Yojimbo is where I keep all my tax-related information and all my tax-deductible receipts. I have a simple tagging system and use AppleScripts to toss receipts into Yojimbo from my email, scanner, or wherever else they show up.
About a month ago I wrote about the iPhone app QuickShot and how I use it to take pictures of physical receipts. QuickShot uploads the picture I take into Dropbox, and I have a Folder Action script set up on my Mac to automatically toss the pictures of the receipts into Yojimbo for me. This is especially wonderful for when I’m on a business trip, or just out and about.
One thing that has always bugged me about my Yojimbo system is that it breaks down when it comes to email on my iPhone and iPad.
Until yesterday I knew of no way to get receipts out of my email inbox and in to Yojimbo except for when I was at my Mac. Therefore, if I was checking email on my iPhone or iPad, I had to deal with the receipts in my inbox twice. First when I came across them on my iPhone or iPad, and then again when I sat down at my Mac and remembered to go back to those emails and then toss them into Yojimbo.
Moreover, this meant that I couldn’t truly do all my email work from my iPad. I could only do some email management from my iPad and had no choice but to do the rest from my Mac.
Yesterday I came across a web service that will take any file you email to it and save that file into a folder within your Dropbox account. The service is called, appropriately, Send To Dropbox.
Send to Dropbox is like QuickShot and DropVox but for emails.
Send To Dropbox is free, and when you sign up you get a unique email address. When you send an email to that address the service saves the email in a Dropbox folder. The service can save the email message itself as HTML or plain text, and it can also save attachments and even un-zip ZIP files.
I set it up yesterday using the same Folder Action AppleScript I use for QuickShot and it works perfectly. Now if I forward a receipt from my iPad or iPhone it will end up in Yojimbo where it belongs and with all the proper tags.