Each year around tax time, I always go through the ritual of cleaning out the file cabinet of the receipts, bills, and other paperwork that I have kept that I no longer need for the following year. My parents always told me to keep two years worth of documents, so I have it down to a science now where each year I am shredding documents from three years ago and always keeping the past two years worth. To be honest, I hate doing this and I have always thought that there has to be a better way.
In my article, I reviewed the Doxie scanner, a tool which I believe will help solve half of the problem. The other half of the problem is that I needed a place to store all of these digitized receipts and documents. Doxo seemed like the right place to do it. The easiest way to explain Doxo in a nutshell is as your digital file cabinet. Let me show you what I am talking about.
Getting Started
Doxo is a great place to store your old bills, receipts, important documents, and more on the web and keep it neat and tidy. It’ll keep your random important documents safe and secure, and, best of all, keep them from taking up space in your home. The first thing you need to do when you register for Doxo is to create folders for your digital file cabinet. You do this by choosing or searching from the list of providers that Doxo gives to you. Each provider that you select will have its own folder and they can be organized into different drawers as well.
Selecting Your Providers
Once you have selected your different folders and put them into the proper drawer, now you will fill out your personal information for each provider. When you click on a provider, you will see your digital folder for that specific company, but it is so much more than just a folder. It has pertinent information about the provider like their phone number, website, etc. Then you can input your personal information for that provider as well. Once you do this for all of your providers you are now set to start using Doxo on a regular basis.
Adding Your Info
Using Doxo
This is where the power of Doxo comes into play for you. It is much more than just a digital file cabinet where you can put all of your important documents. One of the things that it does is that if you use it to store your monthly bill documents, you can utilize their To Do list to remind you to pay bills each month. Once they are paid, you can file away your statement on Doxo.
To Do List
But what makes Doxo even more powerful is that it has connected itself with other companies so that you can view your bill and even possibly pay it right from Doxo. This takes the hassle out of having to go to multiple websites to pay your bills each and every month. Instead, now you can do everything from within Doxo and it makes it that much more easier for you as the consumer.
File Cabinet Replacement?
That is what Doxo is banking on here; it’s hoping you’ll want to cloudify your documents and not store them in your actual file cabinets. I personally think Doxo is the way to go to do this. They have a great user interface, and it is very easy to set up. They also have an iPhone and desktop app to use as well. So you can truly be almost anywhere and still use Doxo. Best of all, they are all free to use.
What I think is Doxo’s greatest feature could also be its greatest weakness, however. They have been able to connect with a small handful of companies to get your bills and pay them inside of Doxo, but a lot of these companies are small regional companies. There are not a lot of the big companies, which the majority of people use, that are connected with Doxo. I think in order for them to catch on to the masses, they have to be able to connect more of the major services that most people use. Without that, I think the majority of people see this app as a hassle as they have to scan in their documents then upload them to Doxo. It is so much easier to put my documents in my file cabinet and shred them at the end of the year. But, if they are able to connect to more services, you can do away with this step and attract more of a user base.
Conclusion
Although I love where Doxo is heading and I really like the site, I still think they have some work to do. They have created a great site to use and it is very user friendly. Now they have the challenge of convincing more companies to come on board and connect with their site. Will they make that happen? I guess only time will tell. For now, you can give it a try for free, and if you are curious about the iPhone app, check out this review from our sister site, iPhone.AppStorm. If you do try it out, we’d love to hear your thoughts about it and how it fit into your paperless lifestyle.