How I Manage My 50+ Online Account IDs

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Last year I did a quick post on my many online accounts.  I have more than 50 account IDs, associated passwords, and other information on an Excel file maintained in Google Docs.  After reading this post at Cash Money Life I thought I’d expound a bit on what’s included in my file and why.

My Basic Setup

I use Google Documents to house a nine column Excel file, shared only with Mrs. PT.  The file contains the following information on more than 50 accounts:

• Account Name
• Credit Limit
• Type
• Payment Due Date
• UserID
• Password
• AutoPay Info
• Online Statement
• Email

Check out this screen capture to see some of the accounts I’m tracking.

Balance Security and Accessibility

I use three different computers throughout the day.  My laptop at work, my desktop at home, and occasionally, Mrs. PT’s laptop.  I need to be able to access my account information from these computers on the fly.  Having the file in an online repository (Google Documents) allows me to do so from any computer in the world. 

In addition, by giving Mrs. PT Google Document access, she can access the IDs when she needs to.  If something were to happen to me, she’d have all our login information in one spot and instantly be able to handle all our accounts.  

It’s also secure.  This from Google’s Help info:

Rest assured that your documents, spreadsheets and presentations will remain private unless you publish them to the Web or invite collaborators and/or viewers. Once you’re logged in, you can grant access to whomever you’d like. Until then, your documents, spreadsheets and presentations are private.

Include the Key Information

Beyond the basics, userID and password, I include the following other categories in my sheet:

• Payment Due Date – By including this date, on accounts that are applicable, I can quickly sort the sheet and have a payment schedule.
• AutoPay – Here I include “yes” or “no”, and explain how the account is setup (e.g. “pulled from bank account x”)
• Online Statement – Again, I include “yes” or “no” so I know which accounts I’ve gone green on.  This allowed me to focus on changing over the one’s that are still “No’s”.
• Email – Lastly, I include the email address associated with the account so I’ll know where the online statement is headed.  This was also done so I could focus on getting all my accounts moved towards one email address.

So that’s my setup.  Not too fancy, but I think it has it’s advantages and gets the job done.  Do you have a better way? How do you organize all of your IDs?

Photo: by Kaptain Kobold

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