Continuing with the different types of technologies I use, I’d like to discuss Hubdoc. I first saw a demonstration of Hubdoc about two years ago, and thought it was an interesting product that could benefit me and my clients. As always, I’m the tester for new software and other solutions, as I believe I should understand it and see what happens in real world use. It’s always amazing how many products I thought were a great idea on paper … and when I started to use them I found out fast that they would not be suitable for myself or my clients’ needs.

Hubdoc is an application that can grab you bank statements, utility bills or anything else for which you have recurring invoices. Hubdoc is constantly adding new links to different sites so the software can automatically get bills and statements that are stored on a secure site for you to view. You can also have the system push the information for bills to QuickBooks online, so you don’t have to enter it and it will give you a copy of the bill in the transaction so you can view it whenever you want. You are also able to upload PDFs to the site.

At first, I wasn’t so sure that this would be useful, but as I started to add my bank feeds and other bills I became increasingly amazed at what it could do. Just setting up my bank feed, I ended up with close to three years worth of statements for me to view (this depends on if you have electronic statements already set up). It also brought in the information on any payment I’d made via email transfer, so I could easily see who I was paying on them instead of the statement just saying “email transfer” and not identifying the recipient. I was quickly becoming very impressed! As I have added different billers to the account and uploaded others, I figured out what this system is really great at: EASY ACCESS to all your statements and bills

Hubdoc is all about having to source documents, to be able to verify something or to have handy when you have a CRA audit and need to produce documents for them. This is where Hubdoc becomes invaluable. As well as always putting a PDF of the invoice in your online accounting software, it also allows you to access every invoice at any time from your computer. No more going into a filing cabinet or storage box to find that invoice … hoping it’s in the right folder. As an accountant, I also can access clients’ documents so if they have a problem with a bank reconciliation I can see the statement at the same time as my client, so I can see and understand problems and know quickly how to correct them.

So if you ask me, I tell any client that Hubdoc is an indispensable tool for any business.