Author: tj-mccue

Let Paypal Be the Heavy: If They Haven’t Paid, The App Will Let ’em Know

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

Reminding someone about a past due invoice can be an awkward situation. Rather than having to call or email directly, you can use a simple reminder tool in Paypal to do it for you. The message is automated and, for some clients, the gentle non-personal nudge can get you paid sooner.

Once logged into Paypal, on the top horizontal navigation menu, go to Tools, then Invoicing. This brings you directly to the Manage Invoices section where you will click the “Unpaid” tab:


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Evernote Gets Crufty — Use Advanced Search to Get Through It All

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

Instead of searching through hundreds of saved notes, you can find what you’re looking for more easily by using Evernote’s search filters.


In the example below, I’m looking for a proposal letter I started and would like to finish. First I do a general search on the word proposal which returns 81 notes:

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Compose Gmails With One Click

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

When you’re heads-down working and want to avoid the distraction of your incoming email, you can use this tip to send outgoing emails without entering your inbox. The trick: create a browser bookmark that takes you directly to Gmail’s “Compose Email” window without first passing through your inbox.


  1. Start by copying this link: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&source=mailto&to=add-addresses@gmail.com
  2. Next paste the copied link into the your browser’s address bar (1).
  3. Then, hit the enter or return key and it will open the Compose Email page.
  4. Finally, add that compose page as a bookmark. To do so in Chrome, click the little “add bookmark” star at the far right of the address bar (2). You can see that I have mine on the main bookmark bar (3) for easy access:


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Forget the Fancy Scanner and Save Your Receipts in Evernote

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

Keeping track of expenses is a hassle, plain and simple. You can buy special scanners or box them up and ship them off to different services to scan. Or, you can just sign up for Evernote.

For each business receipt I receive, I use Evernote’s mobile app on either my iOS or Android device to snap a photo of the receipt and dump it into an Evernote notebook marked by year say, “2016 Expenses.” Sometimes I tag the photo, too, but mostly, I just snap the photo and upload.

Image Courtesy of Evernote
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Get More Productive With Evernote’s ‘Email Notes to’ Feature

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

One of my favorite features of Evernote is the “Email Notes to” function which enables you to add things to your notebooks by sending them to a specific email address.

Note: this is a premium Evernote feature, though the free version does let you play with it in a limited way.

I use this feature to create new project work files that allow me to stay out of my inbox, where it’s easy to get distracted by other messages.

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How to Get Google Docs, and Other Apps, to Read to You

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

In today’s mobile world, having a document read to you, say when you’re driving or working out, is helpful, if not essential. Google Docs, like Microsoft Word, has an Accessibility feature set that helps people who prefer or need to have webpages or documents read to them.

The best app I tested for this purpose was a Chrome browser extension called Read&Write from TextHelp.com. If you follow this link from within Chrome, it will ask you if you want to “Add to Chrome” (below it says “Added to Chrome” because I completed the task before I wrote this post).


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Google Drive’s Public Templates Are Going Away — So Get Them While You Still Can

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks


Templates are a great way to jumpstart a new file to achieve the look and feel you want. Up until now, if you use one of Google’s apps — Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms and Drawing — you’ve had hundreds of publicly shared templates from which to choose. Bad news — as of 2017, they’re all going away.

Note: For more background on this move, see the “Why is the Google Drive Template Gallery Going Away?” section below.

Why is This Bad News?

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Save Time Billing Customers with PayPal’s Invoicing Tools

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

While it can be a real chore to oversee, managing cash flow — aka getting paid — is a constant need for any business. PayPal offers a robust feature set to help you get paid faster with less hassle.

There are two serious time-saving “get paid” options available from PayPal: create an invoice template and an ongoing subscription button.

Note: PayPal has service fees depending on how the money flows from customers to you — in other words, whether the money comes from a PayPal account versus a credit card.

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Save Microsoft Office Files Directly To Google Drive

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

There are still thousands of people who use Microsoft Word to create and edit documents. I’m doing so right now, but I love having those documents in the cloud to review them from any location and any device. Well, there’s a stellar little plug-in for Microsoft Office users who want the best of both worlds.

Note: this plugin only works on Windows computers.

Head to Google’s “Drive for Office” page to download and install this helpful tool. After install, you are almost done. When you next start Microsoft Word, Excel, or Powerpoint, the pop-up screen below opens and requires just a few more steps to authenticate your Google account credentials. To start, click the “Get Started” button:

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Increase Your Email Subscribers by Integrating MailChimp with Facebook

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks

One of the handier features of MailChimp is the ability to integrate with many of the common social platforms to grow your mailing list. In this tip, we’ll show you how to add a signup form to your Facebook Business Page.

The first step is to login at MailChimp. Now, click on your profile in the upper right corner of the screen (1), then drop down and select Account (2). Once in the account section, click on the Integrations menu item (3)and then the Facebook integration (4).


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