Shoeboxed: a Netflix for your Receipts

If you've been following my posts for the last few weeks, you know that I've been searching for a way to digitally store all my important paper records. (If you need to catch up, here's my post about discovering that a bunch of paper records had been damaged by rain water.) The first solution I tested was the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500, a high-speed, sheet-fed scanner that can read both sides of a paper document at once. I ended up loving it. (Read my review of the ScanSnap S1500 here.) I also tried the smaller, slower ScanSnap 1300, which I liked, but not nearly as much as its more powerful sibling.

The second document-storage solution I tried was Shoeboxed, an online service that has been described as a "Netflix for receipts." It works like this: you save your receipts (and other documents), and once you have a collected a stack of them, you stick them in a prepaid envelope and drop them in a mailbox. Shoeboxed will scan the receipts and upload the digitized copies to its server so you can access them anytime you need refer to them. When you visit your page on Shoeboxed, you can see the totals, dates, and store names for each receipt. (This Shoeboxed video shows the basic process).

To test out Shoeboxed, I registered online and a couple of days later I received a couple of large business reply envelopes. I stuffed one with fifty receipts and documents (including several of the wrinkled, water-damaged ones) and sent it in. (When it comes to security, the Shoeboxed site reminds you that your
documents, when in transit, are at the mercy of the security practices
of your parcel service of choice.)

Two weeks later, Shoeboxed emailed me to let me know they were ready. Two weeks is a long wait. What if you need to refer to a receipt during the processing interval? With the ScanSnap, I have instant access to my receipts, and in two instances that I can recall, I was glad that I did have immediate access. (A day or two after my records showed up in Shoeboxed, I got the paper originals in the mail, along with a new envelope to send in my next batch of documents.)

I went to Shoeboxed to look at my records. The web page that displays receipts is excellent. My receipt data was presented spreadsheet style, with one receipt per row, and there was a little magnifying glass that I could click on to get a pop-up image of the actual receipt. Shoeboxed handled hand-written receipts flawlessly — a representative from Shoeboxed told me that all the records are reviewed by real people (who, according to the company, undergo background checks and are supervised while they work). I was able to sort my receipts by clicking on the column headers: store name, categories, total or date.

One especially nice feature is automatic categorization — I was able to assign a categories to different retail stores. That way, whenever Shoeboxed sees a receipt for Staples, it'll categorize it as "office expenses" (or whatever category you want to assign it). Another welcome feature is the ability to export receipt records in a variety of formats, including Excel, Quicken, and recently, Evernote. (I'm a big Evernote user and I'm going to review it here soon). So far, only receipts, not documents, can be exported to Evernote.

Shoeboxed's iPhone app allows you to take photos of receipts. They get scanned and processed just like the documents you mail in. The receipts I submitted to Shoeboxed this way were processed within 48 hours.

Shoeboxed offers a range of service plans ranging from $9.95 a month for the "Lite" plan (50 scans per month) up to $49.95 a month for the "Business plan (500 scans a month). If you pay for a full year of service, you also get an allotment of "catch-up scans" so you can clean out your desk drawer. I could probably get by with the "Lite" version ($99 a year), which is a good deal compared to the price of the ScanSnap S1500 ($419.99 on Amazon). Personally, though, I would rather pay the extra money for the ScanSnap, but I have a do-it-yourself personality. For people who don't want to bother with scanning and organizing their documents, Shoeboxed is an excellent solution.

Mark Frauenfelder – Editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular Boing Boing weblog, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online.

Disclaimer from the Creditbloggers.com editors: Always exercise caution with your sensitive documents, especially if you decide to send them out to an outside party.  Do your due diligence on any company before you send out your data. Check the Better Business Bureau for complaints or endorsements, and always read the company's fine print on its privacy and security policies to understand who handles your data, how it's protected, and if and how it might be used for other purposes or otherwise divulged to other sources.

Tagged as: digital copies, document storage, documents, receipts, shoeboxed

Mark Frauenfelder Credit.com contributor, editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular site Boing Boing, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online. He covers creative DIY projects and how-tos that will help you make the most of your money.