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Favorite Online Tools to Go Paperless

Lesson 7 from: Organize Your Paperwork

Beth Penn

Favorite Online Tools to Go Paperless

Lesson 7 from: Organize Your Paperwork

Beth Penn

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Lesson Info

7. Favorite Online Tools to Go Paperless

Lesson Info

Favorite Online Tools to Go Paperless

Let's get nerdy and talk about my favorite online tools to help us go ah little more paperless I know we've talked about some stuff but let's dive in a little bit more um so let's actually take it tio my computer so I can pull this stuff up and you guys can see this in action so the first thing that I want to talk about is a company called file this file this actually it goes into your accounts so your utility bill your credit card your on phone account like your cell phone it goes in there, gets the actual statements and files them where you tell them to file it so it really takes out the steps of them emailing you your statement or download our sending you an email to a link to go download that statement it does everything four u s o I'm just going to show you what this looks like by signing up for one of for a statement I already have a couple of mine on here um but I'm just going to show you what this looks like so before I do that I'm just going to type in and I'm actually going t...

o talk about this in a minute but I'm typing in my one password which brings up all of my loggins toe all of my online accounts and you can see that I already have this now I will tell you password managers are amazing sometimes they have faults. So this file this is one of those that doesn't love one password. Typically, if I were to hit this, it would go ahead and just fill in, um, email and password and I could log in for this one. For some reason, it wants me, it fills in the tri are forever free version, and since I'm already logged in, I don't want to do that. So what I would do is just put in my email address and copy and paste my password, which isn't the worst thing in the world, but usually it works really well, and so it brings up my account. So the connections that I have right now are my chase l a d w p socal gas and verizon wireless filed. This allows you to connect up to six connections for free, so it's definitely worth testing out and seeing if you like it. So I'm going to just show you how you would add a new connection. So I just mentioned paypal and I do this because every month I get a papal statement. And it is the most annoying thing people has a new version and an old version of their account. I dislike the new version because I can never find my old statements to download, so this is really gonna help out with that. I will never have to interact with that again, it's automatically going to download those statements for me? So I click on paypal and then I have to enter my user information, which, again, is really easy to find because I go to paypal and I'm just going to copy this and connect and it's contacting the institution. It says it's establishing a secure connection and we'll just let that run in the background for a second because it sometimes takes a little bit longer on so we're just going to continue on to the next out, but I just wanted to show you guys this really, really great tool because I think a lot of us we get these paper statements, we think that there could be an easier way, and and this is definitely one of them. Does anybody have any questions about this one? Okay, um, the next thing I want to talk about is actually it's one password, so I just showed you guys, but I'm going to show you how seamless it can be, so again, I'm just going to click on amazon. And it should fill in okay, I think we're having technical difficulties earlier with one password so again I'm just going to copy typically it would you just fill this out for me? Um some having to do a little bit of work but normally would not have to do this and so into my amazon account I don't have to look at log in list the great thing about password aps is they help you create a more secure password because what happens is you've got all your passwords written down in a notebook you could only get so crazy with those passwords because I'm not really going to do a really long crazy password and then have to go okay, what is that say this is really an easy way to get a really complicated password which is a really great step in keeping things secure and then I'm just going to show you guys how to create ah password using one password so log in and I'm doing a new account so I'm just going to put in my information actually have been in jail and password so what one password does the great thing about it you can see that I pulled this guy down because I wanted to generate ah password for me so you can see this is a pretty complicated password I can make it longer if I want I could make it shorter I can say no symbols if the place where I'm making the password is require nita include symbols in the password there are a lot of different things you can do with this so I'm going to copy this just in case it doesn't fill but I'm gonna say phil I did it great I don't want them to send the email updates and I'm going to say create my account oh ok so I guess I already have a password there but that being said you could see how easy that is it saves the information for me so I don't have to worry about it later and again just so you guys can see all of my log in for here which is that's quite a few to carry around in a notebook if you were to have a new book or if you have them some other way so I think it's really important to check out pass word aps there are plenty that also sink with your phone so I think you just have to find the one that fits your lifestyle going free thiss one is not free it's I want to say it's almost fifty dollars and then you have to pay extra for the phone out there are free ones out there and since I have gotten one password so many more have come on the market that are free and amazing so I would suggest checking out other ones as well on and taking a look around for a lifetime it is for the license yes, absolutely you know yeah I don't think you have to pay for the updates. I think one of the apps that I talked about earlier which in the email when was text expander you do have to pay maybe for certain um security are not security but just any updates but this one is one that you do not have to pay for any updates um yeah one last question about that does one password move from computer two computer with you so it's a single license. So yes, if you were to change computers because all of the information is housed in your drop box or wherever you tell it mine is in dropbox so if I were to get a new computer I would just transfer that file over and then downloaded again and say, hey here's my license and I would type in that license key they do have family, I think pacs. So if you were to want one for your whole family for every computer in the household they sell versions that way as well. So if if you're let's say you're traveling and you go to aa er internet cafe and you want to get on to one of your accounts are you in trouble? You're in trouble but only if you don't have it on your phone, so I have it on my phone, so I'm able to log in. Oh, I could look, I mean, technically, I probably wouldn't want to put in my password and log in information on one of those computers, but if I absolutely had to to check in on something, I could look at my phone and type it in oregon, just log in on my phone. Thank you so let's move on to pinterest, I'm pretty sure that you guys are very aware of pinterest, but I just want to bring it up because there are really great ways you can use pinterest it's not just for visual stuff, for collecting ideas and inspiration. You can now make private boards within pinterest so saying you're not much of a never note person, you could use pinterest, so what I've done in the past has helped clients find all their manuals online, we bookmark those in save them as a pinterest board, and we could make that private, so there are lots of different things you could do with pinterest private boards to say personal information like manuals, I mean that's not super personal, but the same time I might not want everybody knowing that I own I don't know, I don't have a good example, but you know something that like a some weird vacuum cleaner something who knows so anyhow I like pinterest for that reason in addition to all the other reasons I think it's something to explore and check out um shoe box so I talked earlier about shoe box when we were talking about our active paperwork so you would think me being a professional organizer he must be really good at numbers you must like be really good at math they're not they don't go hand in hand all the time I'm one of those people that I don't really like dealing with receipts or bookkeeping I have to keep these receipts for tax purposes they take up a lot of room and I don't really like that they take up a lot of room so what I do is I clean up my wallet I put them in my shoe box to receipt place and then at the end of the month I will send all of these receipts in what they call their magic envelope it's a big blue envelope I wish I had one here it's out being serviced um so I put everything in there and then what they do is they put it all on their server and I congar go on to a shoe box and see all of my receipts that the picture of everything and they actually extract that data so that I can export that data if I wanted to teo quickbooks or some other accounting software so shoebox is a really great way to keep receipts organized if you own your own business and need to keep those things for tax purposes, they do have a forever free version which I tried out and realized I did not use because you actually have to take a picture of the receipt and transcribed that information yourself so you have to extract that data again. I'm not good in the numbers and I'm not good at data entry stuff it's not something that I really enjoy doing so I upgraded and I pay I want to say I pain nine or eight dollars a month eight twenty five a month and I can send up to fifty receipts and they go up from there so they have a professional which I think you can send many, many, many receipts but anyhow I use the light version and that works really well for me. Um so shoebox does a great way to keep all of the receipts organized and digital how many of you have heard of square cash tugging along financial financial lines? So square cash sort of similar to paypal but not so paypal takes a percentage right so you pay someone on paypal for services or goods someone is going to get for a percentage taken out of their cut square cash is a great tool to use between friends so say I owe you fifty dollars. You just treating me to dinner or you didn't treat me, but I owe you fifty dollars for dinner. Maybe I didn't have my credit card on me. I didn't have any cash the place willing to cash you took care of it. You would say I'll just square cast you for the amount. So square cash is a really great tool that allows me to send money without having to have cash on hand. Let's, pull it up on my phone. I just want to show you guys how simple it is also my husband. Ten dollars, and he'll get over it a nice little surprise today on blast back later? No, I'm getting so I'm just going to say square cash and it really is this easy. So this is the interface. I didn't do anything. I just search forward in this came up so I say ten dollars. I can either request or I can pay, so I'm gonna pay and I can send this to anyone in my contacts. I'm going to say adam pin, he already uses cash pay so I have touch I d set up so all I have to do is put my thumb print on here and I sent in dollars toe adam so it's really easy if you don't have cash or don't want to write a check to someone, ask them if they use score cashin you might cut out the cash or the czech part of the transaction um my friends and I have gotten really good at using that if we owe each other money so just something that I really like um and then the other thing I would suggest using are you guys using your online bank up? Yeah to deposit checks so so, so amazing. So what online banking has done is made it able for us to not have to go to the bank, which I love a cz much as I like being a responsible adult, I don't really will love to run a ton of errands unless I'm going to pick up food or coffee from starbucks it's not one of my favorite things to dio so online thinking has an ap usually it's already built into your phone if you have the the app from your bank and you would just take a picture of that check and it deposits it without you having to go to the bank at all so it absolutely it does it takes a little bit longer but it's worth it for me to not have to go to the bank and sometimes I have the best intentions to go to the bank for that reason and then for whatever reason I don't make it there something happens and it's like oh, I should have deposited it two days ago sitting at the house when it could have already been in the account so I definitely think it's a really, really great source take compared to square cash square cash that's a good question too I don't know I've never noticed how long it takes the score cash I would say a day or two uh and it just goes into your bank yeah basically so the sender and the user has to upload your bank account information so you would just have to link that so it knows where it's going to and we're coming from yeah, sometimes it will ask for the three digit code just to re up sort of a security measure but as you just saw you just asked for my thumbprint to get in um so after showing you guys says great tools do you have any questions for me? Um might be like it kind of I have a mac but so now we have all these we've gone paperless and these folders air now do you have any does everything just going your document bolder in folders yeah so that's gonna look different again for everybody so I have my personal stuff which I keep in dropbox so I have folders set up literally like I would have in a filing cabinet set up in dropbox so it says, um it says beth personal and under personal it has you know, my husband my pets um it has memorabilia um what else does it have in there? Just personal folders and then I have a work folder which is subdivided into different things and then I have taxes which is separated two different years um and then it might have client projects things like that so drop boxes where I keep I guess a little bit of work plus personal then I use google drive slash google docks for um all of the day to day sort of business keeping so client notes, invoices, things that I need to have really quick reference to I keep in drop are in google docks and then I don't really use evernote I was using it today to show you guys some stuff I don't typically use evernote I don't find it as user friendly, but but I know that a lot of people really, really like it it has a lot of sort of bells and whistles and you can pretty much organized everything you never know you could keep all your documents and every note I wanted thing I know that people really like about ever notice you khun tag everything and so when you put tags on something you can just search for the tag and that all of the paperwork tagged with that will just come up so you don't even need to use file folders and evernote but all those things you'd have to have a wife I enter conviction tease them not necessarily you can download some of this stuff um I think everyone has an option to work when you don't have internet so you just have to click that and it would maybe take up more room on your computer so to keep your computer clean stuff lives in the yeah you have to have more space on your computer you would use the web versions but just uh ever note and dropbox both have desktop versions so do not have the internet you're able to use both of those put files in there take files out yes absolutely anyone else guys are good it was so great spending time with you guys today I hope I was able to relate some really great information for you guys to go kind of paperless and with a z we go out today can you let people know where they can find you after the fact? Yeah absolutely so based in los angeles benito bar dot com and we help people de clutter their homes, their offices, their lives as well as help people virtually declutter their email inbox and go kind of paper this great thank you so much wonderful have you here, and we look forward to seeing you next time you do have another workshop, were you tackle organizing someone's inbox? So, really, these two workshops together, I could make just a fantastic one two punch to make sure you get your life organized. Absolutely great, awesome, thank you. All right, folks, thanks again. We'll see you next time here, a creative life.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Paperless Apps and Resources

Ratings and Reviews

Larry
 

I tend to agree with Bonnie - it didn't solve all of my organizing problems, but it was helpful for the price paid Pluses - 1) she suggested several interesting apps to explore 2) "need to make the environment for dealing with paperwork attractive/supportive" - it should be obvious, but it was a good reminder Minuses - 1) I wish there had been more emphasis on setting up a paperwork system. 2) The scroll down highlighted "transcript" was interesting, but it was obviously not edited - there were misspellings and mis-transcriptions, which takes away from the professionalism

JeaN
 

I have a generally short attention span, so I have studied a lot of organization skills over the years to help me stay successful through school and grad school, and while working in corporate jobs. Now as a business owner I am looking to expand those skills since I have to learn so many more skills and be involved in more aspects of the business. I found this class informative and easy to learn from. I was able to complete the class in one seating, and I have about 4 pages of notes, including concepts and new tools I'm looking forward to implementing and experimenting with. Highly recommend.

user-52239c
 

Well, I found this instructor hard to follow. She seemed a little scattered, maybe she was nervous? She jumped into showing things without a good explanation of why she was doing it. I had hoped I would get more info on how to organize files in a file cabinet but there was not a lot about that, very general. She put files in wall hangers but I'm not sure why those particular ones went there and not in the files box and what was really going into the file box or being scanned. She showed some phone apps but I never quite caught what they were or how they actually worked. So many computer programs and apps to pay for and paying for sending receipts away to be scanned, paying for shredding, etc. I can't afford all of that. I wouldn't send out my personal papers for someone to scan - is that safe - or put my stuff in an envelope and mail it to be scanned -what if it got lost. I can scan and shred for myself. I don't like having so much of my life in the "cloud" for a couple reasons. I am not sure I'd remember where everything was and it would be a major mess if something happened to me and someone else had to get into all of those places. I will take some of the good bits and pieces and use those, as there were some good tips. I bought the class on sale for only $20 so I guess it was worth that.

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