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May 1, 2009

Billeo – Pay it Your Way

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As the name implies, Billeo is an online service focused on electronic bill payments but it also offers a host of other financial tools. First and foremost, Billeo is a way to pay your paper bills (utilities, cable, cell phone, etc.) using a single, online dashboard. While many companies offer their own dedicated online bill payment option, it can be a hassle to access each website separately. Billeo makes sure that you get your payments in on time and saves you the hassle of mailing bills or writing checks.

Billeo’s Toolbar could almost be seen as a form of artificial intelligence. Users download the application and use it to pay bills each month. The toolbar then learns the user’s spending habits in order to alert the user of payments in the future. Additional features include auto form filling at online stores and automatically saving receipts for purchases. While online stores may save your info via cookies, it is helpful to have these purchases recorded in one place to get a full assessment of your finances.

Similarly, Billeo can help users log into websites via a password assistant – by keeping a record of all website passwords. Again, most web browsers have a password reminder function, but users may be worried about the security of storing passwords in this manner, so doing it through Billeo is more convenient and more secure.

One of the best features of Billeo is the ability to track payments and view expense reports. In this day and age, this is enormously important – not only for keeping your credit rating in check, but making sure you don’t overspend and, ideally, saving money every month. By simplifying bill payment, Billeo can simplify budgeting so that you save money every month, or put more money towards credit card debt – or whatever the case may be.

Practical Uses:

  • Pay your bills online at one central source
  • Get payment confirmations so you know that payments have gone through – which may not be the case with a payee’s website
  • Compare your utility and other costs with other providers in your area
  • Effectively set a budget and save money every month by knowing exactly how much you’re paying
  • Create auto-login of your information at online stores you frequent the most

Insider Tips:

  • Use an anti-virus and anti-spyware program. Remember, with spyware a hacker can see what letters and numbers you’re typing in, so password protection is meaningless
  • Use the eWallet feature to choose which credit card/debit card to use when making purchases online
  • Use Billeo’s monthly and yearly reports to track your transactions so you can see if you’re spending more one month but not another

What we liked:

  • It’s free and easy to use with a comprehensive list of billing services, and you can add your own
  • The site is responsive to user requests and is constantly improving
  • Very good form and password recording so you don’t have to keep plugging in information
  • Very secure using enhanced encryption on the user’s own computer, rather than storing everything in a central database
  • Now Mac-compatible

What we didn’t like:

  • You can’t search payment history by keyword, only by date
  • It’s ad-supported (this is what makes it free). But we believe a non-ad version should be made available for paying customers

Alternatives:

Company Info:

  • Launched: February 2005
  • Privately Held
  • Headquarters: Santa Clara, CA
  • Founded by: Murali Subbarao and Allwyn Lobo
  • Web site: http://www.billeo.com

Costs:

  • Free

Comments

  1. Thanks for the in depth review! One correction: Billeo does have a new feature to search for your receipts via keyword. The feature is called Splendid Search and it can be found by clicking the drop down arrow to the right of the Google Search field and selecting “Billeo Search”. Then simply enter any keyword from any field on the receipt such as Company, Category, Amount Paid, Date Paid, Payment Method, or Comment/Tag!

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