Using E-post To Organize And Manage Your Bills
Epost is a free online service offered by Canada Post where you can receive, add, pay, print and manage your bills and other important financial documents. If you have signed-up to view your bills electronically through online banking, then you are automatically signed up with epost.
I signed up with epost several years ago after becoming frustrated with receiving, storing and tracking all of my monthly bills that came in the mail. After misplacing a few bills and getting charged with late payment fees I decided to look for a better way to manage my documents and pay bills online.
How does it work?
After you’ve signed up for the service, you can get started by adding Mailers – the companies or organizations that send bills or other financial documents to you through the epost service. There are over 100 mailers registered.
When you add a Mailer, you are choosing to have this bill or document delivered electronically to your account. After adding your Mailers, all of your bills and documents will be sent to your mailbox once the next billing cycle begins.
You can arrange for epost to send you email notifications when a bill is delivered to your epost mailbox. Once notified, you can login to your mailbox and view your bills.
Epost allows you to store documents within your mailbox for up to 7 years. Plus, you can organize and manage your financial documents electronically by sorting, printing or setting up bill payment reminders to pay bills online.
What Is A Mailer?
Mailers are the companies and organizations who are registered to send you bills, pay stubs, tax receipts, and other financial documents to your Mailbox.
When you add Mailers to your epost Mailbox you are choosing to receive your existing paper mail in an electronic form. There are over 100 Mailers and over 200 documents to choose from, so the more Mailers you add, the easier it is to consolidate and manage your bills.
Available Mailers include:
- Major Bank credit card companies
- Major retailers
- Utility companies
- Telecom companies
- Payroll Companies
Here is the complete list of Mailers.
How do I pay bills online?
You can pay bills online at 2 locations:
- epost.ca: You can pay your bills online via credit card, electronic funds transfer or online banking link.
- Your online banking web site: epost powers the electronic bill portion of your online banking website, which means that you can view and pay your bills through epost at the same time, while you bank online.
Once your payment method has been chosen, whenever a bill arrives in your Mailbox you simply click on the pay link located on the left navigation bar of the bill statement and follow the instructions from there.
Epost automatically fills your bill amount into the “amount owing” field of your bill payments page for your convenience. Your payment will be processed and you’ll be given a reference number to confirm your payment.
Benefits of using epost
Many companies are now charging up to $3 or $4 per month just to send your bill or statement in the mail. Some of them have their own e-billing services, but the nice thing about using epost is that you don’t have to keep track of multiple websites to view and pay bills online.
Receiving my monthly bills online through epost is convenient, secure and environmentally-friendly. Furthermore, when we recently sold our house I called all of our utility companies to transfer over their services to our new place and I didn’t have to worry about trying to track down their next statement in the mail.
Best of all, this service has reduced the clutter in my house, kept me organized so that I never miss a payment again, and saved me money on mailing fees.
Do you still receive your monthly bills and statements in the mail? Is it time to switch to e-billing?
I like e-post. I wish more of my bills could go to it 🙂 It’s my ‘internet cloud’ for bills. I have also been using it for 3 years and so far I can go as far back. Not sure if a limit will be imposed at some point … or a charge.
The next thing I would love to have is all my receipts going digital! Pull up the digital receipt for a refund or an exchange.
Yeah, they do need a few more mailers added, but I found that most other businesses have their own e-services. Our City utility bill for water and recycling now has e-billing, so i think all I’m left with is my insurance.
It’s nice to have it in one place though, and E-post keeps your mail for 7 years.
I will definite look into e-post.
I know you mentioned it is secure, but having all your personal info in one place/location makes me nervous. Receiving the items by old school mail is no guarantee either (things get lost in the mail) but I’m still a bit wary. Do you have to input passwords,account numbers, etc, like you do for Mint.com?
Thanks…
@Sam
You have a password to login to epost, and to add a mailer you’ll need your account number for that particular bill (just like setting up online payments through your bank).
You aren’t required to disclose your banking information like with Mint. It can just be a “read-only” place to store your bills and you can still pay them however you like.
I like having all of my bills in one place for easy reference. But some people prefer the “old school” method and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I actually gave up on epost. Only 3 of the companies I deal with are ‘mailers’ available on epost and 2 of the 3 already had good electronic delivery options from their own website. One feature I really do like is that you could easily batch your bills and have epost notify you say on a particular day of the month to review/pay your bills. Again, if they had more companies participate it could be useful.
@Michael
I hear you on the lack of Mailers. It would be nice if I could add a couple others, but they have their own delivery systems that work just fine. I just wish they were all in one place.
I just started to use ePost to receive my invoices and receive my first one last week. I think it is great to be able to see all your invoices in one place and also to be linked to my bank account.
I’m happy to have found somebody else that tried it and liked it… I was looking to find some good reviews about it. I just found one!
Thanks!
Thanks suelac, I’m glad the epost review was helpful for you.
The concept is great but its not so useful in practice because of the limited number of vendors that can be paid. I signed up in 2005, but waited until 2013 before adding any mailers. The list of mailers does not include any of the suppliers we have for electricity, gas, water, sewer, property taxes, some credit cards, newspaper subscriptions, etc. etc., so the only consolidation I was able to do was to bring together TELUS Mobility and TELUS telephone/internet bills. The list of payees is a fraction of those who are on the credit unions internet banking list. I would not be surprised if it does not endure.
Why so few mailers? What’s holding companies back from participating? I joined and then backed away because it only met a small portion of my needs.
many mailer quit the epost, I don’t know why?