Life Cycle of a Bill 2.0

Posted by André Nosalsky :: April 24, 2009 @ 6:33 am

Mike, my co-blogger here at Lending Club, wrote about the process that he follows with each bill. Mine is a bit different – it’s more of a “2.0” version of the process. Here is how I handle each bill:

Using services

This is similar to Mike’s. You have to utilize some service for a bill to be generated.

Bill not physically delivered

Whenever I can, and with almost every service it is possible, I cancel my paper delivery as soon as I set up the service and instead opt-in to email notifications. Most banks and other financial institutions are great at this and will send you email notifications whenever new bills are ready.

Set up automatic payments

Usually I will submit my credit card as my payment method, and whenever I can, I set up automatic billing. This way, I will never forget to pay a bill and incur late fees.

Pay/Checkup on 5th and 20th

For those companies that do not let me set up automatic billing or if it’s a bill on an irregular schedule, I make a note on my calendar to manually review these items twice a month.

Setup a dedicated email/folder

I have set up a different email account that only contains my bills and other financial notifications. This makes it really easy to manage; if the email is unread or unmarked, then the item still needs to be addressed. Otherwise, I know everything is handled properly.

Filing/records

I no longer keep copies of bills. Most companies have sites that you can now easily access and print all of your previous bills and statements. This makes keeping local hard copies of the bills a waste of paper and space.

Quarterly review

Every three months, I scan all of my bills and statements for irregularities and oddities. So far, there have been none.

Alerts

Most banks and credit cards will allow you to set up alerts for different types of activities. I have my accounts set to send me an email whenever a charge over $100 is made, so the potential for large fraud is minimized.

The idea is to spend as little time and resources as possible handling bills, and this process helps me achieve this. The next step would be to outsource the process altogether.