Full Bill Paying Automation?

DEVONthink Scenarios
1

Hi all,

I am new DT, so forgive me if this is a newbie question :slight_smile:
I want to start going paperless and I am evaluating DT vs. Evernote. I currently have DT Personal, but will upgrade to DT Pro Office if it looks like it will do what I need. Ideally, I would like

  1. a bill to come in via email
  2. automatically get pushed into DT for storage
  3. something (DT, Automator, Applescript, etc.) to figure out who needs to be paid and how much.
  4. open Safari, go to my banking website, enter the bill paying section and pay the bill by the due date
  5. open Quickbooks and enter the bill payment in the register

Whew! I know that would be quite the complicated workflow, and I’m not necessarily asking how to do it, just if it can be done and if anyone else has implemented something similar.

So far, DT and Evernote seem to be approximately on par with each other, but DT seems to have the edge in scripting (which I obviously need). Additionally, I am pretty bandwidth constrained, so pushing everything to Evernote all the time would kill me…

Thanks in advance for any tips or advice for this newbie!

Paul

2

You’d really trust a computer to read bills and pay the right people the right amount – without human intervention!?! :open_mouth:

Technically, everything you describe is feasible, and I agree with your perception that DEVONthink is a better tool for this. You’d want DTPO for its email integration - but I don’t think it’s essential to upgrade to DTPO just for this workflow. Specifically, I’d use a single AppleScript for steps 1 and 2. I’d probably add to that script, or, alternatively, parse the 3rd step in something like BBEdit or TextMate that has good support for regex. I’d do individual scripts for steps 4 and 5. And I’d integrate the whole thing with Keyboard Maestro.

3

Thanks for the reply, korm!

Probably not. I think an Automator dialog would be a nice manual step to both confirm as well as set the amount.

At least this looks doable :slight_smile: I’m thinking now that the way to handle this is to create a bill-paying queue in DT so I can at least review what is pending. A script or key stroke should then set in motion the bill paying frenzy. I think the real scary part is getting Safari to do the right thing :confused: