer: Search operations with lists (opens in a new tab)
- BILL Developer: API rate limits (opens in a new tab)