New Year's Resolutions – Document Better

[Gary Ownsby]

Hello All,

Having been the Executor of five estates for various family members that have passed away over the years, it’s always been a challenge to identify and locate accounts, assets, obligations, etc., of the deceased person. Even if there is a surviving spouse, other than the shock of losing a loved one, the bigger shock is often finding out where everything is.

One often ends up depending on paper-based statements, invoices, bills, etc., that come out over a period of time (monthly, quarterly, yearly, and so on). Accumulating such information becomes slow and laborious and often delays the timely closing of an estate. It can also significantly delay distribution of assets that the deceased person has specified in their Will or Last Testament.

So to help my family in this task when something happens to me, I’ve used Tap Forms to create a method of gathering this information for my wife and I. I’ve loaded all kinds of information and data such as real estate property records, financial accounts and contact info, utility accounts, obligations, etc., so as to give my family a solid starting point. I also use Evernote as our repository for records…sort of an electronic vault of documents; however, as much as I like it, Evernote is not designed to provide a “structure” for information as such. That is where Tap Forms comes into play. If I need a copy of something, I go to Evernote and retrieve it. My Tap Forms “app” often is all I need to handle something but if I need more details, past statements, etc., then what I have in Tap Forms helps me locate it in Evernote. The structure and organization provided by my Tap Forms app is of great help vs. searching through “mountains” of email or scanned documents.

So as statements (electronic or paper), bills, insurance policies, etc., come in, I enter the information into Tap Forms then forward (or scan paper documents) into Evernote. Believe it or not, it’s not the major task you think it might be especially when you do this a little each day when the mail comes or you get an email with useful information. Having Tap Forms on my iPhone, my iPad, and my Macs makes it easy to do no matter where you are or which device I’m using.

So do yourself a favor and document your life a bit better this year to help those that come along behind you. Tap Forms and Evernote are working well for me.

[Brendan]

That’s GREAT advice Gary!

And in Evernote you can obtain a URL to the document which you can paste into a Website field within Tap Forms to make it easier to link a Tap Forms record with an Evernote record.

Thanks!

Brendan

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