As small business owners, one of the most busy-work consuming tasks we must deal with are itemizing receipts. At times, the amount of paperwork that you have do deal with can become extremely overwhelming. For most of us, staring at that pile of unorganized paper can have a negative impact on thinking about the tasks you still have ahead of you. For many of us, the motivation to bring some organization to this chaos is sometimes too much to even contemplate. Procrastination becomes our friend but in the end it doesn’t pay the bills especially when some of those expenses are to be reimbursed by a client. Luckily an enterprising business has found a way to make this mundane and dreaded task much simplier and free up our time to run our businesses. That business is Shoeboxed.
A simple concept – mail, scan and import
Shoeboxed has allowed business owners like me to finally see the floors of my office. Shoeboxed.com became a blessing to many of us business owners because of its easy process. Money Matters has a great breakdown of the process:
- Send your clutter in a postage paid envelope: When you sign up for certain packages Shoeboxed will send you a pre-paid envelope for you to send your receipts and other business clutter in with. They sent me one, and I saw that each envelope is unique to your account with it’s own barcode signature. That means that your information will be correctly categorized to your account. There’s no worrying about your data being lost or added to the wrong account. This option works especially well for folks who are extremely busy, or that have large amounts of clutter to categorize.
- Scan or take pictures of your own receipts and business cards: If you prefer, you can scan in or take photos of your own receipts and business cards, and then upload them through the Shoeboxed site. I think this is probably the option I would use just because it’s the most convenient. I did a few receipts using this method for this review. Basically you just upload the graphic of your receipt, categorize it, and it’s saved!
- Use Shoeboxed mobile and iPhone apps to save your receipts: You can download the iPhone apps for saving receipts or business cards, and categorize and save your receipts while you’re on the go. When you get back from a business trip you can even generate an expense report to send out for reimbursement. Or use Shoeboxed mobile with your other mobile phone.
Once you have all this data in their system, there is a variety of things you can do with it. You can integrate receipts with Evernote, Freshbooks, Quickbooks, Quicken and Outright. That’s right, you can transfer your receipts to PDF (with receipt images), Excel, Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Evernote, Quicken, Outright and CSV formats. Truly transformative. As for business cards, you can download your business card contacts to CSV, which you can import to many places, including Outlook, Salesforce, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Apple Address Book, Act!, LinkedIn, BatchBlue and many other programs and websites that organize contact information. This was the feature that initially drew me in to try the service out.
Options for every entrepreneur’s budget
There are several levels of service that the company provides. One is the free version, in which you must scan in or direct your online order receipts into the account and organize them yourself. They also offer Lite, Classic or Business accounts.
So what’s the difference bewteen the plans? Basically it boils down to the number of scans Shoeboxed will do for you per month (50/150/500), the turnaround time you can expect on your receipts being entered, and whether or not you have access to mobile apps and dedicated support.
It is important to note that the free plan doesn’t allow you to send in receipts (you have to scan all your own), and you only have 5 free credits for the mobile app. So it is limited. The highest plan adds a few more perks besides a higher number of scans including quarterly backup CDs and a dedicated account manager. All paid plans have a free 1 month trial, so it doesn’t hurt to give it a try, you can cancel at any time.
- Business: $49.95/month – or 2 months free with annual plan.
- Classic: $29.95/month – or 2 months free with annual plan.
- Lite: $9.95/month – or 2 months free with annual plan. Receipts and cards not returned when mailed in.
- DIY: Free – Scan all your own receipts, only 5 free iphone credits
I started with the DIY-free plan and am currently on the Lite plan because my scanning needs aren’t as big as some business users and I really don’t want all the paper clutter back in my office.
Combine Shoeboxed with Outright for a powerful solution
Because so much of small business owners’ time could be diverted by busy work and utter disorganization, the capabilities that Shoeboxed provides would be very helpful to anyone that either does not possess that knack of organization or simply does not have the time to organize and keep track of their own receipts. On top of that since Outright can exchange data with Shoeboxed, using the two together is a powerful 1-2 accounting punch for your business. Connecting them both is straightforward and fairly easy to understand. Plus, you still have the option to export the scanned-in receipt information into Excel spreadsheets and other programs that work with large amounts of financial data. If you don’t have a a substantial number of receipts to keep track of would most likely not benefit from this program. However, if you are searching for a way to keep control of your expense records and capture business card information, Shoeboxed is indispensable tool in your small business backoffice.
