Online Bill Paying - Saving your Reciepts

[Merusk]

I don't know how many of you do online bill pay, probably a bunch.  Something I got really frustrated with a few months back was having to print and keep a paper copy of my payment record, it seemed to kind of defeat the purpose of paying online.  I paid last month's bills while at work and I struck on a great idea.

  We use .DWFs which are AutoDesk's version of .pdf files, and there's an electronic printer you can use to make them from any application.  So instead of printing the paper copy, I just made an electronic copy and e-mailed it home.  Fantastic, but what do I do at home?  Well, I found this site which gives the same capability but with .pdfs.  Completly free to download and the trial version doens't ever expire, it just sticks a line of text at the bottom of each page you make. 

I'm sure some of you just have Adobe Writer through various means, but I thought I'd share for anyone who doesn't have the capability or hadden't come up with the idea earlier.

[Jamiko]

Here are a few more I have used:

http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
http://www.pdf995.com/

[Viin]

Hmm, my bank doesn't give me anything that I can print - the only way I know a payment has gone out is that it is shown in my statement (current online one or the pdf version I can download online).

One thing that I absolutely hate about my bank is that they take the money out of your account when they send the check, rather than when it's cashed. Wtf is up with that!

[Merusk]

Ahh, I don't do mine through the bank because 1) they charge for it, and 2) exactly what Viin mentioned.  I don't get anything to print-out and they're double-dipping your money.*  Bills I pay online I do at the billing party's site. They always have a 'print this reciept for your records' page.

*They make money on the front-end from the fee and on the backend with the interest from your cash.  Sure, it's "not a lot" since the money sits in their possession for only a day or two, but multiply that by a few hundred thousand accounts and it adds up. Think Superman III.. or Office Space.

[Murgos]

I can think of 4 or 5 different ways send your printer output to a file.  If you have Word installed I think it comes with Microsoft Document Writer, Adobe PDF writer is also popular and then there are about 1 trillion PostScript and Latex utilities for the same effect.

Oh, also you can just save the web page you are looking at as an HTML file somewhere locally.  OR make a screenshot of it and save that.

Welcome to the digital age.  The rest of us have missed you.

edit:  P.S.  2+ Gigs of Google Email makes a great long term storage facility.

[Merusk]

I can think of 4 or 5 different ways send your printer output to a file.  If you have Word installed I think it comes with Microsoft Document Writer, Adobe PDF writer is also popular and then there are about 1 trillion PostScript and Latex utilities for the same effect.

Oh, also you can just save the web page you are looking at as an HTML file somewhere locally.  OR make a screenshot of it and save that.

Welcome to the digital age.  The rest of us have missed you.

edit:  P.S.  2+ Gigs of Google Email makes a great long term storage facility.

I did the HTML saving once... the problem is it creates a whole folder for the page's images and shit, and was generally larger than a simple .pdf or .dwf document.   Not all of us have shelled-out for or pirated Word, either, so we don't have MDW.

Damn techies, get off my lawn.

[Alkiera]

My bank is great about online banking... they provide confirmation numbers for each individual payment, which I save in a spreadsheet with duedates and whatnot, in case there is a problem later.

The reason the money comes out when you make the payment, is because they issue a bank check, like when you get a money order or whatever from the bank; not a personal check.  Why they do it that way, I don't know.  My bank actually seems to pay some people directly thru funds transfer, or some such.  Possibly the payees are also users of my bank, I don't know.  But some process very very fast, others take a week or so.

And fees for bank services are teh sux.

Alkiera

[Sky]

I save the HTML and just strip out the graphics (red x ftw).

PDF is a good idea, I have a mac, so it's as easy as printing the page.

[HaemishM]

I use Primo PDF at work. It sets up a printer in Windows XP that I can access from any application I can print from and works pretty seamlessly. And it's free.

[Merusk]

Yeah that's the same thing the pdffactory program I linked above does.  Good to know there's a completly free one, though.  I think I'll install that on the home machines instead, to get rid of the line about trial version I always get.  Thanks, H.

[Pococurante]

Nice find - thanks for sharing it.