Comments on: Everyday Lean: Online Bill Pay

By: Everyday Lean Main Page — Lean Blog

Everyday Lean Main Page — Lean Blog — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 03:21:37 +0000

[...] Online Bill Pay [...]

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By: Everyday Lean — Lean Blog

Everyday Lean — Lean Blog — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 03:20:36 +0000

[...] 3/21/06: Everyday Lean: Online Bill Pay [...]

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By: "Stock Up?" Really? For a Penny Increase? — Lean Blog

"Stock Up?" Really? For a Penny Increase? — Lean Blog — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 03:20:19 +0000

[...] Sigh, first class postage has gone up from 41 cents to 42 cents. That really doesn’t impact me, since I mail maybe two or three things a month (thanks to online bill pay — something that hasn’t always served me well). [...]

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By: Mark Graban

Mark Graban — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:51:04 +0000

Revisiting this post… I was paying my AmEx bill and tried to use this “round up” method.

I was forced to enter an amount with decimal. For example, it wouldn’t accept 1000, I had to enter 1000.00.

While I am trying to errorproof to prevent overpayment (missing the decimal), seems like they have error proofed to to prevent underpayment (someone adding the decimal)???

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By: Devin Miller

Devin Miller — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:30:00 +0000

Auto payments can be tricky as well. They expire and are easily broken up by changing credit cards and bank account information. It can be difficult to tell if an autopay has expired and usually only gives the user a false sense of security. The main problem is that you are human and humans make mistakes. Just pick a set process and stick with it. Most people do not have a set procedure for paying and reviewing bills and just shoot from the hip.

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By: Mark Graban

Mark Graban — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:58:00 +0000

How to error proof the company name?

One idea would be to have “auto pay” set up as much as possible, so you don’t have to manually select as many payees, but that works best when it’s the same amount each month (like cable, but not the credit card).

I hate to say “be careful” because that isn’t error proofing. Is there a confirmation screen that shows what you selected before you confirm and submit?

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:21:00 +0000

A similar thing happened to me recently. I accidentally sent a payment to my cable company (Mediacom) instead of my credit card company (MBNA). I think that I was in a hurry and saw a name that started with M, so I just sent it to them. They wouldn’t send the money back, the just gave me credit. At least it wasn’t a large amount of money though. Any error proof ideas for that?

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By: Steven James

Steven James — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 07:36:00 +0000

Hey Mark, well you definately need to be careful in future. I had also made the same mistake sometime back and had a hard time getting my money back.
Well, i went through a Client’s Testimonial on bill.com and things started working fine. I would like to share it with you as well.

Cheers,

Steven

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By: jp

jp — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 15:36:00 +0000

To build on Chet’s point, the radio buttons are a big help. That’s partly why I use a “Portal” model for online bill pay instead of an “Aggregator”.

A portal allows you to set up your accounts along with userids and passwords, and may also provide updated balances and recent transactions. Everything is listed on a central accounts page. However, the portal doesn’t directly pay the bill. You click on the link for each account and get auto-logged in directly to the individual service provider. You can then view your most recent bill, any details, and pay the bill – usually with a radio button. Then you go to the next site on your list.

We use MS Money for everything financial, except bill paying. Twice a month, my wife logs into the portal and goes down the appropriate list (mid-month or end-month). The portal logs her in to each service provider site where she can view and pay the bill. MS Money automatically upates itself a day later when the software queries the online account for the service provider.

It’s a fairly lean process, but the next step is to go to automatic payments. I’ve resisted this method in the past, but it’s time to embrace progress. I still have complete review of the finances through Money, and my experience is that the provider’s chance of making an error is less than mine. Besides, most providers will do the transaction right on the due date, allowing me to keep my money longer (at the whopping 1% interest rate).

Great topic!

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By: Chet Frame

Chet Frame — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:58:00 +0000

Many of the billing companies are working to help with “your” problem. AMEX is one that does a pretty good job. They give you a radio button for the total amount, another for the minimal amount, and one with a line next to it for some other quantity. This is a form of poke yoke. My least favorite, when I was doing business with them, was Sprint PCS because they wouldn’t give you a hint as to what your bill was and you always had to do a separate transaction to learn the balance and then another to pay it. It wasn’t user friendly and many times when I was on the road paying on the run, I would pay my monthly average bill cost because I knew what it was. I also chose to pay in whole dollars to make the event simpler.

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