By Allan Maurer
DURHAM, NC—Receipts, like socks and paper clips all too often disappear into some semi-mystical land of the lost. Many individuals and even some small business people throw them unorganized into a shoebox or filing cabinet folder. Shoeboxed, a startup based in Durham’s Brightleaf Square, offers way for individuals and businesses to digitize those receipts.
“We think paper receipts are anachronistic in today’s world,” says Shoeboxed Director of Communications Dan Englander.
Englander tells TechJournal South the 15-employee company founded in late 2006 is funded by private angel backers. It is considering options for future fund-raising, Englander says.
Back from Germany
Founder Taylor Mingos, CEO, came up with the idea back in 2005, but put it on hiatus while on a trip to Germany in 2006. While there, he hooked up with the German site StudiZV.net, then a small social networking firm of a few people working out of an apartment. Mingos helped build the Facebook-like site and market it to German students.
It sold for $100 million in January 2007 and today is the largest Web site in Germany, pulling more traffic than Google or Yahoo.
Mingos returned to Durham where he completed his undergraduate degree at Duke University, and wanted to get back into a net startup and dived into the Shoeboxed idea, says Englander.
Englander joined the company when Mingos asked him to do some writing for its Web site, then found himself “working all the time on the site.” A year and a half later, he says, “I’m still here.”
Mail in receipts
Although the longterm vision for the service is to have a way for retailers and others to provide the receipt directly to the company from a cash register, that a ways down the business trail. Currently, it invites users to send Shoeboxed their paper receipts via mail in a prepaid 9X12 envelope, then scans and uploads them to a user’s account.
Shoeboxed provides software that helps users organize them once they’re uploaded. The software can connect to a variety of record-keeping and accounting programs such as Quicken. Englander notes that with a few minor exceptions, the IRS has accepted digital receipts since 1997.
Englander says the company is highly aware that some users might have security concerns, so it takes serious precautions both digitally online and in its physical location to insure privacy and security. Receipts generally have less personal information on them than many people think, he notes. “Most don’t include your name and by law cannot have more than 5 digits of a credit card number,” he says.
Users concerned about the mail can use a service like FedEx instead, but would have to pay the charge, he says. He adds that they’ve had a 99.5 percent
Three levels of service
It offers three levels of service, basic priced at $9.95 with the number of receipts allowed being limited and receipts shredded rather than mailed back; a $19.95 plan that allows users to send as many receipts as they can pack into the prepaid envelope about twice a month with receipts returned after scanning; and the premium service at $59.95, which guarantees one day turnaround and “probably results in a little extra love from us,” says Englander.
Although the company does not reveal the number of its clients, Englander says it has had exponential growth. Some business clients mail in batches of 20,000 to 30,000 receipts, while others use the service to keep track of reimbursable expenses.
One set of users Englander says surprised him are individuals who have saved their receipts for years, some since college, and want to organize them digitally and dispose of all that paper.
Englander says Shoeboxed is a typical startup where the staff frequently works 18-hour days. It keeps someone in the office to take calls and prides itself on customer service. He says some callers “Just seem to want to know someone is actually here, since they’ve never heard of anything like this before.”
The company has already received positive press in The Washington Post. Its Web site is cleanly designed and informative without putting users through a lot of sales pitches or relying on fancy graphics. “We’re frugal,” says Englander.
On the Web: www.shoeboxed.com
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