Like all wonderful ideas, a paperless society is still a distant dream and the various kinds of bills, receipts and related documents are still delivered on paper. With the advent of cashless transactions, over 50 per cent people now pay their bills electronically but only about 15 per cent of all such bills are digitally delivered. Keeping a record of the bills and receipts can be a messy business.
But all this is set for a change. Since its inception in 2010, a Seattle-based startup, Doxo, has been helping people organize their bills, receipts and other documents and store them online at Doxo site. It has also been trying to rope in providers like cable companies and utilities to send their bills in digital form while allowing people to register themselves and keep their bills at the site. In a way, Doxo offers a digital cabinet where one can keep bills and similar documents in an organized manner.
The company has also been taking initiatives so that customers are able to receive and pay the bills online. At the moment, the bills of the registered users, either sent by the service provider or uploaded by the user, are in the To Do section. Once the payment is made, the paid bills get transferred to Filed Docs. The site can be used to store other documents as well.
A professional organizer who uses Doxo says it’s a handy tool to organize one’s paperwork. For the people who pay their bills online, it’s an online filing system and even those who don’t can scan the paper bill and upload it on Doxo to keep a record. It’s a secure online storage system that eliminates the need for keeping paper records of bills and receipts, he adds.
Despite the availability of apt technology, why are the people and providers still using paper? He explains:
Bills in the physical form also act as a reminder that they need to be paid while those on the internet may be overlooked and forgotten.Making payment of bills through bank checks is a one-step exercise while doing so online involves multiple websites, log-ins and passwords – all this can be a cumbersome process.If you have a large number of bills, you may have to remember as many passwords to access them online. However, Doxo offers one password to access all of them.
Doxo does not charge any fee from its users but earns its revenue from the providers who stand to cut the cost of sending paper bills by 80 per cent if they switch over to online billing through Doxo.
There are quite a few companies including regional vendors and service providers, who are using Doxo services for the billing purposes. The company s aiming to account for 150 millions bills a month by the end of this year. However, it is still not possible to pay the bills through Doxo though the company is working in that direction. Using Doxo for handling bills and other documents can give someone immense clarity about them that can further help them take speedy decisions about the actions to be taken.