One of the things we realized over the past year or so of using billQ was that reminders are great, but launching billQ to mark bills as paid can really take you out of your groove.

A typical scenario looks like this: You get your email or sms reminder sometime during the day saying your bill is due tomorrow. Then later, when you get home, you mail out your check or pay your bill online. Forgetting to mark the bill as paid, you get another reminder the next day. We'll, having to login to billQ just to click a check box can be tedious — and not everyone uses, or is able to use, the widget — so we have added the ability to reply to the reminder email or sms to mark the bill as paid.

To do so, just reply with the first line of the email being Paid. You can also reply with Stop to stop receiving any more reminders for that bill, or you can reply with Delete to delete the bill.

NOTE: You can also reply to an sms reminder the same way, but your phone must be able to send emails. Also, make sure to double check your phone plan to ensure you won't be charged a data transfer fee for sending an email from your phone. Who knows how many different messaging or data packages are out there. Mobile carriers love complexity.

Anyway, we really think this will streamline the process of using billQ. Now, when you receive your reminders, you won't have to login to billQ to mark the bill as paid along with logging into your bank's website (or whatever task is required to pay the bill). Just reply to the reminder and move on. Hopefully this will save you a few minutes per month. If we can do just that, we'll be happy.

Next up on the feature spotlight are the Reports.

CLARIFICATION: We should have also mentioned that replying to reminders only works when your reminder settings are such that you receive a separate reminder for each bill. If you receive one reminder containing all of your bills, then the reply-to request will not be completed.