With Shoeboxed.com
(affiliate link), businesses can organize paper documents like business cards, receipts and bills. Just mail in your documents in a special pre-paid envelope and Shoeboxed will process, digitize the records and send back the originals. Each document is verified by a human and then the information is available online through a secure website where it can be managed, organized and exported. Shoeboxed let me try a free trial of their Classic plan by sending an envelope of business cards and a few receipts. Here are the results…
Business Cards
Out of 50 business cards, almost all of them were processed very well. The four that were not were strangely designed. For each business card, the system stores images of the front and back of the card, as well as contact information. Name, company, phone and email are visible in the dashboard and any of the data can be edited as needed, exported, or archived in Evernote.
Receipts
Shoeboxed processed 2 of the receipts as receipts and 2 as bills. The two classified as receipts were on traditional receipt paper and the 2 bills were on 8 1/2 x 11 paper. It was easy to reclassify the bills to receipts and Shoeboxed also tries to classify the receipts based on categories (auto, fuel, office supplies, etc.). The classification for the one receipt it did auto-classify was off, but I was able to change it and it’s supposed to get better as you use the system. Having receipts in digital form is certainly a much easier way to organize and manage your expense data.
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Pricing
There are four different pricing levels – Business, Classic, Lite and Free, which differ on the amount of receipts and cards scanned, levels of service and types of services. The Business plan, priced at $49.95/month, includes 500 receipts and cards per month, pre-paid envelopes, 1-2 day turnaround time, and a free quarterly back-up CD. The Free plan includes only unlimited receipts that you scan and upload and a Shoeboxed email address for online shopping and email receipt forwarding.
Mobile
When you’re on the go, Shoeboxed offers a couple of free mobile applications for scanning in and organizing receipts and business cards. Business cards and receipts are uploaded, verified and displayed on your online account — these scans count towards your monthly limit. You can upload unlimited receipts via an email address. If you allow Shoeboxed to share your contact information with each new contact you upload (so they can include an invitation to try their product), you also can upload unlimited business cards via an email address.
Conclusion
All the data was nicely organized and easy to export into files that could be easily used in other applications. Any errors in the processing were easy to correct. Having Shoeboxed process my business cards makes it easier for me to import that information into my CRM without having to hand enter everything. Uploading unlimited receipts and business cards via the special email addresses is an extra plus.
While, we don’t have enough volume of business cards and receipts (yet) since most of our stuff is already digitized, I can see this as being a extremely valuable service for companies that do have a lot of receipts and business cards to file — and $50/month to be able to do something more productive for your time is a steal!
Give Shoeboxed.com a free 30-day trial and let us know what YOU think.
Disclosure: Shoeboxed.com gave us a free 30-day trial of their Classic package to review their service. This same 30-day trial is available to all consumers. Links to Shoeboxed.com in this post are affiliate links because we believe that they provide a valuable service that you may find useful. If you’d like to check out Shoeboxed.com without clicking on an affiliate link, click here.