Shoeboxed announced this week that it has improved the way it handles digital receipts sent to its online filing system. The company, which scans and hosts paper receipts, business cards and full-size documents, can now pick out specific information from forwarded e-mails containing purchase information, and put it into one of the system's 15 purchase classifications.
Like users would do with purchases on travel services like TripIt and Worldmate, simply sending the confirmation e-mail to your Shoeboxed address means that it gets filed along with the rest of your expenses. The goal is to make it easier for customers who are already using Shoeboxed's receipt scanning by mail service to blend in purchases they make online.
The company says the new technique is 95 percent accurate and removes the need for customers to enter in purchase information manually. This is a noticeable improvement over the previous system, which would simply paste the information into a blank message without giving it a title or a expense category. The new system also pulls in things like vendor names and the total amount spent, which can be compared and cross-referenced with other expenses it tracks from your paper receipts and scanned photos you've taken of receipts from your mobile phone.
E-mailed receipts are now automatically categorized, including how you paid for it and where you bought it from.
(Credit: CNET)I gave it a spin earlier today on 10 different receipt confirmations from different vendors and had a 100 percent success rate on it accurately figuring out where the item was from, how I paid for it, and its price. It also did a pretty good job on categorizing the purchases, getting seven of the 10, while leaving the remaining three blank.
One thing it doesn't pick up on, which is worth mentioning, is the actual purchase date. It only keeps track of the date it was sent into the system. This isn't a big deal, since you're probably going to be forwarding items the same day you're purchasing, and you can also see the source copy of the e-mail from Shoeboxed's interface. But it's something to keep in mind if you're planning to forward a bunch of old purchase confirmations.
The receipts by e-mail service is completely free, although other parts of Shoeboxed, like its paper scanning, and mobile photo transcription require signing up for a paid monthly plan.
Previously: Shoeboxed now tags scanned receipts for you
Receipt-scanning service Shoeboxed just launched a new feature that automatically files scanned receipts into one of 15 expense categories. These include groceries, gas, and travel expenses, which you can view simply by clicking on them. Users can also create their own expense categories, although there's currently no way to have the service auto-tag expenses by keyword.
In addition to new receipts, users will find a good number of their old receipts categorized. Dan Englander, Shoeboxed's VP of Communications says some may not get the tagging treatment if the system can't find a match, but that a "large majority" have.
Users of Mint.com and other online banking services have been enjoying auto-categorization for some time now, but keep in mind these places are getting the information digitally. Shoeboxed must first scan your receipts then run them through optical character recognition. The categorization is not just for the scanned receipts though; any online receipts you "CC" Shoeboxed with will get tagged too.
If an item fits into a category it's now automatically tagged with it for easy sorting later on.
(Credit: Shoeboxed / CNET Networks)
Shoeboxed is one of the more inventive and useful services I've seen lately. It lets you organize some of the payments you make with cash (not credit cards) by sending in the huge wad of crumpled receipts you end up with from retail stores. Those receipts will automatically be scanned and plugged in to a financial tracking tool for you to manage with the site's tools, or to export to something like Quicken.
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Shoeboxed)
The site launched in July of last year, and this morning it is unveiling two new useful features. The first is a new analytics engine that will break down your spending habits with svelte-looking charts and graphs. What makes this particularly useful is that it can track both your on and offline purchases, which is shown in one of the new graphs.
Mint.com, which also does this (sans the paper receipt scanning) can be incredibly useful in this regard, but it goes the extra mile by tapping in to your credit card and bank account information to itemize these purchases for you. Shoeboxed's solution is slightly more low tech, with a special e-mail address you can CC to get your payment confirmation sent from online retailers. It will automatically figure in those payments and add them into your total spending.
Also new today is an envelope-tracking system that will keep a history of all your sent and received receipt envelopes alongside a live status indicator that gives you the heads-up on when a new envelope has been sent out. If you're a user of Netflix or any other shipper of goods this tends to be more important, but in Shoeboxed's case it's a nice touch if you want to make sure someone didn't steal the envelope full of financial goodness from your mailbox.
Shoeboxed has a free service where you plug in all the information. The plans that will scan your receipts and actually send them back start at $10 a month, all the way up to the $60 express plan, which guarantees same-day scanning and processing.
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