Never leave your personal finances in the hands of Canada Post.
Nothing against the post office. It actually amazes me that there’s still a service where someone comes to your house every day to deliver mail. But as the rotating work stoppages by Canada Post workers remind us, mail can let you down.
Fortunately, there’s the Internet. It can’t put magazines and postcards in your mailbox, but it can keep you current on your monthly bills and statements. Here are four ways to put your financial affairs online:
1.) epost
Ironically, it’s Canada Post that has come up with this excellent service. Think of epost (epost.ca) as a system for electronically delivering bills and other financial documents to people via the Internet. You can view and pay your bills on the epost website, or have them sent through to your online banking website.
I’ve used epost for many years now to receive bills for cable and Internet, home phone, water and city property taxes. More than 100 mailers, or companies, utilities and governments, are signed up for epost, including Bell Canada, Telus, Rogers, The Bay and several bank-issued Visa and MasterCard credit cards.
Don’t worry that you’ll miss a bill if it comes through epost instead of through mail. My bank website alerts me when I have an e-bill waiting, and I also get e-mails from epost to remind me. Pay your bills instantly, or post-date the payment. Then, store them in a seven-year online archive where you can retrieve them any time to check a detail (seven years is how long the Canada Revenue Agency requires you keep documents).
If there’s a criticism of epost, it’s that it never really took off to become Canada’s one all-purpose online billing service. Lots of big-name billers aren’t listed. Example: The natural gas utility Enbridge.
2.) E-billing
The limited inventory of billers on epost means you won’t be able to have all your monthly bills sent to you online. However, you may be able to set up an e-billing account directly with some companies or utilities.
I recently set up an e-billing account with Ottawa Hydro. They e-mail me when my bill’s ready, I log into the website to read it (and weep) and then pay it through online banking. If I want to compare my current bill against a previous one, I can browse through the online archive. You can even download the brochures that Ottawa Hydro adds to its bills to update customers on service issues.
Other companies to offer e-billing, sometimes called online billing, include Bell Canada, Telus, Vidéotron and Rogers.
3.) E-Statements
If you use online banking and have online access to your investments, then the need for printed monthly statements is less acute because you’ll generally know where your accounts stand.
Regardless of how much you rely on printed records of your financial transactions, it makes good sense for a couple of reasons to sign up for e-statements. The first is that instead of accumulating piles of paper in a drawer or filing cabinet, you have an orderly online archive of statements going back years.
Another good argument for e-statements is that they may exempt you from certain account fees. For example, online brokerage TD Waterhouse will waive account inactivity fees on non-registered accounts for clients who sign up for e-statements.
Note: In addition to monthly statements, banks and brokers offer electronic delivery of tax and trade confirmation slips.
4.) Direct deposit and pre-authorized payment
I’m not big on pre-authorized payment, where you allow a biller to withdraw monthly payments you owe directly from your chequing account. I prefer to have some discretion over exactly when I pay my bills. Still, you’ll never miss a payment if you use the pre-authorized approach.
