NeatReceipts Professional Mobile Receipt and Document Scanner and Software Combination Version 3.0
by NeatReceipts
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List Price: Our Price: $179.95 You Save: $70.00 (28%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Office Product See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of NeatReceipts Professional Mobile Receipt and Document Scanner and Software Combination Version 3.0
Customer Review: Great hardware bundled with a software abomination!
Summary: 3 Stars
I've been very pleased with the quality of the scanner itself. Just a couple of years ago I purchased a similar type portable scanner for over twice the price but was never happy with it. Documents would always get skewed going through the scanner due to a weak feed system. It is for this reason that I still give this scanner props in spite of what others have said.
I think I would have been far more upset had I purchased NeatReceipts for the entire package and the promise of a system that is supposed to help me organize my documents and keep track of all my receipts with ease. I think the makers of this product had a good idea -- I only wish they would have put a little more research and testing into the software portion of the product. The user interface is confusing, and it lacks the kinds of configuration options that most users would expect to find in a software package that promises so much. I had to search through the entire menu three times before I could believe that there is no way to configure common scanning options I've grown accustomed to seeing in other scanning software. You can't choose your scan resolution, there is no option for scanning in black and white (as opposed to grayscale) and when in "receipt" scanning mode you don't even have the option to scan in color. When exporting to graphic formats (bmp, gif, jpg, png, tif) there are no configuration options for any of the formats. For example, when exporting to jpeg format you might expect to be given the option to choose the degree of compression vs quality depending on whether you want a clean, printable image or you would rather have a small file size. The software makes all those choices for you, and you may not like the results.
There are other quirks as well, which I find inexcusable. For instance, when scanning receipts the software will fill in the merchant name if the first few letters you type match a name you have entered previously -- a nice feature that can turn on you. If you happen to be entering the name of another merchant that just happens to have the first few letters in its name as one previously entered you can typically continue typing the name and the suggestion will disappear, but I have begun having problems with the software not allowing me to modify the suggested names, and there is no option in the software to make modifications to the lists it creates in its database like I've become accustomed to doing in Quickbooks.
Another annoying quirk is when exporting to pdf format -- possibly one of the potentially most useful features of the software in my opinion -- the resulting pdf documents are always blurry. Again, there are no options allowing one to adjust the quality of exports -- a BIG disappointment.
Finally, the software is incredibly bloated. There is no quick-loading streamlined app for quickly scanning a few documents, which really would be nice seeing as how it takes 56 seconds for NeatReceipts Professional to load on my T5470 (Intel Core 2 Duo) system. I also noticed that NeatReceipts.exe and associated processes tip the system memory scales at over 130MB -- nearly twice the memory footprint of programs like Adobe Photoshop and iTunes!! Fortunately if you're running Windows XP you have the option to use Windows XP's scan wizard and avoid the NeatReceipts software entirely (my recommendation).
Customer Review: Must have for Accountants or Small Business Owner
Summary: 5 Stars
I am an accounting and tax professional and I've got to say the Neat Receipts Scanner is the best tool I have ever come across. I had no trouble with the install on either my desktop or laptop. I am chronically behind in my personal bookkeeping and thought this might help me enter charge card receipts more quickly in my personal QuickBooks file. I was not disappointed. I have taken the scanner with me when I traveled (bought the case) and used it to scan tax records for preparing tax returns when I returned home. In reading some other reviews, I have found some potential answers to problems based on my own experience.
Some receipts have logos which the scanner can't read & I had to put those names in manually. There was no real fix for this one but receipt without logos generally weren't a problem and if it misread a name and I corrected it, usually it was correct on subsequent scans as the software learned.
I changed the expense and payment accounts once (if needed) and it remembered for the next time. For instance, if the software autocoded a Costco receipt to groceries but I actually only ever buy gasoline at Costco, it would remember that Costco was a gas purchase and then I'd only have to change it if it wasn't gas. I was able to code the credit card account for specific cards by putting the last 4 of the card number in parentheses.
Some people claimed that scanning to pdf caused it to be blurry. I figured out why when I goofed on my scanning. If you scan a receipt directly to pdf, it blurs, if you scan a document to pdf, it is not blurry. If I want a pdf of all the receipts, I scan them as receipts and then print them to the pdf file... problem solved... clear copies.
Only lines and not an image of the receipt. Yep... had this happen to... thought something was wrong until I realized I was scanning the receipt face up instead of face down. I did it correctly and had no other problem. [I don't really understand why you put the calibration sheet in face up when receipts are scanned face down, but hey... it works]
I was able to sort my receipts by payment method and block & import to QuickBooks by expense category. Doing it this way recorded the debits and credits properly. My only critique on the QuickBooks is in using the option to download the entire expense folder into QuickBooks.When doing this, you can tell it that all of a certain Neat Receipts expense account is the same as a selected QB account allowing them to be tied together for the download. Same thing for the payment accounts. When I reviewed what was down on the download, I realized it had recorded each charge slip as a "bill" and then paid the bill using the given credit card account. This caused me to have twice the entries that I needed in my QB and also didn't allow me to maintain "Other Names" as all payees had to be Vendors.
Overall I am very, very please with my Neat Receipts Scanilizer and have recommended it to a client who did purchase.
I love this product, recommend it highly and will never travel without it...
Customer Review: Where has this product been all my life?
Summary: 5 Stars
As one who runs his own home based business, I accumulate a ton or receipts each year. Not only do the receipts take up their fair share of space, but they also, thanks to thermal paper, seem to "disappear" as time goes on. OK, maybe the paper doesn't disappear, but the writing on the paper does. And what good is a receipt that can't be read at tax time?
I began using the Neat Receipts Pro in late 2006 and haven't looked back since.
The software is intuitive. You create a category (let's say "Office Supplies" or "Fuel" or "Client Entertainment") and then just scan the receipts after hooking up the scanner via your PC's USB port. Scanning involves feeding the receipt into the scanner, waiting a few seconds and then seeing the receipt on-screen. For the most part, the software is pretty good at deciphering what the receipt says, including the sales tax and the total. It does have issues with the vendor at times, since many stores like to use their logo instead of writing out their store name. If there is any information that the software didn't "read", it's just a matter of typing it in manually, which takes no time at all.
Once you have created all of your categories (and you can create both business and personal categories, and label them as such), and you've scanned your first batch of receipts, looking up a receipt takes no time at all. Simply highlight the category and look for the receipt, which is arranged chronologically. If you need a reprint of the receipt, simply select "Print" and it will print it out original size. You can also export to PDF, which is a feature added in the latest software release.
In addition to receipts, you can also scan in documents for putting into a "digital safe". The software categorizes those items also.
I save up my receipts for the week and scan them on Sundays. Once I'm done with the scanning, the best part is coming up: the big pile of receipts gets shredded! Everything is stored on the PC. Obviously its a good idea to create a backup of your receipts and the program has that feature built in also. Since all of the receipts and documents are stored in a database, you simply select "Tools" from the menu, then "Database", then "Backup" and it backs up everything into your My Documents\NeatReceipts folder. I then backup to an external drive nightly. Quarterly I copy the backup to a DVD and place it into a safe.
The Neat Receipts program also scans business cards and transfers the contact information, another neat feature (I see where they get their name now!).
The IRS accepts the receipts in digital format, so there is no issue come tax time.
Bottom line, if you like to have your life organized, and you don't like to have a ton of receipts taking up space, this is one of the best investments you can make.
Customer Review: Just what I was looking for
Summary: 4 Stars
I think this product is best for on the road folks who have to deal with expense reports and stacks of business cards. For full blown document management, it's going to disappoint.
After seeing a lot of negative/luke warm reviews, I delayed buying this thing, but I'm glad I finally did.
I have a full sized scanner with a document feed for scanning and storage of documents like bank statements, meeting notes, etc. This scanner is a little too slow for that since it has to be fed one paper at a time.
But for those times when I'm on the road and need to send someone a copy of something, I can scan it in and email it rather than hunting down a fax machine. Or scan it, throw the paper away and not carry huge stacks of paper for the trip back.
For receipts, it works great. The OCR isn't fool proof, but there's so much information on the average receipt, that it does a pretty good job. It seems to learn a bit, so that I had to enter the info on a Hertz receipt the first time (tons of information on those) and then afterwards it knows it is a Hertz receipt and even pulls the correct tax and total now. It still pulls the rental start date rather than end date as the receipt date however. For gas station receipts, they often say "Welcome to ___ Shell" and after the first time I entered the info, it now knows that it is a shell receipt.
Receipts can be fed any direction and the program will try to figure out which way is up. Seems to work best if fed top first, but with jagged edges, sideways works just fine.
My old way of doing expense reports was going through the stack of receipts, grouping them to the right time period and project and flat bed scanning them. Now I just enter them one at a time, no need to worry about order or grouping as long as I enter the receipt date and project. Then just highlight the right ones, and it'll create a nice .pdf with a summary of the amounts as the first sheet and pictures of the receipts fit as best as possible on the following pages.
Business card scanning works pretty well. Takes some editing to fix entries, but given how varied business card formats are, it guesses fairly well on what's the company name, what's the phone number, cell number, email address etc. It keeps the picture of the card so if there is a typo in the email or phone number, I'm not completely stuck, I can pull that up.
One annoying thing is the software license allows installing on only one computer. And they don't sell a license for just the software so to be legal, you'd have to buy 2 scanners to use on say a home PC and a laptop. There is a way to install just the scanner drivers so it can be used with multiple machines. But it would be nice to have the software on my home PC and my laptop.
Customer Review: Poor Quality Scans
Summary: 2 Stars
I need a portable scanner primarily to scan documents and attach them as pdf files to emails. This scanner is small and lightweight. However, the quality of the pdf files that this scanner creates is very poor. The quality is not satisfactory for business use. The text in the pdf files created by this scanner is not sharp. In addition, when you scan a document to a pdf file, and you look at the scan on your computer screen or print it out, there is a light gray outline around each line of text. It is as if the text had been highlighted by a light gray highlighter pen. The highlighting is light, but it is there.
I called NeatReceipts tech support, and their rep scanned a document using her NeatReceipts scanner while we were on the phone, and she told me that the gray highlighting appeared on her screen and when she printed the scanned document. We tried all the available scan settings, but we could not eliminate this problem. We tried the "black & white" setting and the "color" setting, but the problem persisted. She told me that the "black & white" setting scanned at 300dpi and the "color" setting scanned at 600dpi, although I could not find anything in the manual that gave this information or said anything about how to set the dpi setting. Thus, the only dpi setting available using the "black & white" setting is 300dpi. And the scans created by this scanner look more like 200dpi. This is unacceptable. Recalibrating the scanner did not reduce the problem.
Surprisingly, she told me that she had not received this complaint from any other customers. The explanation may be that other customers are just using the scanner to archive receipts, and maybe the scan quality is not so important for that. But if you need to create good quality pdf files, then you should not buy this scanner. On a good scanner, when you scan a document to pdf, the resulting pdf is virtually a copy of the original document. Not on this scanner.
I bought NeatReceipts 3.0, and the scan quality was poor, so I uninstalled the 3.0 software and installed the old version 2.8 software from their support website, but the scan quality was still very poor.
I did not attempt to use the feature that allows you to scan receipts and automatically import the information from the receipt into financial software, so I can't comment on whether that works well.
In a pinch, I would use this scanner to email a document, but the poor scan quality makes it unacceptable for regular use. Since the quality of pdf files was poor, I returned the scanner.
This scanner is actually manufactured by Plustek. Plustek sells the same scanner under the Plustek name with a different software package. I may buy it to see if it creates better quality scans.