Mike Tooley from Shoeboxed.com was kind enough to let me interview him recently.  For those of you that aren’t familiar with them yet, Shoeboxed.com is the easiest way to digitize and organize your receipts and business cards. With Shoeboxed, you can mail receipts and business cards and they will be scanned and entered into an online account for you. The paid scanning service and the free online software make organizing these receipts and business cards easy.

You can use Shoeboxed for receipts, invoices, business cards, and more.  Simply mail your documents to them and they will be scanned and entered into your account.  You can send your receipts to PDF, Excel, Quicken, Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Outright.com and Evernote.  You can search and sort by store name, date, total and payment type, with automatic categorization.  Business cards can be exported to Salesforce, LinkedIn, your email client, and other programs.

I asked Mike some pretty basic questions…enough to give you a pretty good feel of what Shoeboxed.com is all about.  Mike’s excited about working with me here at JohnLizotte.com.  Please feel free to post your comments or questions.  If I can’t answer them myself for you, I’ll get with Mike and he’ll be happy to respond.  I’ve had someone set up a “mystery-shopper” account at Shoeboxed.  In the coming weeks, while Mike and I are answering your questions, my mystery-shopper is going to be testing out Shoeboxed.com, and will give us a full review after 30 days.

Lizotte:  Mike, thanks for taking the time to talk to me about Shoeboxed.com.  Why don’t you start by telling me who your service is aimed at?  Who is the ideal user of your service?  Who would get the most benefit from using Shoeboxed?

Tooley:  Shoeboxed is perfect for entrepreneurs, small business owners, freelancers and business travelers, but we also have plans geared toward those who just want to get rid of their paper clutter around the house. 

Lizotte:  I keep my receipts filed in my office so that I can give them to my accountant.  What do I tell him when he asks for my receipts and I’ve already sent them to you?  I guess the same thing applies to warranty returns.  How do I get copies of my receipts?

Tooley:  Once you’ve sent your receipts to Shoeboxed, getting them to your accountant is a breeze.  You can download a PDF, CSV, or Excel file of your expenses to email or hand to your accountant.  You can also print a hard copy of any scanned receipt at any time from your account.  Our digitized receipts are accepted by the IRS so there’s really no need to hang onto the hard copies, but you can choose to have them sent back to you after processing at no additional cost.  Store policies regarding digitized receipts vary, so we recommend that you save the original paper receipts where a warranty or return is involved.

Lizotte:  I need to access my business card file from my smart-phone when I travel.  Is that possible with Shoeboxed?

Tooley:  You can access everything in your online account—business cards, receipts, and other documents—anytime, anywhere from your smart-phone, you just need internet access.  In addition to retrieving your scanned items, you can also submit business cards and receipts to Shoeboxed with your smart-phone when you travel.  Shoeboxed Mobile allows you to snap a picture of a receipt or business card, and then email that picture to Shoeboxed for processing.  Our iPhone application for receipts works similarly, but it takes on-the-go expense tracking to the next level by giving you the ability to create and email expense reports right from your phone.

Lizotte:  Let’s say I sell lots of items on eBay or Etsy.  I’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands of transactions in a typical month.  How does that work for you?  Is there a limit on items?  Do I have to print and mail each of my email notifications from eBay?

Tooley:  Shoeboxed is more for expenses, so the email notifications you receive when you sell items on eBay, Etsy or similar sites fall a little outside the scope of our service, but we are integrated with some great bookkeeping sites including Outright.com that are better suited for income. However, Shoeboxed is perfect for tracking the emails and notifications associated with buying things on those sites. Instead of giving eBay or Etsy your personal email address, you can give them your Shoeboxed address so that your e-receipts and email notifications get sent straight to Shoeboxed for processing and online storage.  Alternatively, you can just forward your online shopping receipts from your personal inbox to your Shoeboxed address.  Either way, everything will get processed and securely stored in your Shoeboxed account. 

Lizotte:  What if I already use online services like Outright.com or Freshbooks.com?

Tooley:  Shoeboxed is integrated with both FreshBooks and Outright.com, giving you a full set of online accounting tools.  Once you sync your accounts, your expenses as compiled by Shoeboxed are automatically sent to Outright.com and FreshBooks and updated once daily.  The set-up process is incredibly easy and only takes a few minutes. 

Lizotte:  I know someone who is in the process of starting a B2B marketing business.  She’s generating a ton of receipts right now, but she can’t file or track them if her life depends on it.  She’s not very technically-inclined.  How difficult would it be for her to get an account setup on Shoeboxed?  How quickly could she begin to use your service?

Tooley:  Shoeboxed was created for people just like your friend.  Using Shoeboxed is very easy and you can start submitting receipts and business cards as soon as you sign up.  When you create an account, we will send you a postage-paid envelope, all you have to do is stuff it full of receipts or business cards and send it back to us.  If you can’t wait for the envelopes, send us a picture of the receipt via email for processing.  Either way, all of the work of data entering and categorizing is done for you by Shoeboxed.

Lizotte:  Ok, on an easier note, we all know that everyone likes freebies.  Tell my readers how they can earn Tshirts and other goodies. 

Tooley:  We periodically run promotions that allow our users to earn freebies.  During our last promotion, users could earn t-shirts, cash and iPads just for referring their friends and family to Shoeboxed.  We are looking to do a similar promotion in the near future, so stay tuned and check out our website for updates. 

Lizotte:  I’ve read a lot about you in various press outlets lately.  You’re getting a lot of coverage for what you’re doing at Shoeboxed, but I’m curious…Any hints on what’s coming in the future?

Tooley:  In the coming weeks we are going to add multi-currency support to make Shoeboxed more international friendly.  We are also planning to expand our mobile app offerings.  Beyond that, it’s difficult to say what improvements we will make in the future because any changes we make to our service are based on user feedback, so if you have any suggestions, let us know. 

So there you have it.  If I’ve missed anything, or there’s something else you’d like Mike to address, leave a comment or a question and one of us will take care of it for you.  If you’re tired of trying to input and track all of your reciepts, I’d encourage you to try Shoeboxed.com out for free by clicking here.  Your feedback and questions are encouraged, and I’ll be posting periodic updates on our mystery shopper as she progresses with her trial period.

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