How to use to go paperless with bills

[nancysieder 1]

I just learned about Evernote.  What is the best way to learn to use it to keep my bills paperless

[gazumped 9,562]

Hi - welcome to the forums.  A nice gentleman called Jamie Todd Rubin is Evernote's paperless ambassador,  and his blog deals with a lot of practicalities in that area.  In general Evernote's help pages (see below) will show you some of the ways in which you can add paper and electronic documents to your notes.  My general process is:

1. scan (or clip) everything that records where and how I spend money - on the day I spend it if possible.
2. shred everything unless I need the receipt for work expenses (they want paper) or a warranty claim (lots of shops in the UK still want the actual receipt,  as proof of purchase not a copy).
3. send the work receipts to the firm to get them out of my hair.
4. check the warranty pile every few months and shred the receipts where the warranty period has expired.

When you scan be sure to give the file a long meaningful title following a standard pattern:  I use yyyymmdd - receipt - <retailer> - <description>.  The date is the date of purchase because that's sometimes (OK - pretty often:  I get distracted..) not the date that I'm doing the scanning.  The other stuff means I can find all my receipts in a bunch of other notes;  all the times I went to a specific retailer (if I need to);  and I can get the specific receipt for those flippers I bought last year if I need it.

 

If you're premium and need to track down a spend of 24.80 to balance a statement,  the OCR in Evernote is good enough to find you all the receipts containing that number.  So far I've only ever had one hit on that sort of search.

 

Most important advice - to learn how to use Evernote,  start using Evernote.  Don't shred anything for a week or two until you're sure you're happy with everything.

 

Then go crazy!

[nancysieder 1]

Thanks for the information, gazumped.