SELF, one of the premier lifestyle and fitness magazines in the country, just released it’s April issue, where they feature Shoeboxed. We’re obviously very happy to have Shoeboxed in SELF, and I think they did a great job with the story, focusing on how Shoeboxed can help you organize your receipts for tax time and how it makes it easier to claim deductibles. We’re hoping that SELF’s 5,000,000 readers think so too.
SELF’s April edition is on stands now, so definitely go out and get a copy. Tear out page 40 and put it on your fridge so everybody can see!
As you no doubt noticed, Shoeboxed has a sleek new design inside the site. We wanted to make Shoeboxed a little easier on the eyes, and we also changed around the navigation to streamline the receipt organization process. We hope that we can save you some time and frustration by making it easy to navigate and manage your receipts, whether you have 5 or 5,000 in your account.
The main navigation for the application itself is now in the side navigation bar. Many of the navigation elements before were split between the side and the top, and we think by combining them together, we can make it easier to get around.
In the top navigation, there is now more information about the company, including a vision statement and our environmental stance in addition to existing pages like About Us and the Shoeboxed Info Desk, a one-stop destination for FAQs, help, and white papers about relevant topics that we launched last week.
The new tagging system released today is another way to improve the way you manage all their receipts. Information about what shoeboxes a given receipt is in is now available from the My Receipts table, so that it is easier to keep track of what receipt is organized where. This was something that a lot of you asked for, and we are happy to deliver it!
As always, let us know what you think. We are all about you, and want to make the site as useful to you as possible. Email us at help@team.shoeboxed.com with any comments or suggestions!
Also, if you have an account at Digg.com, help us make our story popular here.
David Allen is a widely popular author who preaches the concept of GTD, or Getting Things Done. He is a thought leader in the area of personal productivity, and I’ve been meaning to mention him and his suggestions on the blog for awhile now. For a limited time, we are offering to send you a FREE David Allen book! If you buy a membership to our Receipt Mail-In program for $9, we will send you a free copy of David Allen’s book, “Getting Things Done.” Sign up here: http://deals.shoeboxed.com/gtd.html
Here are some of the core principles, as noted on his website:
* Capturing anything and everything that has your attention
* Defining actionable things discretely into outcomes and concrete next steps
* Organizing reminders and information in the most streamlined way, in appropriate categories, based on
how and when you need to access them
* Keeping current and “on your game” with appropriately frequent reviews of the six horizons of your
commitments (purpose, vision, goals, areas of focus, projects, and actions)
He also has some interesting things to say about receipts:
If your receipts are all over the place, your filing system is chaotic, and your in-basket is dysfunctional, it just seems like too much work to do to find and organize the tasks at hand.
And
We’ll probably want to claim deductions, but if we do we’ll have to back them up, and that means we’ll need all the receipts. Oh, my God! I don’t know if we really have all the receipts we’d need and what if we didn’t have all the receipts but we claimed the deductions anyway and we got audited? Audited? Oh, no - the IRS’s JAIL!!
Anyway, Shoeboxed is not just about getting your receipts organized and manageable. We’re big supporters of any life hacks out there that can help you get other parts of your life more organized or make you more productive.
And that’s why we have the new offer: If you buy a membership to our Receipt Mail-In program for $9, we will send you a free copy of David Allen’s book, “Getting Things Done.” Sign up here: http://deals.shoeboxed.com/gtd.html
I do lots of different things at Shoeboxed - I guess that’s the nature of working 16-hour days. One of the most entertaining parts of my job, though, is actually using Shoeboxed. We want our user experience to be second-to-none, so we all use Shoeboxed religiously to organize our receipts, and we are all veritable Receipt Mail-In addicts.
Before I started using Shoeboxed, I never did any kind of serious budgeting. Living off my parents, the money coming in always seemed reconcilable with what I was shelling out. I was content just looking at my bank account online to check my balances. But I really wasn’t able to track my spending with any sort of accuracy. Debit card statements are notoriously hard to read because of shortened store names and little reference to what you actually bought.
But then I started using Receipt Mail-In, and with basically no effort, I now know a LOT more about my spending habits. I’m now religious about asking for a receipt from cashiers, and a never forget to keep it in my wallet. I dump it in my Receipt Mail-In envelope as soon as I get back to my desk, and then mail it in whenever I feel like it. (Yes, even though I work about 30 feet from the Receipt Mail-In operation, I use USPS just like everybody else) I have hundreds of receipts in my account, and it was really interesting for me to realize that most all of my receipts are for food. Here is a sneak peak into my personal account:
It really made me step back and realize how much money I could save by eating out less, and eating at less expensive places.
So this morning? I’m eating cereal instead of going out for breakfast at one of the restaurants across the street.
Receipt Mail-In is the first receipt organization service that makes organization into a reasonable task. Sure, a lot of people save receipts, but it it so time consuming to scan the hundreds of receipts required to get the detailed analytics that Mail-In users (like me) are privy to. Aren’t you curious what you will find out about your spending habits with Receipt Mail-In?
Shoeboxed was born to be a receipt organization service. We’re committed to help everybody organize receipts with as little work as possible - everybody from individuals to small businesses to large corporations.
Because we are so committed to this idea, we are revamping our core organizational function on the site. Shoeboxes were originally designed as folders where you could store your receipts. Toward the end of last year, we introduced everyone to the idea that you could itemize your receipts on Shoebox, and organize those individual purchases in Shoeboxes instead of the whole receipt. But we’ve learned that whole receipts are often what people want to group together, so we are going back to our original functionality to keep it simple, and, I think, more useful.
We made this change based off of feedback from our users. Whenever you have a question, comment, or feature suggestion, please drop us a note at help@team.shoeboxed.com, and we’ll be happy to help. We love getting feedback, and are very open to creating exactly the features that you want on Shoeboxed. It’s all about you, baby.
Up until I discovered Shoeboxed, my receipt organization level was a disaster. There were several sources for the problems plaguing me.
Undeniably, some of the blame lies on me. I got a second’s worth of satisfaction when I tossed the receipt from my vanilla chai latte. On the rare occasion that I did save the receipt, it cluttered my wallet, purse, desk or found a long-term/permanent home on my floor.
I tried saving my receipts in a little white box in my closet. My friends, however, kept thinking it was another box of stilettos in my cluttered wardrobe and would open it. Receipts are private; sharing them did not work for me.
When visiting my kid-cousin, I found out that children do not so much share as take EVERYTHING. After one day when my cousin stole my purse and hid every single content in it (oh boy, is hide and seek fun), we filmed this comical reenactment.
The following video exemplifies how difficult it is to keep track of receipts:
On a more serious note, our fast-paced retail environment makes it difficult to hold onto our financial history. To speed up the checkout process, many stores have switched to thermal papers and printers. The downside is that the ink fades rather quickly. Many retailers who use thermal paper receipts, like Target, only guarantee the receipt will last for 90 days.
Despite all the forces preventing people like me from keeping and organizing receipts, it is important. Receipts enable consumers to make returns, claim insurance, and get reimbursed for work. Shoeboxed worked for me, and I hope it works for you too!
I’ve talked quite a bit on the blog about our innovative receipt scanning program, Shoeboxed Mail-In over the last few months, and I’m very excited to announce that we are moving out of our trial period, and are now offering the full service.
All the information you need to know about Mail-In can be found in our Mail-In Info Center.
When you scan in every receipt you ever get, there is some really interesting and useful information that can result. Actually accomplishing the monstrous task of scanning every receipt you have has typically been a challenge in the past. But now, with Shoeboxed Mail-In, you can easily have digital copies of all of your paper receipts.
All your receipts are organized in the same account, and you can organize them by date, totals, store, and any other category that you need. Tracking your spending through receipts gives you a complete overview of what you have been spending you money on, so you can track your spending habits. Several blogs have called us the”Netflix for Receipts.”
Sign up today for as little as $19.95 a month. This is hands-down the best deal around for organizing receipts, and it’s the only service where you don’t have to do any of the scanning yourself!
Over here at Shoeboxed, we’ve always been dedicated to the personal approach. We talk with users face-to-face, over the phone, and via e-mail everyday. We recognize how important it is to give you whatever help you need to get the most out of our service.
For a while there, all the calls that came into Shoeboxed forwarded to my personal cell phone. That resulted in some VERY early mornings, which I guess is understandable when you consider that Shoeboxed users organize receipts from all over the world, across time zones.
I’ve also spent a considerable amount of time answering e-mails from everyone who sends us one. We have a lot of users, and even a small percentage of them e-mailing us can be a heavy load, but I’ve always really enjoyed interacting with the people that use our service.
As we’ve grown, though, the volume of people contacting us–for whatever reason, from people who forgot their passwords, to people who want to tell us that we’ve come up with “the single most incredible idea I’ve ever heard” (Nic from Mississippi)–has greatly increased over time.
In order to offer the same personalized responses that you all have come to love, we are upgrading to a state-of-the-art support system, so that you can have the best possible Shoeboxed experience. We should be rolling this out over the next couple of days. Please feel free to keep contacting us at help@team.shoeboxed.com!
Well I can’t believe it. 2007 is almost in the books, and we’re coming up on a whole new year.
I know people get really excited about New Years, but I don’t really buy into it all that much personally. Yeah, I’ll probably run every other day for the first couple of weeks trying to get back in shape, but I know that will probably fade away. Why? Well, mostly because I hate working out, but that’s neither here nor there. If working out were suddenly made effortless and entertaining, then I would probably do it.
What’s most frustrating about New Years resolutions is how hard it is to maintain them. I’d love to write a blog entry that rallies the masses to finally rummage through their house, find all their receipts and get them organized on January 1st, and them have them keep that organization up every day throughout the whole year. But I don’t give myself that much credit. I’m no motivational speaker, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change your unorganized ways.
Shoeboxed makes it unbelievably simple to organize your receipts. And as we all know, the easier it is, the more likely we all are to keep up the organization. Shoeboxed Mail-In is probably the best thing to come around for people that can’t keep organized since the file cabinet, and we hope you sign up for it in 2008.
Mail us your receipts, we scan them in and upload them to your account, and then send them back to you. There’s really no work on your end, and you have digital copies of all your receipts. There’s never been a better way! If nothing else, it’s a great way to organize receipts from the holidays.
Have a great 2008, and know that you can enter the new year with the realistic goal of getting organized!
We sent this news out in an e-mail last week, but I just wanted to note it here as well: Shoeboxed Mail-In has officially been launched. It works like this:
1. You receive a manila envelope from us with directions and an pre-paid, addressed envelope to send back.
2. You fill the return envelope with as many receipts as you like, and you send it back to us.
3. We scan in your receipts and enter in all the relevant data for you into your account, and then send your receipts back to you.
4. We let you know when your receipts have been scanned in and are available online.
The project is well under way, but due to the outrageous number of people that asked to be a part of the free introductory service, we had to limit the number of people that could be on it. Why? Because, well, startups are lean, mean frugality machines and we’d go out of business if we gave out free stuff to EVERYONE who wanted it. But we do want to thank everyone who e-mailed us in the last few days. the support has been amazing, and we can’t wait to work with you all in the coming months!
In the future, this service will have a small fee attached to it, but we wanted to work out some of the inevitable kinks in the logistics of sending out that many mailings and scanning that many receipts.
We’ve been excited about this project for a while now, but have been really re-energized by the overwhelming positive response to the announcement.
Believe it or not, we don’t like receipts very much. We think they’re annoying, a waste, and difficult to keep track of. Our greatest motivation in developing Shoeboxed is to make it easier for people to organize and manage receipts, because after all, they contain lots of information worth keeping around.
I came across a website the other day that made a strong case for the existence of a site such as Shoeboxed. Mark A. Thomas of New York has decided to put most of his receipts from the past few years on the Internet. The site allows any visitor to access Thomas’ receipts in high quality resolution.
Although the idea of saving receipts online, as Thomas has, may seem appealing because it frees up your filing cabinets (or actual shoeboxes) and other storage space at home, the security and organization are lacking with Thomas’ method. With Shoeboxed, Thomas would be able to establish different Shoeboxes to better organize his receipts, thus making it easier to track down travel receipts from food purchases, for example. At the same time, with a personal and secure account, Thomas would not have to put all his receipts on display to everyone. With Shoeboxed you now have the option to keep your receipts online like Mr. Thomas wanted to in a secure and organized manner. Let’s also not forget that putting your paper receipts online allows you to recycle your receipts, an extra plus and step towards keeping a sustainable society model.
Shoeboxed can work for him and it can work for you! Sign up for free today!
There has been a decent amount of chatter recently about the security of financial applications on the Internet. Lots of people are scared to tell a company that they don’t know what all their financial information is. We totally get that. I’m not comfortable with it either.
The Federal Trade Commission requires that businesses cannot print or electronically send receipts with more than the last 5 digits of a credit card number or any information regarding the expiration date. Limiting this information makes the receipt untraceable back to the credit card number and associated sensitive data. Credit card numbers and expiration dates are common targets for identity thieves and scammers, so it makes sense for businesses to exclude that information on their receipts to protect their customers.
This is important to remember when signing up for and using Shoeboxed. Many people are worried about storing financial information like credit card and bank account numbers online, but with Shoeboxed, the receipts you organize have none of that information. Nothing that you upload or send to your account would be personally identifiable, and this makes your data much more secure.
This makes Shoeboxed unique from most every other financial application on the Internet. You can get control of your finances and organize receipts with just as much ease on Shoeboxed as any other site, but with Shoeboxed, we never ask for all that sensitive data.
Excitement continues to build around the Shoeboxed idea. Most people we meet are loving it, and that is certainly and understandably very motivating. But what’s always really awesome is when people we haven’t met love the idea too.
About a month ago, one such stranger decided that we were a cool company with a worthy idea. This person wrote up a little review for a website called KillerStartups. Not only is sort of validating to be on a website with such a suggestive name, but apparently the readers of that site agreed with the reviewer. Readers have the opportunity to voice their opinion about which startups featured on the site will go on to become “Killers.” We had more than 100 votes in the last few weeks, making us the 3rd most popular startup featured this month on the well-read website.
Thanks to everyone who voted! And be sure to tell your friends that you organize receipts on one of the most killing-est sites on the web!
Here at Shoeboxed we have become quite passionate about receipts. We think they are awesome. In fact, we are quite sure the man who invented them is severely under-appreciated, whoever he was.
Receipts are the diary of the lazy. If you won’t tell a story, your receipts will do it for you. Your receipt of Bed Bath & Beyond a week before your first year in college says you were excited and anxious and completely delusional about the size of your dorm room. Your receipt for a new wardrobe says you were ready to take on the big city and look good while doing it. Your receipt for a tub of Chunky Monkey ice cream, two bottles of hair color, and bubble bath salts remind you of a particularly bad break-up.
Because we know receipts are more than just pieces of paper that litter the streets (which reminds us, please recycle), Shoeboxed is happy to introduce our paper Receipt Uploader. Now all receipts, paper and digital, big and small, can be treated as equals.
Your e-mail receipts will come to Shoeboxed in exactly the same way. Nothing has changed about the old way Shoeboxed worked. Just give online stores your “@shoeboxed.com” e-mail address whenever you buy something online or sign up for a mailing list. Receipts and e-mails will come directly to your Shoeboxed account.
But now all those receipts lying around your home and stuffing your purse can now join the party, too. Just scan in or take a digital picture of your receipts. Then use the Receipt Uploader to put them directly onto the list you already have going on your My Receipts page.
We don’t think there’s a better way to get your purchase history in one place. It’s never been easier, and there are lots of new features coming along in the near future that we think are pretty awesome, so keep an eye out!
So what are you supposed to do if you love Shoeboxed–the team, the spirit, the innovation, the product–but you just don’t feel like you shop online enough to benefit from signing up?
We think you should think again! Shoeboxed is totally worth it, even if you only buy things online a couple times a year.
I can say this with certainty because I am the same way; in fact, I don’t buy things in general unless I have to, and sometimes I don’t buy things even when I know I should (you can see the picture of my shoes in the blog archives for an example of this).
Anyway, a few days ago I remembered that my time in Berlin is drawing to a close, and that I actually need to start getting ready to go back to the good old U.S. of A. I quickly realized that I had absolutely no idea when my return flight was leaving, or even on which day the flight departed, and that it would probably be in my best interests to find that information out. Of course, my travel itinerary was nowhere to be found. However, I knew the airline had sent a copy of the flight information with my e-ticket receipt to my e-mail address. This was not exactly reassuring, though, since that e-mail was a few months old, and finding one e-mail in my inbox is like finding one specific needle in a haystack made out of other needles.
Long story short, I searched through my inbox for what felt like a really long time, and ended up asking my mom to send me her copy of my itinerary. She was not impressed.
Obviously, none of this would have happened if I had been using Shoeboxed when I bought the ticket—my e-ticket information would have been easily accessible right from the start. This experience made me realize that it doesn’t matter how often you shop online—Shoeboxed is a great tool for anyone to have.
