NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner and Digital Filing System for Mac

Wow, what an excellent idea. A scanner with software that recognizes and does a pretty good job of categorizing receipts while recognizing which line represent taxes on the purchase, etc. The problem is that, at least on the Neat for Mac version, YOU CANT DO ANYTHING WITH THE SCANNED RECEIPTS AFTERWARD. On the PC version you can then import the data into Quicken or Quickbooks. Not so on the Mac version. There is no way to do it. Message boards on tech sites (and Neats site) are full of complaints about it. If you go to Neats support website you get weak apologies and no clear answer on what they are doing about this unbelievable oversight. Yet they STILL on their website list Neat for Mac as being able to export to Quicken, etc. That seems shady to me. So, there you have it. A bunch of scanned receipts and nothing whatsoever you can do with those receipts afterward in terms of importing the information into an accounting program. You might as well have used your old scanner and some cheap scanning software, because youll end up with the same thing: a bunch of pictures of your receipts. Dont let yourself be used by the Neat Company. If you have a Mac, run away from Neat for Mac.

The compactness of this scanner is its main selling point. Its about the size of a curling iron and will fit easily in your suitcase or carry on bag. However, I would not use it for anything important or official, as almost everything wiggles or crimps as it goes through it. If portability isnt your need, Id probably pick another one.

I bought this to get myself organized. The software is great (once you figure out how to use it, which isnt easy). The scanner works well with heavy paper such as business cards and some checks, but is virtually impossible to use with thinner paper, especially letter size sheets. I have yet to get a single piece of paper to feed straight. No matter how meticulously I align the paper, the scanner will twist it and turn it so by the time it is half way through it is at a 30 degree angle. It comes out twisted and the resulting scan is distorted. It installs easily, but is impossible to use. About every third or fourth scan, it will no longer feed or if it does, the software will say that the scan cannot be completed even though the entire document has been fed through the scanner. The only solution I have found is to quit NeatWorks, unplug the scanner, plug it back in, and then restart NeatWorks. Then after three or four scans, repeat this process. Obviously the hardware has lots of bugs that the company needs to fix. The concept is great, and I had high hopes for it, but clearly it is going to require way too much work to scan most documents. Instead of being a time saver, it has become a time waster.

The Neat Receipts for Mac portable scanner arrived in a timely manner. The device is easy to use and does not take up a lot of physical space. Should make 2012 a non paper cluttered year. Downloading the software for the program was easy and the tutorial was excellent.

Great product, works as advertised. Wish they had a desktop version like they have for windows. One refinement would be on its OCR, I find myself writing in some info that the OCR misses. Also the drag and drop is a little buggy at times. I did not expect this product to be bug free from a company that is use to writing windows programs. I am positive that future updates will remedy any bugs. Even with the bugs I am very please with the product and would suggest it to everyone.

I was hoping it the software would recognize line items or item names on receipts to make it easier to find when searching. I have to manually input the important items on the receipt in the notes section to be able to find them in a search. Also, it loses connection to the computer frequently and i have to unplug and then replug it in.

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.

I bought a neat receipts for my wife who has a Mac running both Win 7 and OSX Lion. I bought the Windows version which didnt work through the Mac hardware. I downloaded the Mac version of the software and installed it on Lion. Neat software asked for a Product key which I typed and it didnt work for the Mac software. I sent an email to Neat customer support to see about getting a Mac Product key or to see if there was a way to make it work on Win 7. After 5 days and numerous mails, I never got a response from their support department. A friend with a Mac and the Neat Mac software had a similar experience with Neat support. She and I are both returning our scanners. This company is a joke. Dont waste you money and your time. If you do youll be sorry.

I have had this system for nearly a year now and stopped using the Neat Scanner just a few months after buying it. This unit is simply a waste of money; it scans single-side pages (which usually need to be held manually as it goes through so it doesnt twist) at a very slow, inefficient speed. For those considering Neats hardware, look to their upper-end unit. Later I bought the vastly more efficient Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M, which is light years ahead of NeatCos equipment (even their higher-end NeatDesk model which Ive also used at a colleagues. Highly recommended instead of this brand.) The software is useful, but as others have pointed out there are limitations (See later UPDATE below). One of the most troubling is that, according to NeatCo Tech Support themselves, their software only supports FIVE scanners! Lets face it, scanning isnt rocket science, and OCR has been around for a long while. How hard can it be to at least try to adapt to the most popular scanners? This company seems to put very little effort into Quality, and far more into Marketing. While Fujitsus software leaves much to be desired, their hardware is the real choice if you want to track receipts and such. Sadly no software out there yet matches the potential usefulness of Neats. If only the two could play well together... UPDATE MARCH 2011: Neat just released a vastly improved software update and it is now nearly perfect. They really listened to users. The low-end scanner review, and my recommendation for Fujitsus in its place, still stands.

This little item works very well and very quickly but it isnt perfect yet. The scanner is good, it rectifies crooked scans, but the OCR can miss things. It can be amazingly accurate, and on the next scan it can get the vendor wrong, the price wrong or the details wrong. Nevertheless its good because it is very easy to correct the mistakes and then the file of images and the reports it generates are great for record keeping and consistent with IRS standards. Particularly good if you have a FLEX (Flexible Medical Spending Account) and you need to keep records of all those copays, OTC meds, etc. Overall a really good product. Fix the OCR software and it will be perfect.