View/Edit Pane
When you click to view a receipt, business card or document, a new toolkit allows you to easily zoom in and out, view your documents in full screen and switch between pages of multi-page documents. You can also print, email and export your receipts, business cards and documents directly from the view/edit pane. Other improvements to the view/edit pane make it easier for you to edit and add details, fields, and notes, and to move items between your receipts and bills/documents folders.

Business Cards
New drop-down menus at the top of the business cards page make it easier to manage and export your contacts. We also made improvements to the CSV export feature—there are now separate fields for first and last name, address line 1, address line 2, city, state, zip code and country.

Documents
You can now download PDF files of your documents simply by clicking on the export button at the bottom of the view/edit pane.

Other Highlights
Track and view your business cards, documents and receipts by envelope
Easily view your receipts by credit card
Payment type field added for PDF/CSV receipt files

The fine print:
Cash and iPad gifts are based on legitimate sign-ups for paid Shoeboxed plans as determined by Shoeboxed. This promotion is for US and Canada only. Duplicate as well as fraudulent sign-ups will not be accepted. Shoeboxed reserves the right to terminate this promotion at any time.

With the Shoeboxed iPhone app, you can easily track your expenses and create expense reports on your iPhone. Just snap photos of your receipts and Shoeboxed will extract the important information using our human-verified OCR extraction process. Download the app for free and receive five free credits. Receive an additional five credits when you register your account with Shoeboxed. After your free credits run out, you can start a Shoeboxed plan to continue the service if you like. To learn more about how Shoeboxed can help you stay organized visit our site. If you have the app and a Shoeboxed account, and you’ve actually read to the bottom of this post, send an email to help@team.shoeboxed.com to receive 10 additional free credits for your app.

The small biz warriors at FreshBooks, Outright.com and Shoeboxed are interested in only one thing: helping you spend less time on busy work – like invoicing, bookkeeping and recording expenses – and more time doing what you actually love – running your business. That’s why all three companies have integrated their services. ShoeBooksRight? FreshOutBoxed? OutBoxedBooks? Not such great business name combinations. But Freshbooks, Outright and Shoeboxed? Now there’s a great business combo. We have always known that these integrations were made in small business heaven, and this was confirmed recently when we were introduced to Evan Roberts, founder and manager of PPC Lab, who actually uses all three services together. Here’s what he had to say about his experiences:

“Being a young entrepreneur the last thing I want to spend time on is tedious accounting work. I’ve been using FreshBooks for a few years for invoicing, billing and pseudo expense tracking but when I stumbled upon Shoeboxed.com and Outright.com I felt like the accounting weight had been taken off my shoulders. It may sound overly dramatic, but I am really not disciplined enough to keep proper records on my own, and my accountant was never happy with my scattered shoebox of receipts and spreadsheet full of notes—usually done at the last minute.

Having this all done automatically and up to the minute is amazing. It’s so much easier to handle accounting issues like expenses, estimated tax payments, and billing, and I feel more in control and aware of my business than ever before. I’m positive that without these tools my accounting book would be a mess, and my accountant would never have bought a box of chocolate for ME on tax day.”

Here’s How the Integrations Work:

Shoeboxed lets users send in receipts and business cards using pre-paid envelopes, e-mail or even their mobile phones. After they scan, data enter, and categorize received items, Shoeboxed uploads expense and contact data to users’ online accounts. From there, users can track expenses, create expense reports and export data to Excel, QuickBooks, Quicken and similar programs. And that’s not all. Shoeboxed users can export billable receipts straight to Outright.com for bookkeeping or to FreshBooks so they can be billed to clients.

FreshBooks makes the necessary task of client invoicing quick and painless. Not only does FreshBooks create beautiful, Fortune 500-quality invoices, they allow you to easily track how much you’ve billed and how much is outstanding. If you need to bill a client for an expense, FreshBooks automatically snags the digitized receipt from Shoeboxed. When invoices are paid (hooray!), FreshBooks exports them to Outright.com where the income is automatically tracked.

Outright.com is a free bookkeeping app for sole-proprietors and small business owners. Using Outright.com, business owners can easily track their income and expenses, import financial information from sources like business credit cards and PayPal, and automatically populate their Schedule C tax form at the end of the year. Outright.com also imports receipt information from Shoeboxed and income from paid invoices recorded in FreshBooks.

Evan Roberts Twitter handle is @evroccck. His company’s website is PPC Lab.

Here’s how they work:

Teaspiller for Tax Advice
For those looking for tax experts and QET advice there is Teaspiller, a service that allows users to ask tax questions, upload tax data and have their taxes filed by an expert, all online. The service is integrated with Shoeboxed and other tax applications, making it easy to get financial information to a Teaspiller tax expert.

Shoeboxed.com for Receipts and Expenses
Shoeboxed makes keeping track of expenses and deductions a breeze. With Shoeboxed, gone are the days of spreadsheets and boxes full of wrinkled receipts. Users simply mail their receipts to the company, and the tedious process of scanning and data entering receipt information is done for them. Data is then made available to users via the Shoeboxed web application. And for those who want to keep track of their expenses on the go, Shoeboxed Mobile and the Shoeboxed iPhone app allow users to take pictures of receipts with their phones and send them to the company for data entry.

FreshBooks for Invoices
Of course tracking expenses is only part of the organization battle. FreshBooks allows users to create professional invoices and track how much has been billed and how much is outstanding. And thanks to an integration with Shoeboxed, FreshBooks automatically pulls receipts if users need to bill clients for expenses. Paid invoices can then be easily exported to Outright.com where income is automatically tracked.

Outright.com for Bookkeeping
Outright.com is a free bookkeeping app that, integrated with Shoeboxed and FreshBooks as well as credit cards, PayPal, and other services, automates your accounting. Users can monitor the progress of their businesses, prepare financial statements and automatically populate Schedule C tax forms at the end of the year. Need help with the June 15th obligation? Outright.com calculates the estimated tax you owe, so you know exactly what to pay, while helpful alerts keep you apprised of all your other tax deadlines.

Now that we’re under a month away from June 15^th, you might be one of the millions of self employed or small business owners that need to file a quarterly estimated tax payment. While not everyone’s cup of tea, the process can certainly be made more manageable by leveraging a few simple tools on the internet.

Do I need to file estimated tax payments?

If you’ve got self employed income, or are a landlord or investor, chances are you’re responsible for making quarterly estimated payments to the IRS (if you’ve got a full time job where taxes are withheld, it may be possible to adjust the amount to cover your additional tax liability).

How do I calculate my estimated taxes?

The IRS says that you must pay either 100% of the tax shown for the prior year, or at least 90% of the tax owed for the current year, or you’ll have to pay a penalty on the amount you’ve underpaid (to learn more about IRS penalties, click here ).

These payments should be made quarterly.  For 2010, the dates are January 15^th, April 15^th, June 15^th, and September 15^th.

4 tools to help file your estimated tax payments

1. Manage your invoices and receipts.   Keeping organized is the sure way to get your estimated tax payments done quickly and on time.   Services like Shoeboxed can make the process of tracking deductions incredibly easy. If all you need to do is scan or send in all of your receipts and documents for filing (or even use their mobile app to take a picture of your receipts), you’re about 75% of the way there. You can track and manage all of this data online, which will decrease the amount of time needed to calculate your income for your estimated filing.
2. File quarterly estimated tax payments electronically.   Once done, the web comes to your rescue again: you can pay the taxes using the IRS’s Electronic Federal Tax Payment System.
3. Find a tax expert do it for you.   Sound complicated or rather not waste your time with accounting?  You can find certified tax experts on Teaspiller to help do it for you – all without stepping into a tax office.   Teaspiller is also integrated with Shoeboxed and some other accounting packages, making it even easier to share your financial data with a tax accountant.   Click here to start your Estimated Taxes.
4. Need some tax advice. If you’re late on your estimated tax payments and need some advice on how to deal with the IRS, Teaspiller is also a great resource for your tax questions.   Click here to Ask a Tax Question.

As the April 15th tax filing deadline rapidly approaches, for most small business owners  who haven’t filed there are two options:  either finish your tax return, or consider an extension.

Small business owners and freelancers should consider speaking to a tax preparer regarding their situation to decide if there’s enough time to make a last-minute dash to submit your return.  Otherwise, the preparer will be able to file an extension, which will give the taxpayer an additional six months of breathing room.

But there’s a catch:  this only applies to the paperwork, and you are still responsible for estimating and submitting payment for your taxes. If the IRS considers your payment estimate to be incorrect, it’s possible that the IRS will assess a late penalty.  The IRS charges an interest of 0.5%/month on any portion of your taxes not paid by April 15th.

According to Teaspiller.com, an online tax preparation website, most of their customers requiring an extension often complain about not being organized enough to submit their small business returns—generally overwhelmed by the amount of tax paperwork that needs to be found and organized before meeting with an accountant.

In order to get everything squared away properly, Teaspiller recommends sites like Shoeboxed to help organize business receipts.  This makes it easier once tax season approaches for the customer, and also makes it easy to automatically upload all of the information directly into Teaspiller and share with your selected tax preparer.

Teaspiller’s certified experts (CPAs and IRS Enrolled Agents) can then help a Shoeboxed customer decide if an extension is needed, and whether or not you need to make a payment to the IRS–helping small business owners get the reassurance they need before making an extension decision.

Even a few years ago, entrepreneurs and small business owners had very limited, expensive resources for supporting their companies’ necessary operations.

“Years ago, a small business owner had to do many things by hand and rely on clumsy expensive desktop software to run their business,” said Taylor Mingos, CEO and Founder of Shoeboxed.com. “Now, there are a wealth of internet-based, interconnected apps like Shoeboxed that are leveraging technology to let small business owners focus more on growing their business, and less on administrative hassles like keeping track of expenses, invoicing clients, keeping the books, or issuing payroll.”

And now, with the Google Apps Marketplace, access to the services of companies like Shoeboxed is only a single click away. In a brilliant move, Google has built upon a movement that has been creating a stir over the past year, manifested by the Small Business Web. Founded a year ago by Shoeboxed, BatchBlue, Freshbooks, Outright, and MailChimp and now consisting of over 70 companies, the mission of the Small Business Web is to create “a movement to bring together like-minded, customer-obsessed software companies to integrate our respective products and make life easier for small businesses.”

Now, Google has taken that mission to a whole new level.

Many publications have been covering the launch of the Google Apps Marketplace and how it fits in to Google’s larger strategy. However, it is important not to miss the forest for the trees. The Google Apps Marketplace is just a milestone in a much bigger movement sweeping the nation: small businesses are tapping into innovative, inexpensive technology solutions to grow their businesses and revitalize the economy.

What are your thoughts about this exciting new trend?

By now, you have most likely heard about the launch of Google’s new App Marketplace. This revolutionary launch will now allow the millions of Google Apps users instant access to over 50 apps to help them avoid administrative hassles and focus on growing their businesses!

Here at Shoeboxed, we are thrilled to announce that we are one of those initial 50 launch vendors.

“Shoeboxed is committed to leading the marketplace toward a paperless office with digitization and intelligent online processing of documents, so integrating with Google Apps was a logical choice for us,” says Taylor Mingos, Founder and CEO. “By adding the Shoeboxed App to the Google Apps Marketplace, we’ve made it extremely easy for Google Apps users to get a powerful receipt and business card management web application that works seamlessly with their messaging and collaboration platform.”

So what does this mean for you Shoeboxers out there?

By integrating Shoeboxed with Google Apps, users can access the Shoeboxed App using single sign-on through Google Apps, eliminating the need to remember an extra password. In other words, you are just one click away from your Shoeboxed account. Increased security, and increased convenience! Now accessing Shoeboxed’s powerful finance and contact organization features is quicker than ever before.

We are so excited about this development with Google and will continue to add features to the Shoeboxed app. Stay tuned!

Going to SXSW this year? Party in style with Shoeboxed and the other members of the Small Business Web! Come for food, drinks, and great networking with hundreds of small businesses and web application vendors just like yourself.

When: 4-7pm Saturday, March 13

Where: The Pure Volume House at 504 Trinity St, Austin, TX.

Who: The Small Business Web– we connect web apps to help small businesses bloom and grow!

You must sign up here for the party. Austin law requires us to have a guest list.

Can’t wait to see you all there!

Built on top of Shoeboxed’s core mail-in service for receipt digitization, the Shoeboxed Accounting Professional Plan enables accountants and bookkeepers to manage multiple Shoeboxed accounts from a single intuitive dashboard. Accounting and bookkeeping firms can now eliminate expensive and time-consuming receipt scanning and data entry practices by simply sending their piles of receipts to Shoeboxed where they will be scanned, data entered, automatically categorized, and securely archived online. From their Shoeboxed accounts, financial professionals can then generate spreadsheets, PDF reports, and QuickBooks files by category as well as date range.

Accountants can view, create, modify, or cancel unlimited accounts all from one secure page. Clients also have their own unique login information to access their accounts without having access to the other accounts. All Shoeboxed accounts on the Accounting Professional Plan are discounted by 10% recurring monthly. For accountants and bookkeepers looking to grow their business, offering a document digitization service to their clients at a low cost is an innovative selling point.

Key features of the new Accounting Professional Plan include:

*Searchable online archive of original receipt scans and human-verified receipt data

*Generate IRS accepted reports with original receipt images

*Export receipt data to Quicken, QuickBooks, .CSV, and other industry standard formats

*Perfect for CPA’s, bookkeepers and corporate workgroups

*View, create, modify, or cancel accounts all from one intuitive dashboard

*Provide unique login information so that clients can login to their accounts too

*Eliminate paper clutter, extend service offering, and impress clients

Those who are interested in trying out Shoeboxed’s Accounting Professional Plan for receipt management should visit our website for more information at https://app.shoeboxed.com/multiuserAccounts.htm.

Here at Shoeboxed, we are all about saving our users time and money, and our partners feel the same way!

Now, our friends at Outright.com have an exciting new service that will help you take care of your W-9s and 1099s with minimal cost and hassle!

Recently, Outright.com launched a FREE service to collect and manage W-9s for contractors. The W-9 service is fully automated and helps businesses comply with the IRS requirements that a W-9 be on hand for 1099s filed.

Starting today, Outright.com automates the filing of the IRS Form 1099-MISC. Those W-9s collect the information they need to take care of the 1099 for users, with no paperwork. The 1099 filing service is a paid service, but where most accountants charge around $10 to file a 1099, Outright.com files for only $5!

For you Shoeboxers out there who need to file your 1099s, Outright.com is offering a special 50% discount! Just visit http://outright.com/taxes/forms/1099 and enter the coupon code “Shoeboxed1099” as you check out.

If you are a contractor, introduce  your client to Shoeboxed and Outright.com  and pass along the code to help them with tax season!

With Shoeboxed and Outright.com, tax season is a breeze!

Check out this great webisode featured on Rise to the Top! See how Shoeboxed can help you stay organized as an entrepreneur.

Awesome Entrepreneur Web Resource-Shoeboxed

 Thank you, and we look forward to providing you with your Shoeboxed service from our beautiful new headquarters!

1) Time. No need to enter receipt data by hand or with a clunky scanner. It will save them hours every month!

2) Space. No more shoeboxes or wallets stuffed to overflowing with receipts and business cards.

3) Money. Never lose a reimbursement or potential deduction again.

4) Peace of mind. No need to worry about IRS audits ever again. All scanned receipt images are fully IRS accepted.

5) Nifty gadget. With our new iPhone App, the most tech-savvy of family and friends can stay organized on the go!

Help friends and families jump start 2010 more organized, clutter-free, and efficient. Give the gift of Shoeboxed!