NeatReceipts Scanalizer Professional 2.5 Mobile Scanner and Software

When I received the product I wasnt able to get the software that drives the scanner to work. After calling support I learned that the software was several releases out of date and was given a link to upgrade the software. After several attempts, the scanner did not work using the updated software. Calling the support folks who were good to deal with, but informed me that the scanner would have to be replaced and they would be sending me the information to return the defective product. Its been weeks to actually get this scanner operative which has been a big waste of time. To add to the problem I was told that the product can not work if Carbonite is running and presently there is no fix. Perhaps a small thing, but you have to remember to freeze Carbonite in order to use the scanner and remember to unfreeze it when youre done. It just makes the scanner less user friendly than it should be. Its been working for a day or so and well see, but Im convinced this is my last purchase of Neat products which have turned out to be not so neat.

Although I cant give this product a perfect five-star rating, it still is worth the investment. I am impressed with the overall accuracy of the OCR capibility and the flexibility of the filing system. The major drawback for me is the lack of full integration with the newer versions of Quicken, which is my main financial management software. It requires several extra steps to transfer all the scanned info and not all the fields that I need in Quicken are available in the scan batch. However the ease of use and the fact that receipt, bsn card and other documents can be stored with a compact device on-the-run compensate for most of the awkwardness.

Great device for cutting down on paper clutter. Main uses for me are receipts (I create a PDF of all receipts from a single trip and zip it with the expense report), for business cards which I sync with Outlook and for general notes -- I never have to worry about having the right paper folder along on a trip. Outlook sync for business cards is great but could map more fields or allow user to adjust the maping. For example, would like to map attachments and back of card (particularly Chinese cards) into Outlook.

Great product for reducing the sheer mountain of paper a person collects each day/week/month while being able to maintain needed records for personal/tax purposes. The scanner is a nice compact size and handles most receipts easily on the first try, even the ones that have been folded, scrunched, twisted and then straightened out. The only thing I would like it to do, and I havent figured out how to do it if it can, is maintain the addresses with the vendor names so I dont have to retype in that info each time. The software help menu is okay, but could be a little better.

I was so impressed by the demo I saw at the airport kiosk that I could not wait to get back home to buy one of these gadgets. I ordered it from Amazon, and it arrived in record time. I set it up, loaded the software, then tried unsuccessfully to scan receipts and business cards. The paper got stuck, jammed, the computer froze up and the entire process stalled. I tried many times to get it to work. Reinstalled the software, set everything up just the way the instructions said - no luck. I even did a clean reinstall of my operating system, just in case I had a computer error. I am no computer novice, but this gadget just did not work. Amazon was gracious enough to accept a return and to refund my money. I am very grateful to them, and deeply disappointed in the Neatreceipt. What a time saver ot would be - if it only worked. Perhaps my machine was just a dud - and I hope that is true. But I just did not want to take another chance.

The scanner here is worth about $120; so youre paying about $35 for the NeatReceipts software. Thats probably the upper limit of what its worth right now. It claims to be version 2.5, but feels more like an early beta - slow to load, frequent crashes, poor search function. This is potentially a useful package for compulsive record keepers. Scanner works fine, but software needs more development.

Product is listed as scanner and software. NOTE: Product does NOT come with software!!!! Software should not be in the title of this product whatsoever if it does not come with the software.

My disappointment with this product is two-fold: (1) The number of scanning and classification errors it had in my testing were too high. (2) It does not add anything to somebody using Money or Quicken. Ill address the second point first: My main interest in this product was to have my receipt automatically categorized and then have that information transferred into my Money file. However, I found that that the categories it supports are very limited. Secondly the import into Money was very cumbersome: you had to first select the records you wanted to import, save it to a file, then open that file in Money and import the records. Note that these have to be done one account at a time since Money expects that the records you are importing all belong to the same account. The biggest blow was that the importing process did not retain the category selected in NeatReceipts, so the whole exercise was just an elaborate way to get an entry into Money. If your institution supports downloading, that is a much more easier and accurate way to get the records into your Money or Quicken file. You can then categorize them manually (of course both Money and Quicken do a good job auto-categorizing expenses with regular payees). As to the first point (scanning errors), I found that it was unable to pick out the account number in some cases, the date in another case and even the amount in a couple of cases. One of my receipts was for a refund with the - symbol clearly present in front of the amount. It not only categorized that as an debit instead of a credit, it even got the amount totally wrong. On the positive side, it should be useful to somebody who does not use a product such as Money or Quicken - having a digitized, searchable copy of your receipts can be very useful. You will have to correct some errors in the scanning/optical recognition, but using this product will be better than not doing it at all.

I purchased Neat Receipts after reading mostly positive reviews here and elsewhere but have been disappointed. At least 75% of receipts scanned are not read completely or improperly, and I end up manually typing everything into the program. Many businesses now use the carbonless receipts and the customer copy is a light yellow with faint imprinting. Neat Receipts will not recognize these types of receipts - I realize they are difficult but are also a large percentage of what I have to work with. Right now it is gathering dust on the shelf as receipts go into a shoe box, just like before. Can you say EBay?

When I first got it I loaded the software, and then tried the scanner. It did not work and I had got the receipt face down. I reloaded the software and downloaded the latest update and the scanner worked. I found that it does not support foreign currencies and usually got the date and the amount wrong (the former was partly because my computer comes from Switzerland. And I was in the USA at the time so my receipts were all American. What I did like was that I can scan all my receipts and export them as a pdf file which I can use to back up my expenses. It also does not import pdf files so that if I save my internet receipt in pdf format, I cannot import it and I have to print it out and rescan it, which seems to defeat the purpose of the paperless office. However, it also offers a business card scanner and it works as a general purpose scanner which is useful when I have to send an electronic scan back to the office. For those based solely in the USA this should do the trick but for those travelling overseas you will still have to do the currency conversion at the next level.