Have you conquered that shoebox of receipts you keep? Once I watched this demo video I realized my life would never be the same again. Dramatic? Sure… But if you know the drama of looking for, organizing, and storing receipts… you’ll understand. One thing not-so-clear? Why the demo has a German-techno inspired soundtrack.
I asked Dan Englander, VP of Communications, to explain.
Shoeboxed.com is a site that allows you easily keep digital copies of all your personal and professional receipts. Why are receipts so important?
Receipts are a ubiquitous part of American life. We get one virtually every time we make a transaction of any kind. These little pieces of paper seem to go anywhere and everywhere after they are printed: in your wallet, in your pocket, in the trash, under your car seat, cluttered on your desk, etc. They’re easy to ignore or lose, but they also happen to be really important, as they can save you a ton of money in the long term, and can help you track where your money is going.
Whether you need your receipts for reimbursements, tax returns, returns and exchanges, donations, insurance claims, or proof of purchase, Shoeboxed can help you keep them organized and accessible for when you need them. And when you have all your receipts organized digitally on Shoeboxed, you’ll have the added benefit of being able to see interesting information and trends about your spending habits, since receipts tell you exactly what you are buying.
How do receipts factor into positive personal finance habits?
Being on top of your personal finances means keeping track of a lot of different things. Investments, credit card spending, debts, mortgages, and loans are important to keep track of. But receipts, most of which seem individually expendable, are extremely important to keep track of as part of a complete personal finance system. Receipts give you item-level information about where your money goes, which you can’t see on a credit or debit card statement. They are also necessary for taxes, reimbursements, and insurance claims, so they are worth keeping, and worth keeping organized.
What are some of the advantages of keeping digital receipts?
Many of our users come to us with a backlog of paper receipts that they have cluttering up their home or office. When you have a couple hundred paper receipts (or many, many more in a lot of cases), it’s incredibly difficult and time consuming to maintain a workable and efficient organizational system for them. Having them in digital format is the only way to create a manageable solution for your receipt clutter.
Another important thing to remember about digital receipts is that they are accepted by the IRS, and have been since 1997. With Shoeboxed, there’s no need to worry about being audited; you’ll be all set to defend your books quickly and easily. Learn more from the IRS here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-irbs/irb97-13.pdf
How are receipts organized at Shoeboxed?
With Shoeboxed, all your receipts are entered with a Store Name, Date, and Total, and all your receipts are sortable by those three categories. Say goodbye to the pile of receipts you have lying around, and say hello to easy-to-find, neatly organized digital receipts.
You can also create any other categories that you need to further organize your receipts. We call these categories “shoeboxes”. For taxes, you could create one for “Taxes 2007″ or for that business trip, you could make one for “CPA Conference, New York”. It’s easy to place receipts in shoeboxes so you can find what you need.
I read your company started as a dorm-room business idea at Duke University. What prompted the idea, and how has it evolved?
Taylor Mingos started Shoeboxed while he was a senior at Duke in 2006. He’d had the idea for a while before that, but started building a team of other students to start coding and marketing the site at the beginning of the school year. Taylor graduated in May 2007 and took 12 students to Berlin, Germany for the summer. During the previous two years, Taylor had studied abroad there and helped to start what is now the most popular website in Germany, studiVZ.net. During summer 2007, Taylor wanted to return to Berlin to immerse himself in the thriving start-up scene and go full-speed-ahead with Shoeboxed. Since that summer, we have been based out of Durham, NC, right near Duke.
Our long-term goal has always been to eliminate paper receipts altogether and revolutionize the way that receipts work. We started originally with email receipts, allowing people to email in receipts to the Shoeboxed accounts. We have since expanded to offer our revolutionary Receipt Mail-In program, where we scan your paper receipts for you and put them in your Shoeboxed account. That’s our focus at the moment, but we’ve got a lot more up our sleeves.
Do you think paper receipts will “Go Bronto” — that is, go the way of the dinosaurs? What does the future hold for receipt keepers?
We hope so! We don’t like paper receipts, and are working hard to make sure they can become more manageable and less annoying. That is, of course, until we can eliminate paper receipts altogether and have cash registers email a receipt directly to your Shoeboxed account.
Thanks, Dan! I think you guys have a great product. For anyone struggling to keep the paper version of their financial lives in order, check out Shoeboxed, or, see the links below.
Related:
Five Tools to Organize Your Financial Life
How to Keep Your Passwords Organized
Year-End Financial Housekeeping
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