NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner and Digital Filing System for Mac

(Product: NeatReceipts for Mac mobile scanner using 3.5.6 software update) My Two Day review - amazon shipping was quick and delivery was sooner than expected which was great, I got some time to play with the scanner over the weekend and here are my initial reactions to using the hardware, software and living with it for the past two days... (Ill hopefully update this review down the line, this is a product thats been in my crosshairs for a long time, but now that Ive finally gotten it, my first recommendation is - if you think you need to digitize your life, you probably do. Dont hesitat like I did, then try to reconcile boxes upon boxes of papers... its not fun, but its rewarding at least...) the package and unboxing: the packaging is pleasant and easy to open, easy to read etc - its surprising how some pieces of equipment are just laden with fine print - most of which is repeated in a booklet within anyway. the package came with the scanner, a usb A to B (mini) cable, the starter booklet which included a calibration card, dry cleaning sheet and wet cleaning cloth (in pouch, one time use) the install CD and a PDF program cd as well (PDF program didnt come with any documentation, but it will install and not run on OSX 10.6... time to upgrade i guess). the hardware: the scanner is ligher than it looks - it has a nice sleek build with quality hardware. a simple green led beside the PDF and Scan button (and not a glaringly bright LED either) notes when its on and ready to scan, and blinks for scanning. two rubber feet on the bottom keep the unit steady on the surface you have it on. the scanners feed rollers are something to touch on - they grip thin receipts pretty well and help smooth out wrinkles as you scan (i tried some pretty wrinkled fuel receipts and was impressed that the scan was legible and OCR was still able to do its job. even the most faded receipt was at least visibly legible even if OCR couldnt read the faded blue ink on white paper. the rollers have to be fed at one end with sheets smaller than a standard letter size sheet (feeds in portrait dimension) and can take a sheet as long as you care to send into it. a standard, color letter sheet will scan within 3 seconds and then OCR takes over (while which you can continue to scan additional pages). i had a few pages skew sideways in the rollers, but nothing that a little feeding techinque couldnt fix. the software: this is the crux of this piece of kit. i wouldve bought an automatic feeding, duplex scanning scanner if all I wanted was to create tons of pdfs of my papers, but to have the software pull some intelligent information while running OCR on those pages. the software isnt something ive mastered in the last two days, and ill admit, i think it shouldnt be this hard (I design buildings using 3D software, so im not thick when it comes to software. my best one-liner of this software is the itunes of pdf filing. it seems like they used itunes as a model for the program and went from there. the folders along the left column are like play lists in itunes. the window with file names and details are how youd view songs and the preveiw window is just like the single song/album art preview window in itunes... so anyway, thats a feel for it. I believe ive used the most basic method of filing so far and used the default folder types and form fields and pulled just basic information so far. I like that the software has default tax form data fields where you can selectively pull information that might apply to certain tax forms (from which you can export to turbo tax etc later) I did expirement with importing a single page pdf which it did nicely, the next two tests are multipage pdf files and using photos of receipts taken with my phone (will probably have to convert photo > pdf to import) As i learn more ill post up!

Works in a pinch - I purchased the unit because of size. I needed a scanner that was easy to transport and quick to setup on a conference table. The size is great and it is very easy to stick in my computer bag. As for function it scans - but locks up constantly, the feed tends to pull the paperwork to the side creating a skewed document. If you plan to do a lot of scanning - this is NOT the machine for you.

Im not sure how this is getting bad reviews. I purchased this for the BEVY of receipts I had for 2012. I purchased the Mac version and am running 10.7.5 and the software works great! The scanner is fast, quiet and very accurate. The only thing that has to be updated every now and then is the total. It seriously is painless and a huge time saver. Dont believe the bad reviews. This will help with my small business immensely!

Have used a neat receipt scanner for many years, and up until recently I would have given them 5 stars. Recently I updated my MacBook Pro to El Capitan, since then I will give Neat 2 stars. I would constantly have to unplug and reset, the scan would start and then stop saying that no paper is detected, it would take me 2-3 unplugs before the scanner would work and scan my document. Now I have purchased a MacBook Air. No luck at all with getting the scanner to work. Reinstalled the software to no success. What now takes them down to 1 star (zero if I could), is that they are forcing all of their customers to go to the cloud...of course this also takes a monthly subscription. Their big PLUS for this is that it will work with most other scanners, but I dont have another scanner and if I did I would be using their software. My recommendation would be to look for another

The scanner is a great size, compact and easy to carry around with my laptop. I really like that it doesnt require any external power too. The quality is great for receipts and documents. As for the software, I often find that I have to crop my receipt scans because they show up with a giant black box around them, and generally speaking I have to edit every receipt because the OCR is good but not perfect. The software also seems to be more tailored for business professionals, and not just a regular home user like me. Something like tags or custom fields for each scan would be a great addition to the software. I know you can buy other programs that are supposed to work very well with this scanner, but I feel like if I am going to pay almost $200 for this package, I shouldnt need to buy extra things to make it work.

So a good friend of mine who is a producer/ DJ told me that I needed to be up on this Neat scanner & Id always wanted one so I decided to take him up on it. Im actually happy I did. The quality of the scanner is fantastic... I actually dropped it a few times now on a hard wood floor & it hasnt broken yet which is a big deal for me. The quality of the scans are good also & installation for my compy (MacMini) was simple & super easy. I ddint have a CD drive though so I had to go to Neat.com to download the software. Scanning receipts is also extremely easy as is the organization set up in the Neat program. The ONLY issue I had with this is the number recognition which Ill get into below... Most of the time this scanner seems to get all of the numbers just blatantly wrong. A 6 will be an 8, a 1 will be a 7, or a 5 will be a 4. It seems to really depend on the FONT the receipt is written in. Long receipts like Best Buy for instance it will always get wrong. Completely abandon the idea that this thing will read your chickenscratch you call handwriting. All restaurant receipts will have to be entered by hand. Which, to Neats credit, is amazingly simple & not very time consuming at all. After a while because not many receipts are read the right way, you get used to it. Whats upsetting is that when this thing does it right, the whole process from feeding the paper into the machine to moving on to the next item, is less than 30 seconds. Most of the time though, if youre thorough & adding the business name & taxes paid ect... that turns into 1:00 of time easily. Im an actor & a DJ. I can write off QUITE a bit so even if this thing doesnt get it right all the time, it still saves me TONS of time because of the sheer amount things I can write off. The sheer fact that this thing will allow me to throw away all that paper is a blessing. The only place where Neat can improve this scanner is the resolution to be able to scan numbers more clearly. Besides that, not a bad effort at all.

I very hesitatingly bought this product considering that I have a scanner as part of my printer. However I have used this more often since I purchased it than I have used my regular scanner. The portability has allowed me to take it with me all the time and I feel my efficiency has gone up several fold because of it. I would strongly recommend this to anybody needing a regular scanner plus portability.

Scanner is amazing... But software needs improve. it doesnt remember categories connecting with retail stores, it is slow or occur errors for continuous scan and analyzing..

This scanner has made submitting receipts and expense reports much easier. I work for an overseas company, and am required to turn in monthly receipts. I was always putting it off, because it was such a chore to find the receipts, put them chronological in order, and then tape them to paper. On top of that I was creating expense reports in word documents- it was just a big hassle. With Neat Receipts I simply scan whatever receipts I have whenever I think about it- and the program that comes with the scanner saves them in an inbox. When I am ready to submit them to my company, its very easy to sort them by date and create an expense report. The expense report includes images of the receipts and then an itemized listing of whats there. I email the whole thing to my company. Where I was once spending several hours I am now only spending A FEW MINUTES! But the scanner and program could definitely use some improvements. For one, I wish I didnt have to restart my computer to get it to recognize the scanner- I wish I could plug it in and it would be ready to go. And while the software program is certainly fine- there are a lot of things that would make it great. For one, you cant choose which data fields show up in your expense report. This means a lot of data fields are included which I dont need and have left intentionally blank. It also means that the report cuts off some of the data fields I wish to include (specifically notes about each receipt- they are cut off from view half the time, but other fields which I left blank are still there, visible.) Luckily, my company doesnt mind so much what my expense reports look like, but if this program were great, I could tailor the expense reports to fit my needs. As it stands now every expense report is the same and you cant edit it. All in all I am very happy with it- I love not having to tape and staple physical receipts anymore!

Theres two parts to this package: the hardware scanner and the NeatWorks software. To me, the performance of both is mixed. The scanner is great for its small size and clean scans. Unfortunately, the feed mechanism has trouble with receipts printed on slippery thermal paper (pretty much all receipts these days!). Often it slips on one side resulting in a crooked scan. The filing part of the software is ok. No big faults or bonuses. As others have noted here, the OCR software is hit-and-miss - probably not helped by the crooked scanning. Rather than being able to go straight from scan to QuickBooks theres a fair amount of manual messing around getting the analysed info correct. Its hard to get more than 3-stars excited about this product. It helps me scan stuff right at my desk but it certainly isnt the productivity boon I hoped it would be.