Managing bills have always been problematic. Fat wallets, lost bills, unsorted bills these are some of the problems most people face nowadays. Try Cloudsgreen, a cloud based eco-friendly receipt management service, by warangal based entrepreneur Shashank Pawar.
We had previously featured Warrantify, a Hyderabad based startup, featuring a similar service with other addons and a mobile app.
Available for both personals and organisations, this service helps you generate, store and manage receipts making things much simpler. The website automates the whole process from bill/acknowledgement generation to cash flow statements. The company wants to contribute to a greener earth by cutting down on paper usage, thereby reducing deforestation and water pollution. The service also helps in economising on resources like printer supplies, bookkeeping costs, storage etc… as the whole process is paperless. Even the website is designed light so that you economise on the bandwidth usage.
Since the whole system is based on cloud users can generate receipts or acknowledgement slips from anywhere and send it to anyone without needing to print it. All the generated slips are transferred into the recipients CloudGreen account, making retrieval of previous slips and archival easy. The service also has a provision to account for payments and cash inflows without receipts.
Users can can create multiple logins under different departments and assign permissions to the operator. The website also customises the look of the bill if required and users can also view the cash flow statistics with a few clicks.
When we tried the service, the initial account setup was easy but the website feels like it could do with some design improvements.
The company had developed a virtual printer that can cling onto an existing POS software and generate electronic receipts for them. By not using a physical printer the per transaction cost can be brought down.
The company plans to have a ‘per transaction’ model at the POS and a subscription based model for accounts on CloudsGreen.
Some of the functionalities provided by the website isn’t unique as these can also be found as a part of various customer relationship management (CRM) or accounting software. Websites like eSlips and Shoeboxed provide similar functionality with a better feel. Nowadays users also have the option of having similar functions on mobile apps making it more convenient for them to use.
The service already has 300 account sign ups and have partnered with 6 fests for now. They have also partnered with a Water filtering plant based out of Andhra Pradesh.
CloudsGreen plans to market the POS virtual printers to various retailers and at College Fests.
The important questions: is the use case so strong for the product that it will see hundreds of thousands of signups? Is it better suited for mobile or the web? Indian customers are used to physical bills and receipts. Our economy is still cash based for the large part. Asking the common user walking into the store to accept an online receipt may be a bit of a stretch. But then, no harm in trying out a solution that could end up being useful in the long run.
