Setting up
Fawcett Bills is used to automate the annoying parts of paying email bills – scrolling round looking for amounts, account numbers, and invoice numbers, then copying them piecemeal into internet banking.
To do this, Fawcett Bills hooks into your Fastmail account (using JMAP) and your bank account (using Akahu) and automatically scans your emails using Bill Templates you set up, in order to detect bills.
During Setup you will have to select two email folders: one for unpaid bills, and one for paid bills. Fawcett Bills accesses these folders to present your “Inbox” – a list of emails that either need paying or have recently been paid. Unpaid bills show up white, while paid bills are slightly faded.
Sometimes you have already paid a bill when the email arrives. In this case you can use the “Mark Paid” button on the right hand side to move the email straight to the folder for paid bills.
Once you click on an email, the full email content is fetched from Fastmail, and displayed with any attachments.
Any Bill Templates you have set up will be evaluated against the email. Does the sender match? Can we find the payment details? Any Assertions? If we can say yes to all of these then a banner at the top will be shown with the payment details and a “Pay” button.
After checking and confirming the payment details, Fawcett Bills will trigger a call to Akahu, an intermediary between you and your bank. Akahu will then proceed to make the payment on your behalf. Fawcett Bills will also automatically move the email into your paid bills email folder.
And that's it! You've successfully paid the bill, and can go back to doing more interesting things with your time!