I typically don’t gush here about a service that I’ve just tried out for the first time, but I’ll make an exception for FileThis. I just read about it over on Lifehacker, and thought I’d give it a try. FileThis is a service that collects your bills in one place, so that you don’t have to sign into multiple online accounts. I just gave it a try, and this could be one of the biggest timesavers I’ve seen in years.
I previously wrote about my killer automated digital filing system, inspired by David Sparks of the Mac Power Users podcast. I’ve tweaked that system slightly, to shuttle bills and records into DEVONthink, but it’s still great. The one friction point with that system was going out and collecting all the bills, before automatically processing them. To get them, I had to sign into websites of multiple providers, navigate to my bills, and download them.
FileThis has decreased the number of websites that I need to visit. FileThis has paired with numerous institutions, allowing you to connect your FileThis account to your accounts with those institutions. FileThis will then automatically fetch your statements, and download them to a destination service of your choice. Included among the destinations are Dropbox, Box, Evernote, Google Drive, and locally on your computer. I choose the latter option, since I keep my bills in a DEVONthink database.
Now, I launch a FileThis menubar app on my Mac, which goes out and downloads any new bills into a folder. I have a Hazel rule set up that monitors that folder, and moves any downloads into my filing system.
If you’re concerned about security, check out FileThis’ statement on security. Aside from the security features you might expect, it was important to me that FileThis only has Read Only access to my accounts. The time savings for this is so huge, that some risk is worth it to me. I was able to connect accounts for my electric company, trash company, insurance company, cable company, and my wife’s mobile phone provider. Five logins reduced to none.
Would you trust a service like FileThis? If you want to give it a try, the above link in this article (or this one) will give both you and me an extra free connection, plus 250 extra MB of storage (for use if you decide to store your bills with FileThis instead of downloading them to another service). If managing your bills gives you a headache, give this a shot.
Tony Hue says:
Reminds me of another similar website called Manilla. Unfortunately, they’re shutting down on July 1 and I’ve been searching for a reliable alternative since then.
June 19, 2014 — 3:42 am
Evan Kline says:
I hadn’t heard of Manilla until I discovered FileThis. It sounds like it has many Manilla refugees. I hope FileThis can survive.
June 19, 2014 — 5:50 am
keepingeyesopen says:
If you use a bank bill pay service, you might check there to see if that service integrates with electronic bill download. My bank’s bill pay service will automatically download bills into the payment module and notify me when a new bill is present. I can then log on to the bank bill pay site to pay bills, each of which can be automatically populated with the correct amount due.
Unless i’m missing something, when using the FileThis service, you must manually enter the payment amounts when you pay your bills in whatever bill pay system you use. The advantage of the FileThis service is that you end up with copies of bills downloaded into your computer to be filed. The advantage of using your bank’s bill pay service to retrieve bills is that the payment process is more automated.
October 1, 2014 — 7:19 pm
Julia says:
I could see this being handy for those bills that I keep for taxes and for documentation. For example, utility bills for my home office; mortgage bills for proof of payment. I’d like to see it work for statements too, and be smart enough to put them in folders by month or type.
May 20, 2015 — 11:09 pm
Evan Kline says:
Julia, are you using a Mac? If so, you may want to look at Hazel, which is an app that can perform various actions on a file, such as renaming and filing it to a folder, based on its content. You’d want to set up FileThis to download files to your Mac for this to work.
May 21, 2015 — 7:52 am