Show HN: Review My Startup - PaperPhobic | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Review My Startup - PaperPhobic

paperphobic.com

63 pointsfreerobby32 comments

PaperPhobic is a cloud-based receipt organization system. No signup is required, you can email photos of your receipts (or e-receipts) to receipts@paperphobic.com. We also have a free iPhone app you can use.

Notable paid features include transcription of price/date/description/categories, and super-quick expense/reimbursement report generation.

We are not the first to enter this space, but we feel we can compete on ease of use for the receipt uploader.

Would greatly appreciate feedback on the service and product. Thanks!

Pretty sure this paragraph should be on the website.

I had to come here to really understand what I was looking at.

Thanks.

"you can email photos of your receipts (or e-receipts) to receipts@paperphobic.com. "

Here's a big tip that will unconfuse many of your visitors: PUT THAT SENTENCE ON YOUR HOMEPAGE.

I sat there for a 30-40 seconds trying to figure exactly how you'd get the expenses. I saw that you weren't scanning them, but didn't see exactly how you would get them from me. I formulated a couple theories about how you worked, including snail mail. Maybe it's because its too early and my brain isn't yet charged I didn't get to photo emailing.

Great feedback, thanks. We're struggling with trying to cram too much info onto one page. Will try to focus on a simple, single statement like that above all else.

Ok, what happens when I send an email with a photo of a receipt to that email address?

As a side node I find these green bubbles irritating that popped up while I moved my mouse over the page; then I moved them over some of these list items, expecting to get an explanation... no green bubbles. If you must include such a gimmic, please make sure it's easy to grasp how they are triggered, so that one can actually use (or avoid) them.

When you send us a receipt, we store it, create an account for you, and send you a welcome email with all the info you need to upload more receipts and view them online.

Sorry you feel our tooltips are a gimmick - we used them because we felt it was the best way to convey the most information without crowding the screen with excessive copy.

> we felt it was the best way to convey the most information without crowding the screen with excessive copy

The problem is that there are too many bullet points and not enough spacing between them.

Also there being two columns of bullets its easy to lose track of which bullet its about (left or right side).

The tooltips would be ok, but they overlap the bullet icon, which makes it feel cluttered. I'm ok with the idea of changing some part of the page based on my movements, but I think it'd work better if you changed the screenshot (perhaps with an illustration of the feature) instead of overlapping the bullet icon.

The animated screenshot with the balloons feels very busy.

As I was typing this up, "Robby" popped in and asked me to talk with him. This feels a little too eager - and I'm never sure if these popups are real people actually contacting me (which makes me feel a bit uncomfortable) or just automated (which is annoying and makes you wonder if there's really someone there or not).

All in all, the site feels busy. Your 37Signals style "Premium Plans" page is a lot easier to follow, but it suffers the same balloon tip problem.

I'm not sure "complete protection" is a good two-word summary of the premium feature. It kind of implies that my data's going to be released to the public unless I pony up some cash...

It looks like it has potential. Sort of a simplified / low overhead Evernote.

Thanks, lots of good stuff in here.

just my $0.02... but those live-chat windows? personally, I find them irritating. I have no idea if I am in the majority here, though, so you may be best off ignoring my opinion.

Not only do live-chat windows pop up at you, but they make an annoying, little noise as well.

It is obnoxious to say the least.

I turned off the sound on the homepage. Most of the feedback we get from normals concerning the popups is very positive - I'd definitely recommend it at as a customer development tool.

I'm curious...how are you differentiating from expensecloud or expensify? I've used both (and like both..in slightly different ways).

The other piece they have (which I like) is they integrate with credit card companies / banks...so I can do my expenses with a combination of iphone-snapped receipts (small stuff) along with cc receipts.

The goal is to provide a lower-friction product and compete on ease of use. E.g. no special formats to follow, no pesky emails reminding you to update certain things - just upload and go (we're not quite there yet). In some cases that means we won't be a replacement for a service like expensify, and that's fine with us.

I'm going to echo the sentiment of a few other people and say that the tooltips are a) distracting and b) not very useful because it makes me work to see what you're trying to convey.

Examples from the free side:

* Both no scanner and e-receipt compatible have the same tooltip, why not just add a bullet point "Email e-receipts or photos to xx@yy.com" You'll replace 2 bullet points with one

* Warranty and return notifications are self explanatory - no tooltip

* Tagging "by purchase category" gets rid of the tooltip

* Searching & Sorting are self explanatory - no tooltip

I would definitely keep concentrating on being concise like you are, but having the tooltips seems like cleaning your room by putting everything in the closet. At least to me. You can have another page to go into more depth if you have that much information, but it doesn't seem necessary for most of the tooltips.

Posted about a very similar idea on our blog, http://blog.sparkmuse.com/nexpense-success-through-persevera... . You've got some competition, but I think there is some great opportunity in the market too.

I love the name, for a start :)

Home page before logging in: Nice, the tooltips appear a bit randomly, sometimes I have to shake the mouse around to get it.

payment : amazon.com only. Paypal would be nice....

money : $ only. Others would be nice (euro, pound...) and not too hard.

From some Item screen : my Items is a bit hard to spot. A bigger,more centered button would be nice. The presentation lacks clarity. Maybe a clear square div containing the text would be better; and the description text could be a bit bigger, too.

About new Item : Hmmm, I'd really like an additional input for price. Yeah, I know, you're trying to get it as simple and unencumbered as possible :)

I liked the idea. One thing to think about is that these days, any receipt that is important enough for me, I am getting that in email anyways and some stores have started sending email receipts for instore purchases (eg Apple). However, the app will prove useful for people who have to file reimbursements and have to track each receipt.

I think that's true for some folks, but not others. Lots of normals still buy expensive TVs at Best Buy, WalMart, etc. and get a paper receipt. Thanks for checking it out.

I like it. Just installed the app and will try it for a couple of weeks. I've been looking for something like this. The iPhone capture is killer - no lame scanning of receipts.

When I travel on business, I carry bunches of receipts around in my wallet - it sucks. I downloaded paperphobic and look forward to using it on my next trip.

Great idea. I hate hate hate paper receipts, and have definitely lost the ability to return things because I couldn't find the receipt 8 months later.

>Place your mouse over any feature for more information

You have an iOS app so may I suggest that you make your website fully iOS compatible?

We have a special iOS-friendly template for most of the pages on the site. Or do you mean you want the option to skip that template?

I followed your link from HN on my iPad. I say instructions telling me to mouse over and couldn't. Didn't dig much further into it than that though.

If only the UK tax / business law allowed people to submit digital copies of receipts. I still have to provide every original receipt :(

What if the original is digital?

About the logo, to me it seems like it's backwards, digital->paper, if you v-flip it then it looks like paper being digitized.

Nice idea, I'm not crazy about the "paperphobic" but its smart to not try to use the word receipt in the name.

How long is your OCR code, or do you use foreign products?

if it's like other expense report apps, it's probably mechanical turk-like, and not OCR. ingenious though.

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