Managing Your Finances: Online Banking

by Lee Hudspeth
(This article appears in The Naked PC #6.16, September 15, 2003)

** 03. Managing Your Finances: Online Banking (by Lee Hudspeth)

In this new article series I'll explore a variety of online and 
PC-based services, tools, and features that are available to make 
managing your financial empire more convenient, expedient, 
accurate, up-to-date, and even fun. I'll start by looking at 
online banking, in particular, paying your bills electronically. 
The bank I'm using is Bank of America. Your mileage may vary.

To get started with online banking...

Step 1. Start by signing up for your bank's online banking 
service.

You'll need your ATM/check card number and PIN, and of course 
your checking account number. If you have a credit card issued by 
your bank you'll need to have that handy too.

During the signup process you'll be prompted to agree to an 
Online Banking Agreement. Before proceeding, if you have an older 
PC or happen to have a really old browser, study the Agreement's 
"System Requirements" section to be sure you meet them. I suggest 
you print the entire agreement out and file it for future 
reference.

You'll also want to study, print, and file the bank's Online 
Banking Guarantee (or document with similar wording), basically a 
privacy policy statement.

It's a good idea to read everything that appears on the screen(s) 
during the signup process. One little paragraph at the bottom of 
one screen caught my eye, "Current Pay by Phone Users please 
note: Your Pay by Phone security code will be changed to match 
your Online Passcode. Use only the first four digits of your 
Online Passcode as your Pay by Phone Security Code." Any Pay by 
Phone user who missed that text would have been for a rude 
surprise.

Although this article focuses on online bill payments, there are 
dozens of other transactions and features accessible to you via 
online banking, for example, view your account balance(s); stop 
payment on a check; order copy of a check and/or statement; 
search for transactions; for credit card holders you can request 
a balance transfer, order convenience checks, request a sales 
slip copy, dispute a transaction, etc.

Step 2. Sign up for your bank's electronic bill payment service.

Bank of American refers to the electronic bill payment service as 
"Bill Pay & e-Bills." According to my bank's documentation, "You 
can make [electronic] payments to anyone, anytime, anywhere in 
the United States, from your mortgage lender to your newspaper 
carrier. The only payments you cannot make through Bill Pay are 
court-ordered payments and state and federal tax payments."

Step 3. Gather your payee paperwork, including the payment 
address.

You need each payee's most recent statement, and if the payment 
stub is the only place on the statement that shows the remittance 
address you may have to either call the payee or look up the 
remittance address on their Web site. In one case (my telephone 
service provider), in order to set up an electronic bill they 
require the most recent statement date and the balance due on 
that bill. There may be other confirmation fields for your 
payees, so keep that paperwork handy.

Step 4. Set up the payee.

For my first payee, I chose Union 76 which is my automobile gas 
credit card. I could either type the payee's name in, pick from a 
list, or type in a search. One of the payee confirmation fields 
is the zip code for the payee's bill-payment mailing address. 
Oops. I had the Union 76 statement but not the payment stub (the 
tear-off portion that gets mailed to the payee), and--very 
inconveniently--the statement didn't have the payment mailing 
address and there was no Web page with this info AND it was after 
the 800# had closed so, I had to switch to a different payee. 
(That's how I came up with Step 3!)

Step 5. Decide if you want to pay the bill manually each month, 
or automatically.

You can elect to have a provider's paper bill sent to you 
electronically, and even to have it paid automatically. Enrolling 
was relatively simple: I chose the payee, the registration 
process determined what information the payee would need from me 
and prompted me for it, then allowed me the option to confirm or 
cancel the request, and upon confirmation it showed me a summary 
of what I had just done and the current status for that e-Bills 
payee.

Step 6. Repeat steps 4-5 for each payee.

Now that you have your payees set up, expect to receive your 
first e-Bill in about a month, depending on each account's 
billing cycle. I'll cover making and scheduling electronic 
payments in my next article.

What are your experiences, likes, frustrations with electronic 
bill payments? I know many of you have been doing this "e-bills" 
stuff for years; since I'm just getting started drop me a line, 
I'd like to hear from you.

(c) 2003, Lee Hudspeth
You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
mailto:LeeHudspeth@TheNakedPC.com

You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
leehudspeth@TheNakedPC.com

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