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Best Ways to Organize Bills?
scorp1us asks: "Every year on the 1st of January, I start a new set of folders for storing my bills. Generally, I keep everything divided up by account. But this seems to take too long. I wait 3-6 months and get a big pile nad have to go about sorting it. I have been considering a per-month scheme - all bills go to one folder, each month. With all the CS people out there studying sorting algorithms, has anyone found a better approach?"
...are not news for nerds, no matter what "algorithm" spin you put on it.
Or you could just build categories in quicken/money/gnucash? and print reports at the end of the year.
I use Quickbooks for my business and those are my only writeoffs anyway.
I file all of my bills in a circular metallic file, which I clean out weekly. It sure makes my bill-organization easier.
Hold on, someone's pounding on the door...
This really has nothing to do with sorting algorithms, unless you're using a database or something. No, you're talking about a very small data set (in CS terms) that you just have to organize in a way that best suits your needs. You haven't provided nearly enough information for anyone to make a serious suggestion.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Always put your bills in order as you put them into your folders.
With all the CS people out there studying sorting algorithms
I dind't know that people who played counterstrike would be studying in this feild.
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It's quite simple. Just take a hole punch, and punch two holes into your root-node bill. Each subsequent bill will take three holes (parent, and leaf nodes) Then, chose your sorting schema (dollar amount, utility name, month name, whatever) and simply tie the bill to the appropriate leaf node with a piece of string. Fast indexing, and fast retrieval. Voila.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I use a large binder to keep things together. The bills get hole-punched and inserted into the appropriate section and when you're ready to file the old ones, they're easy to access.
Things like credit card receipts are paper-clipped or stapled to the invoices that they were charged to.
I don't think it's the best right now, but it works better than our previous (non)filing system.
There's not really much need, is there? When a new bill comes in, you can put it on the stack of bills that need to be paid. When the bill is paid, you can shove it in a big box, right on the top.
This procedure has a couple benefits. It's simple, taking no time or thought to implement. Plus, the big box implements a stack. If some bill needs to be discovered for some reason (a rare event) you will discover that the stack is mostly sorted in chronological order with the newest bills on the top.
When solving any problem, it's important to ask yourself what level of implementation effort is necessary. There's only one reason to go into the box of past bills: to find an old bill. A manual search through the pile won't be appreciably speeded when the pile is fully sorted by date and category, so why go through that effort? Just as good is the nearly cost free implementation of a *nearly* sorted stack of bills.
Of course, I am making the assumption that you are sorting bills to solve some sort of real-world bill-paying problem, and not a problem that a particular personal compulsion for neatness might raise (i.e. neatness/categorization obsession).
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
This is a great idea (hole punching). I used to use this to organize my floppy disks. Now I use it to keep my CD's organized.
Just curious, do you ever come back to them? I started to be that organized, then I realized they never come back out, so I stuff them all into a big envelope at the end of the year. In recent months, I have most of my bills come to my email account instead.
I guess what I'm saying is "I need more info" before I can suggest a method that is helpful to you. One major ingredient to how you sort is how you intend to retrieve it. I'm reasonably certain that anybody who's ever written a search algorithm will give you a similar answer.
"Derp de derp."
if you sort by date, there is no sorting work involved. Things keep themselves sorted. At the end of a month/year just start a new folder. Simple and easy.
What are your access patterns? Is this data just stored away and rarely, if ever, referenced again? Or do you frequently need to find it? Sorting, indexing and searching all require effort, but you can trade off sorting and indexing effort against search effort.
Also, you don't necessarily have to have a single solution for all data elements. Stuff that is likely to be needed frequently and/or soon can be cached in fast-access storage, stuff that may be needed can be placed in slower storage, stuff that almost certainly won't be needed can be placed in archival storage and stuff that definitely won't be needed can be discarded.
FWIW, here's my solution: I use a computer (and Quicken, though there are many workable alternatives -- that's just the one I started using 15 years ago) to provide quick access to all of my financial information. 99% of the time, all I need to know is who, what, when and how much, and the computer provides all of that. Additionally, there's plenty of incentive to keep it up to date, since doing so helps me answer the rather important question "Do I have any money?". It's also pretty easy, given I can download and automatically import bank and credit card statements.
For managing the paper, I use a multi-level storage approach. I have a "to hold" file that is my fast-retrieval cache, for things that I know I'll need soon. I keep two files and a box for each year. One file is "tax-related stuff", the other is "warranty-related stuff" and the box gets everything else, in a random, completely disorganized jumble. Retrieval of stuff in the box is slow, but since it's basically LIFO-structured, more recent stuff is easy to find, which fits common access needs, and I really don't get in there very often anyway. Any need to reach into the box represents a cache miss, and I try to adapt my caching algorithms to minimize those (without overloading the cache, of course).
I keep the last four years' tax and warranty files in the filing cabinet. At the end of each tax season, the previous year's box moves to archive storage in the basement. When a given years' tax and warranty files move out of the filing cabinet, they go in their corresponding box in the archive. Every few years I go through the boxes, and any that are more than 10 years old (7 is really adequate) get shredded.
The computer-based data, however, is permanent. I put backups in a safety deposit box. I expect it will frighten me in 30 years to see just how much money I've made and spent in my lifetime.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Asking techies about paper for archiving is like asking the phone company how to communicate using tin cans and string. Go paperless!
I run my life as paperless as possible. I use electronic statements whenever available, and I scan the remaining paper. It takes me about 15 minutes per month. I have a CD with all my taxes, bank statements, car repair history, etc. back to about 1994. I keep a copy at home, and a copy at a remote location just in case.
As for sorting, I name the files by the date, and place them in folders based on the institution. It's not searchable without knowing the date, but I don't care. OCR could solve this, but I don't consider it worth the time.
Internal bills:
rent/mortgage, electric, gas, etc.
External bills:
car payment, credit card(s), cell phone, etc.
Of course, this comes from someone who hasn't balanced his checkbook (between ATM receipts and online banking - why bother?) since 1997 or so.
Of course, this comes from someone who hasn't balanced his checkbook (between ATM receipts and online banking - why bother?) since 1997 or so.",/I>
It appears we have a United States Senator among us! Welcome to Slashdot!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Worked for me. Haven't looked at a bill in 2 years and going. She handles the bills way better than I ever did.
:p
Alternatively, you could just scan them all and put them into HTML, and then search them with google.
Especially your credit card statements...
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
It does not matter where you put the bills. What matters is when you do it. I try never to touch a bill more than once. When I get the bill (or statment) I take the actions to pay it then I punch the statement with my 3 hole punch and put it in a binder. I takes less time (often none at all becase I am waiting on something else anyway) This way I don't forget to pay and I never have to look at a bill again sort sort or resort it.
Just connect into the TIA (Defense Department Total Information Awareness system) and search on your name. You will find all record of anything you ever spent anywhere contained therein.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I mean, I just realized last year that in the basement I had six shoeboxes containing twenty-five years worth of cancelled checks, invoices and receipts.
I tried to go through them, but realized that I didn't really have any quick, easy, reliable way to decide which could be safely thrown out. Sure, 95% of them were easy. Most bills and cancelled checks only need to kept for long enough to resolve any mixups. But the rest were fairly hard.
Tax returns? I think the answer is supposed to be that you don't need to keep them after ten years.
And in the really old ones, I realized that I was fascinated by the changes in the look of bills, receipts, and checks. The oldest ones were printed in ink with chaintrain printers, for example. Then they started to become laser-printed--in monospaced type. Then they acquired proportionally-spaced type. Then they started to get laid out with little boxes and sidebars and things...
Up to about ten years ago I still got--what DO you call those anodized aluminum boxes they always used to have on the counters of small businesses, containing what I think were continuous-form carbon receipts that might have been about 6 by 8 inches in size, onto which bills/receipts/invoices were written by hand? The typefaces popular for letterheads, business cards, and so forth have changed considerably over the years.
But I digress. What algorithms and rules of thumb do people use for deciding what bills can be thrown out? Pardon me, of course I meant shredded.
(And please don't tell me to "just scan them..." then I need to fret about archival media and whether CD labels rot CD-R's and whether Blu-Ray DVD drives will be able to read CD-R's and how to assign them file names and... oh, my aching head)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
My algorithm is very simple: if (snailmail==bill) { toTrash snailmail; } Really. I pay bills using an online service through my bank. For bills that I can't get electronically, I still pay them using the service. So, there is a record of me paying the bill through the service along with account numbers, etc, and there is a record in my online check register of the money going out and to whom it was paid. And for bills that I do get electronically, there is all of the above plus the actual online copy of the bill - in the highly unlikely event I need to see it again. I don't feel the need to keep paper.
Try draining your piles with a large diameter needle about once a week. This prevents the secondary scrota formation and makes riding a bicycle much more workable. If you have such a large abundance of pile nads that they require catalogueing, perhaps you need to need to seek out an apple corer or it's surgical equivalent.
Thanks.
A wife is really great for this task. After all, women love to shop and handle money. Learn to exploit her natural talents.
Why do you need to keep the bills? Are you going to use them to compare how your utility rates have changed over time? I've found that I usually only look at them once I get them in the mail and then again when I pay them. If they are kept, they usually get put in a drawer with lots of other old bills and never looked at again.
Unless it is something like a medical bill where it's common to get charged multiple times, are you ever really going to need to see the details for your utility or cable bill ever again? Probably not. So why not shred them and get rid of them?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I divide bills/papers up by category...
1) car
2) house
3)
4) utilities
5) monthly non-utilities (cell phone?)
6) insurance (car/health separate)
7) retirement
Anything that is eBilled monthly, I paperclip together, along with a post-it saying when they were eBilled (confirmation screen printout optional) and file it under 'Monthly'. Other bills I pay get placed sans paper clip in the 'Monthly' folder. Car/house bills/papers have their own folders, ordered by when they came in (ie, i always put them in front). Since 99% of my purchases are made via credit card, I have a receipts folder ordered by date and large purchases are noted with post-its. At time of purchase, I put the receipt in my wallet and when it gets too painful to sit on, I clean it out.
I keep all current folders in a bin under my desk, complete with built in bins for post-its and paper clips. When the folders (usually 'Receipts') start taking too much room, I move them to cardboard boxes in my storage room. I can find nearly any bill/receipt within minutes, it's all right next to where I spend most of my time (computer) and it doesn't get in my way or others' ways.
Caveat: I'm 25, single, no kids. My system may get overwhelmed by someone that could, say, actually benefit from a Palm Pilot's scheduler feature (if you have kids/wife/dog, you know what I mean).
--trb
I hate paying bills so before I was married I would prepay my bills. Most (phone/cellphone/power/water) are so small that it costs me more in monthly stamps than I would lose in interest. I would generally write a check for at least 3 months rounded up to the nearest $100. Made checkbook balancing really easy. Each month I'd glance at the bill for correctness then file it. Saved lots of time. A friend of mine was more extreme. Every January he paid all his bills for the year in advance.
Now my wife pays the bills and she is ruthless about getting rid of paper. Almost everything gets shredded immediately after being paid.
I used to be paranoid about dumping stuff 'cause "I might need it someday" but I've gotten the bug and shredded lots of old statements and gained at least a foot of space in my file drawer. My desk is lots clearer and I can find the stuff I actually need to find lots faster.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
You need 4-6 files for this:
Say you spend an hour each saturday dealing with bills. Each file represents the saturday you need to pay a bill by in order to make the due date. Each saturday you clean out the contents of one file. Pay the bills, sort them into whatever filing system you use (I like phone, gas/electric, city services, other - you don't need a file for each company/service combination - it makes it harder to go back, in fact).
Keep these filed according to their due date. Each year take those four or more bill folders and place them all in a large manilla envelope and keep them for however long you need to (2-7 years). Do NOT keep them for any longer then legally necessary. The current year and the previous tax year is a good minimum, and generally few service bills need to be kept any longer than that.
12 bills from many sources takes up very little space. Remove the envelopes after paying, staple them, and highlight or underline the due date. Make sure they are all laying flat so they take up as little space as possible, and are easy to flip through from the stapled corner.
Honestly you shouldn't be spending more than 5 minutes a day to sort into "To be paid" folders, and then maybe 20 minutes actually paying them, stapling them, removing unnecessary bits of paper, and filing them each saturday. If you want to spend less time, make "To be paid" folders that are only paid every other week. Wait long than that and you'll usually have issues with bills that come due before the next 'to be paid' day, and the workload on that day will seem daunting, even though it'll still take less than an hour or so.
Besides, shouldn't you have all of your fixed payments, and most of your regular services on an automatic bill pay service? If not, get with the program. No need to spend more than a few minutes a month keeping your finances in order once you get them in order.
-Adam
Pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. -- George Orwell, 1941
Very true. This is shown in the case of the "anti-war" movements of Europe and the United States which were organized to prevent democracy from coming to Iraq (and in favor of Iraq remaining as a totalitarian dictatorship). Against their wishes, and despite their efforts, Iraq will likely be democratic next year (2004).
This "peace movement" if it had been around in 1943 would have been protesting against "intervention in Germany's internal affairs." and claiming that military solutions were not the answer to the Blitzkrieg.
it sounds like you have a good filing system already, but lack the discipline to stick to it. you'll probably find a large number of people who file by month, and a large number who file by account. I myself am sorta a both. I keep monthly bills by account, and keep store credit/debit card receipts by month.
pick a filing system you like and get yourself into the habit of sticking to it in January, and dont let teh papers keep piling up into june.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
1) Bigger shoeboxes
2) File above after 7 (seven) years.
My solution to the problem of too many bills was to quit buying so much crap. Once you quit letting the marketing department run your life, you'll be surprised how many other problems are also resolved.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Eliminate most of the unnecessary filing by throwing away the "normal" white envelope monthly bills. Wait for the yellow certified "disconnection" envelopes to come in and then sort those by shutoff date. As you pay them one day prior to shutoff, throw them away.
>Tax returns? I think the answer is supposed to be that you don't need to keep them after ten years.
If you get audited, and the government finds errors, they can go back as far back as you ahve been paying taxes, as my Dad found out.
Good thing he had laid a trap for them. The first errors they found were such that they owed him... Like not claiming a charitable deduction that ended up being several hundreds of dollars. They went back to the church that it was given to and got a receipt.
It was a large scale manger scence done in ceramic, and handpainted. Originally they were just going to give it and not worry about the deduction, but when the IRS came a knockin' about some other issues, it was insurance in the hole.
Mr. Gates, you're here.
Mr. Nye, sit here.
Mr. The Cat, please sit outside.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Try using a payment service like PayTrust. All of your bills go to them and are scanned in and presented online. At the end of each year they offer to send you a CD with all of the bills for the year. The CD they send is browser-based but has a light Java app that acts as a local web server, allowing you to perform searches and sorting of the data through your browser. I've been using them(actually I started with paymybills.com which was bought out by them) for 4 years now and haven't regretted it once. I just ordered my 2003 CD which includes my 2000, 2001 and 2002 records. About half of my bills are delivered to them electronically now so those are HTML instead of JPEGs.
As I get bills in via mail, I open them, note the due date and amount and jot that down on the front of the envelope. I then place these bills in the order of due date into an upright filer where I can see the front most (and soonest due) bill's due date. This filer sits next to my computer on my desk so I can always quickly tell if I have any bills due soon.
I use online bill pay via my bank and so grant a few extra days for processing. When I think I should get around to firing off a batch of bills, I get online grab the stack of bills and start paying them until I either a) don't feel comfortable committing more money to paying bills or b) don't have any more bills due in a "reasonable" period of time.
And the only reason I do it this way is because after dropping money into savings and such, our cash flow is such that we have to watch how we time our bill payments. If cashflow wasn't a problem (i.e. we had better self control over our spending habits), I would probably just pay bills as they come in.
As for filing them, I have an accordion folder where I keep things sectioned. Phone (for land line and cell bills), utilities (gas, electric, water, sewage, cable modem, etc.), medical, insurance, etc. If it gets too full, I go through and clean it out, usually only keeping the most recent 6-12 months of statements. As for long term keepers (tax documents for example), those get filed into a separate folder for later use if needed.
Just have 2 boxes, 1 marked "20th century" and 1 marked "21st century." Much easier, and you only have to buy a new box every 100 years :)
And, yes, the "21st century" box would of course contain all bills starting with January 1, 2001
Most bills contain lots of redundent white space. This can be greatly compressed by organizing all your bills in a neat pile, add some gasoline (just a touch) and running a fire routine (match 3.0 or lighter 2003). In a few moments, bills can be stored in a small bag. Note: This is a beta solution, I have yet to work out the decompression routine.
The only algorithm needed here is. 1. Get off your lazy b**t. 2. File the bill into it's right folder. 3. Pause for a month. 4. Go back to step 1. Osho
And, yes, the "21st century" box would of course contain all bills starting with January 1, 2001
You are off by a year. The new millenium and century started on January 1, 2000.
I created a spreadsheet to solve this problem.
In the first column I have dates. In the next column the current bank account balance. In the next columns I have money in/out. This includes paychecks, mortgage, student loan payments, credit card payments and a column for other expenses.
Most of these dollars in/out columns is setup so that it checks the date in column A. In the case of a paycheck, it checks the day mod 14 (income every two weeks). In the case of the mortgage, it checks to see if the day of the month is the 6th and not a weekend, etc. Some checks are complicated like my water bill-- the due date is the Friday between the 3rd and 9th of each month. I also have to estimate certain payments ahead of time.
Then, all these columns are added together accross the same day and carried over to the next day's current account balance.
It works great. Whenever a check comes in, I just open the spreadsheet, look at everything coming due according to the spreadsheet, and payit. It even lets me see when I've got to carry money in my account over several pay periods to cover automatic widthdraws from my account for things like the mortgage payment.
When new bills come in, I just update my estimates in the spreadsheet or add the amount the other expenses column. When I have take money out of the account to pay for things like groceries, I use a debit card and update the spreadsheet when I get home.
Now you might ask how this solves the problem of getting rid of those paper bills. The key is to create one sheet of paper with all the information you need to handle electronic payments -- things like URL's, etc. When you get paid, go online with this sheet and pay everything you can electronically. I'm to the point now where I only have to write maybe one or two checks a month to pay for things. I keep one small stack of bills that go into this category. It's so small a stack, I don't bother with things like file folders.
I usually file mine into the trashcan. Of course, I just got evicted from my apartment, and my cellphone is cut off, but that's just coincidence. Right?
where the comment ends and sig begins
This is a far superior system to just ignoring everything but the pink bills (past due notices), which was what I was using before. :) $120/yr is way less than I was paying in late fees, so it is a bargain for me.
Aaron
Been a long time user, now it is one of the reasons I run Windows.
With the bill pay, one can schedule in the payments, and then let the paperwork pile up for a while.
Hopefully there is a FLOSS program out there that does the same things, but Quicken is the gold standard for personal finance IMHO.
Put them in a bucket according to some hash values (*ahem* months?), and then sort each bucket seperately. Lather, rinse, repeat. Wow, it's so brilliant I think it's already called a Bucket Sort. AND if you're careful with your piles, it's stable too!
Just scan it, store it in a database. Then you can sort it however you like depending on how you need to go through it.
.png files in a directory structure organized by biller->year->month
What??!?!? There's no app for linux to do this? Write one, I'll give you $20.
Right now, I'm just storing them as
It works well, but something actually designed for this would be much nicer. I guess Omnipage for windows and mac is supposed to be quite good for this, but it's $500. Ouch.
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"I'm don't think I'm going to do that either. I never liked bills much."
I know we're talking different bills, but...
Five twenties (preferably new and crispy) creased perfect down the center, stacked, and folded in half as a hundred stack is simply great. $2500 makes a nice short brick. ~$3200 makes a nice cube.
Come on, can you think of a better way to count twenties?
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
I use per-month folders and that's worked pretty well for me; the main benefit being that I actually put the papers in the folders. On the rare occasions I've needed to find some scrap of paper, rummaging through a month or two's worth of stuff isn't too bad.
The only drawback I found was at end of year when I wanted to sort out my business expenses so I could deduct them. My solution: two sets of monthly folders: yellow for business, green for personal.
Also, for those fellow geeks who have trouble keeping organized, I strongly recommend the book Organizing from the Inside Out. It's a smart, practical book that really engages your analytical skills. It's done wonders for me.
What I would absolutely love to have is a "recording mode" in Mozilla so that I could ditch the snail mail invoices forever. The way it would work is that you would click a "record" button on Mozilla to enter recording mode and then every page that you look at would be permanently archived for later user, including all page prerequisites (images, etc.), and all form data. Then, merely by paying my bills online, I would automatically get a permanent, electronic record without having to manually save the pages (which doesn't always work right anyway because some sites force cache expiration). Even better, Mozilla could detect that I normally record my visits to American Express, for example, and automatically ask me if I want to start recording the next time I visit, so that I don't even have to remember to click the "record" button.
I submitted this as a feature request to Bugzilla, but it could use some more people to vote for it. I would probably even pay a nominal bounty for this feature, though I don't have time to write up exactly what I want at the moment, so I'm just hoping that somebody else has the same itch.
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P.S. My wife's "natural talents" have nothing to do with shopping or handling money. I have to handle all the bills myself. My wife handles... uh, something else. Perhaps in your family, it is the other way around?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I find it much easier and much cheaper to move every six months and change my name every 12 months. It's as simple as picking a name on a gravestone, and filling for a tax ID number for a business by that name. It will run you about 1500 grand for the entire process and that does add up, but it's a lot cheaper than actually making car and house payments! Like I'm going to fork out the 3 grand a month they want for this condo. It's ridiculous. The 15 grand a month I make from spam is more wisely spent on hookers and drugs. Take it from me, paying bills is for suckers.
-- Gene Siskel
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
It looks like Bugzilla has disabled links from Slashdot. So, you can cut and paste http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217686 (remove any spaces that Slashdot's lameness filter adds) or you can search for bug number 217686.
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I had piles and piles and bags full of bills and mail until I found the perfect solution to organize my paperwork !!
That's how I do it. Why bother paying bills every month? Bills generally cost very little compared to EVERYTHING ELSE, I can pay bills for three months if I don't eat out or go to bars for a month.
It feels really good to pay bills 'quarterly' rather than twelve times a year. You just have to be a bit on-the-ball about having the money when you need it.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
repeat
get(bill)
pay(bill)
delete(bill)
until (hell freezes over)
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
When they arrive. I log onto my online banking site and setup the payment like so:
due date on bill - 1 for amount x
The due date - 1 is so the payment will be transmited to the payee on time
Grouptab.com provides bill tracking. It's geared towards groups of people who share bills together, but it could also work for your purposes...
I got a desk with two drawers. During the year I pile up the bills on the desk.
On the first of the month I pay all the bills and sort them into drawers: business in the left, personal in the right one.
Every year at the tax time I take two plastic garbage bags, empty drawers into them, mark them with a post-it indicating the year and throw them into the attic.
And the cycle starts anew.
When dealing with data storage, you have to look at how and when you attempt to retrieve data. If you only have to look through your records once a year, and it takes 2 hours to go through it, it's not efficient to sort anything if it's going to take you more than 2 hours per year.
Now, yes, there are issues with risk, and that if you have reason to go through the records twice as often, then it becomes worthwhile to index, but likewise, if you have no reason to go through the records, you're wasting time by organizing.
If you're thinking of this as a data warehouse, you'd heavily index it, but rarely update it. That's not the case with this, unless you're looking for something multiple times per month, you're updating it more often than retrieving. So you have to balance how much work goes into indexing, and how much time is saved by that indexing.
So, anyway, here's my method --
I have a hanging folders with major categories (utilities, telecommunications, financial, insurance, home, receipts, etc). In each of those, I have various manilla folders for each company or account that I have to deal with (eg, Utilities : electric, oil; Telecom: land line, DSL, DSS, cell phone)
I then do absolutely nothing with them, and let all of my bills collect up throughout my house, and forget to pay my bills... once I notice I'm overdue on a bill, I pay it, and enough to cover me for 3-4 months past that. Every 6-9 months or so, I get sick of the piles of crap, and sort them into the folders.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Store them in the recycle bin ("trash" if a mac user)
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
Relevent FAQ for individuals:
There's more if you're an employer or a business, but I figured that was outside the scope of discussion. Also, their site's search function isn't exactly the most useful; I couldn't find anything meaningful about audits.
Sort bills in order of denomination. Make sure the bills are all aligned and none of them are upside down in the stack, keep the portraits of the presidents facing UP when you put them in your wallet.
Get one of these for your desk. Mark the first folder as "current" or "unpaid".
Create additional folders for "Bank1", "CreditCard1", "CreditCard2", "Autoloan", "WishIHadAHomeLoan", "PhoneBill", "Gas & Electric", "Cable", "Internet", "LongDistance", "ParkingGarage" etc.
- When bills come in, place them in the "current" folder.
- Come pay day, sit down, pay bills, write checks etc.
- - After paid, strip unecessary garbage from the bill e.g. envelopes, ads, credit card checks
- - Staple that bills pages together
- - Place recent bill in the matching folder on top(usually held together with a paperclip, small binder clip, [this makes it easy to search through since most bills print the date in the top right hand corner] or in some cases stuff multiple bills in one of the same bill's folder)
- - - Checks from Bank statements get binder clipped together with the small clips & stuffed into an envelope sorted by check number.
- At the end of the year, take all of the folders, write the year on them & place them in the file cabinet (optional) I don't typically get that many bills so it may take 2-3 years before I bother to toss them in the filing cabinet.
Think of this as processor cache
Personally, I have stopped receiving almost all of my paper bills in favor of "electronic" ones. Some are linked straight to my bank where I can review them and pay them right out of my account, others are more of an "email/website" type ("This month's bill is now available at ..."). Makes life much easier at the end of the month.