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Shoeboxed.com is one of our favorite B2B apps of all-time and we were thrilled to recently have the opportunity to chat with the founder, Taylor Mingos about his company, small business trends and more. He even offers a tip to help you out on next year’s taxes!
Taylor Mingos is the Founder and CEO of Shoeboxed.com. He is a native of Kansas City, MO and attended Duke University where he studied biomedical engineering, electrical engineering and German. When Taylor is not working he enjoys traveling, wikipedia binges and tinkering with smart home technologies.
In this exclusive interview with us here at We Rock Your Web, Taylor shares some of the company background, his thoughts on the importance of the human capital, the value-add of people vs. relying on computers all the time and also some tips for how to run our small business just a little more effectively.
Can You Provide Some Background On Why And How Shoeboxed Got Started?
My co-founder, Tobi Walter, and I started Shoeboxed in 2007 after meeting at a German company called StudiVZ. We were both long-time entrepreneurs and the idea for Shoeboxed came out of the fact that we wanted to solve one of the biggest problems small business owners face: keeping up with receipts for tax deductions and audits.
Shoeboxed has grown faster than we could have ever imagined, and we currently have over 500,000 users in 120 countries. Our headquarters is in Durham, NC, and we have another office in Sydney, Australia, which does all of the processing for our customers in Australia and New Zealand.
Our team currently has 65 employees, but that number is likely to go up soon since we’ve been growing so fast!
What Do You Feel Has Been The Biggest Change In The Industry Since The Company Was Founded?
The biggest change in the small business accounting and bookkeeping industry since we started back in 2007 has been an explosion of consumer reliance on mobile.
It is extremely important that companies recognize the importance of mobile, and we are very fortunate to have gotten in that game so early.
Consumers are no longer content with stand-alone desktop services, and this is especially true with the tools that small businesses are using. We recognized this back in 2009 and developed our Receipt & Mileage Tracker app for iPhone and Android. The app allows users to snap pictures of their paper receipts and Shoeboxed extracts the vendor, total amount, payment type and date, then saves the information along with the receipt image in the user’s secure online account.
Thinking Of Your Consumers, What Concerns Keep You Up At Night?
Although I’m fortunate enough to sleep soundly at night, the thing on my mind right now is actually hiring. The happiness of our employees is something our customer’s notice and the close-knit nature of our team is one of the best things about Shoeboxed.
Even with a team of 65, we have managed to retain an amazing company culture, and it is very important to us that new hires mesh well with the rest of the team.
What Recent Business Or Consumer Trends Have Most Impacted Shoeboxed?
Credit card companies have started using receipt matching technology for transaction reconciliation, and they’re still figuring out the best ways to do this efficiently. This is especially true with regard to OCR technology.
This is a major opportunity for Shoeboxed to insert itself as a player in the credit card space, which is something we hadn’t had the opportunity to do in the past. Stay tuned!
What About Shoeboxed Makes You Stand Out From Your Competitors?
Shoeboxed is not the only company that digitizes receipts, and I’m sure you’ve seen some of our competitor’s commercials for their scanners.
What sets Shoeboxed apart from other companies is the fact that we human verify every single piece of information that we process. Other companies simply rely on OCR technology which is only accurate 85% of the time. The fact that our staff checks your data ensures that it is as close to perfect as anyone can get.
We also have more ways to get your receipts into Shoeboxed than anyone else. In addition to our mobile apps, customers can send their receipts, business cards and other paper or digital documents to us via our prepaid Magic Envelopes, Gmail Receipt Sync, Web Clipper and their own personal scanners.
Are There Any Plans To Expand What Shoeboxed Offers To Compete With The Likes Of Accounting Software Like QuickBooks Or Wave?
QuickBooks and Wave are actually long-time partners of Shoeboxed and we’ve built some amazing integrations with them. All of the receipts in your Shoeboxed account can be exported directly into QuickBooks, Wave, Xero and numerous other online accounting solutions.
We would definitely like to grow to the size of a QuickBooks, but in our own, trailblazing type of way. 🙂
Is There Anything Else You Would Like To Share With Our Readers?
Please, please, please do not wait until the last-minute to start getting your documents in order for tax season! I can’t stress this enough.
Whether you’re a small business owner or not, staying on top of your receipts for tax deductions can help you out more than you think, not to mention if you get audited. The average missed deduction is $460, and that makes me cringe because there is absolutely no reason to leave that much money on the table.
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