Bill Payments Online – Recording and Tracking Monthly Payments

In another post on the Technology for Seniors Made Easy blog, I wrote of my excitement when I learned about and mastered Bill Pay online with my bank.  See Paying Bills Online.

This morning I wondered if I had scheduled the payment for my phone bill that was due today.  I wasn’t too worried.  I knew that I could always go online and pay directly from the phone company’s site and still be on time.  On the other hand, as you’ll see, or have seen, in Paying Bills Online post, a bank employee had shared with me that this was not the most secure way.

After going to my bank account online and checking the bills I had scheduled for payment this month, I saw that I had indeed scheduled the phone bill payment.  I have been setting aside bills when they come in and then using a down-time I go online schedule the amount to be paid and when.

Excel Spreadsheet Check List for Bill Payment

Then I decided to add one more simple, reassuring step so I would not have to log in online if the fear of having forgotten surfaced again. I created one quick place to check in my computer.

To do this, I went to Excel, a spreadsheet program, and set-up a quick checklist. I put my regularly scheduled bills in the left column and then added a column for each month. Now I can simply go to this form to check off when I’ve scheduled the payment. See Making Checkmarks – Character Viewer in Mac.

You’ll note in the example above that the bottom row is already filled in with checkmarks. That line represents a monthly payment with the same amount throughout the year. Such a payment can be set up to recur automatically.

Finally, I highlighted and copied the data from the Excel spreadsheet and pasted into a note in Evernote.  As I written in other posts, Evernote is the easiest place for me to organize, store and find when I need to go back to it. To see that post, you can click on Voice Memos in Evernote for Organizing and Storing. You can also do a search for Evernote in the “Search this site” box at the top of the sidebar on the right.

Excel Payment Checklist in Note in Evernote

I did one more final check before completing.  If you have a Mac, you WILL be able to continue to use “Character Viewer” to add future checkmarks on the Evernote note. To future discoveries for fun, ease and efficiency.


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