Use Billeo to track bills and avoid late payments

In response to the recent story I wrote about the security of Mint.com a reader tipped me off on another personal finance tool which looks pretty useful. Billeo is a free program whose "Bill Pay Assistant" feature lets users set up reminders for their many bills and can log them into the site in order to make the payment from their preferred source of funds. Billeo even lets users save copies of the confirmation page, which makes keeping track of your finances a snap, and beats the analog method pictured to the right.

Billeo's biggest strength is that it leverages the security and payment methods already in place by those companies you do business with. When it is time to log in and make a payment, Billeo doesn't handle the actual transaction; it simply logs you into the existing payment site for the bill you are paying. As for the security of your information Billeo is using 128 bit encryption which is standard in the industry and your actual information is stored locally on your PC with the same encryption.

I am definitely going to have to check out adding Billeo to my personal finance toolkit as soon as they roll out support for Firefox 3, which is my browser of choice. Even though I have automated most of my bill payment there are a few which cannot be automated, for which a great reminder service would be useful. There's nothing worse than paying a company an extra $40 because your payment is a day late!