idoc 416 Posted September 1, 2022 Posted September 1, 2022 For several years I've been using a file fetching document service called "filethis.com". The idea is that I enter all of my accounts for which I receive a monthly statement and the service retrieves the statements automatically and places them into separate folders in EN. Overall it works OK but it has some issues. The main issue is that so many accounts nowadays have 2FA and other security checks such that filethis is unable to retrieve the statement. It then sends me an error message and I have to go online and fix the issue. This usually involves the sending of an identification text message to my phone etc. Also, it seems to create all sorts of duplicated notebooks in my EN such that eventually I have 2-3 notebooks for many of my accounts. Overall it's gotten annoying and I'm wondering if anyone has any better way of achieving this? Or does everybody simply log into 20 different vendors every month to get their statements and then drag those into EN?
Evernote Expert agsteele 3,078 Posted September 1, 2022 Evernote Expert Posted September 1, 2022 Yes, I do it all manually. I've not found the automation options I've explored would save me much time.
idoc 416 Posted September 1, 2022 Author Posted September 1, 2022 I have about 20 statements that come over monthly (from about 16 vendors). Most of them come over very smoothly without any issues at all eg: electrical, gas, phone, Internet, bank, credit cards, mortgage, car loan etc. I could physically go over to all of these sites each month and download the relevant statements into a folder and then transfer that to Evernote. Filethis.com definitely makes it much easier by making the statements magically appear each month within EN. I've been using them a long time and they used to be absolutely flawless before 2 FA, Captcha and all those other security related measures. I'm not complaining about the security but services such as Filethis don't seem to be able to keep up with it all.
Level 5* gazumped 12,229 Posted September 2, 2022 Level 5* Posted September 2, 2022 Hi. I'm intrigued. How, under Filethis were you getting these statements into different notebooks?
Level 5 PinkElephant 9,019 Posted September 2, 2022 Level 5 Posted September 2, 2022 Sounds interesting - as long as it works. Since vendors are required to protect clients data, I think we will see more and more measures to protect accounts, and anybody trying to automate will have a hard time to keep up. Personally I don’t download at all on a monthly basis. Practically all services have a monthly down payment, directly deducted from my bank account, so I don’t have to bother with payments. And usually I get one receipt per year, a balance to pay or receive and a new calculation of the down payments. One download per year, and most is coming by email anyhow. Remark: The website still uses the old Evernote logo, so this part was not updated for quite a while. 1
idoc 416 Posted September 2, 2022 Author Posted September 2, 2022 1 hour ago, gazumped said: Hi. I'm intrigued. How, under Filethis were you getting these statements into different notebooks? The statements are sent to a default notebook in EN and they are organized by filethis into 20 nested notebooks that are under this one. For example, when filethis sends my Amazon statements it creates a sub-notebook called Amazon and they deposit all of the statements there. For some accounts they create sub-notebooks with the account number at the end eg: Spectrum 3434, Spectrum 4543 since I have two Spectrum accounts. For Chase they create "Chase Mortgage", "Chase Visa", "Chase checking". The statements sit in these notebooks until you act on them eg: if I see Chase Visa with a note count of 2, it means that July and August statements are waiting. As I mentioned before one of the downsides is that the sub-notebooks tend to get duplicated sometimes and I will often see "Chase Visa" along with "Chase Visa Card" and "Chase Visa 89899989" etc. I'm not sure why this happens but it's usually not a problem because only one of these will have a note count next to it and this is the active one with the statement sitting in it. I pay a nominal annual feel for this service and was really very happy with it for many years. Recently it's become somewhat more cumbersome but still way better than doing all of this myself.
Level 5* gazumped 12,229 Posted September 2, 2022 Level 5* Posted September 2, 2022 8 hours ago, idoc said: it creates a sub-notebook called Amazon and they deposit all of the statements there. Thanks for the explanation, but what's a 'sub notebook'?? If FileThis drops information into one notebook, it can only -surely (and maybe)- move it to another notebook. Evernote have got (I thought) the creation of new notebooks tied down pretty tightly - unless the user explicitly creates a new notebook, I didn't think any external app (apart from Filterize) could create a new one, or even move existing notes around....
Level 5 PinkElephant 9,019 Posted September 2, 2022 Level 5 Posted September 2, 2022 Same ??? with me. There are no nested notebooks in EN, not in the app and not through the API. Content moved through the API can be assigned to notebooks, like WebClipper or the EMail forwarding does. But the notebook structure is flat, and I think (without being sure about it) that the notebook already needs to exist.
idoc 416 Posted September 2, 2022 Author Posted September 2, 2022 I was being sloppy in terminology. “Filethis” is a Stack and within it are the 20-30 Notebooks. Each notebook is a separate account (Amazon, Chase etc). Each note (pdf) within the notebook is a statement. I normally keep the stack collapsed and expand it once a week or so to check if any new statements have arrived. For example, a Visa Business statement will be opened, reviewed, entered into Quickbooks and ultimately combined (with Acrobat) to the back end of a different note, outside the stack, which contains every monthly Visa statement for years. When a note gets too large I move it into Google Drive so it doesn’t clutter my EN.
Level 5* gazumped 12,229 Posted September 2, 2022 Level 5* Posted September 2, 2022 19 minutes ago, idoc said: “Filethis” is a Stack and within it are the 20-30 Notebooks. Thanks - I understand the system now. Still don't understand how you could have gotten to more than one notebook for any given account, but if you did, you did. Best suggestion at this stage would be to hand this on to both Evernote and Filethis Support teams to see whether they can work out a solution. Like @agsteele I do it manually - but being me I tend to leave a few months between runs unless there's an issue I know I need to look into... It would be very nice to get an automation for the process, though the general paranoia about bank accounts being hacked will probably lead to more hazards cropping up along the way...
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