NeatReceipts Scanalizer Professional 2.5 Mobile Scanner and Software

I would have liked it a lot except that the product I recieved does not scan properly. Half of the scanner does not scan color images and when using black and white documents half the document is darker than the other half. This is right down the middle of the page from top to bottom. I will not be ordering anything from that seller again.

I have used NeatReceipts for several years and this little scanner really does a great job. Doesnt take up much room and after you are thru using it, just unplug it and put it in a drawer for next time. I save my receipts for a couple of weeks and then scan them all at one time. This really helps when tax time comes as many people find out that the receipts you get from the stores are thermal printed and the information on the receipts disappear/fade after awhile and if you cant read them, thats a problem. This scanner along with the NeatReceipts software can save a lot of headaches when compiling your receipts for the year.

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.

As a road warrior, managing my travel expenses has always been a time-consuming chore. And the occasional lost receipt as well as non-billable expenses incurred while traveling (which are nevertheless tax-deductible)have probably cost me hundreds of dollars each year. I wondered whether this device would really be more effective than a regular photocopier/scanner and the answer has been a resounding YES. The software is very intuitive and it is now a snap to process all my receipts and develop my monthly expense reports. The software is very well designed and allows you to split receipts, drag and drop from one expense report to another and indicate whether an expense is personal or billable (which means I am now capturing ALL my travel expenses.) My only criticism is that there isnt a way to just manually enter expenses for tips. I work around that by creating a hand-written receipt for tips for each trip. Hopefully theyll address this in a future software update. I am recommending this to all the other consultants in my company -- after all, if you save one potentailly billable hour of time, it has more than paid for itself!

The NeatReceipts product is useful, labor saving and fun to use. I bought it to clear a large backlog of unfiled trip expenses - it was neat to join forces with my 6 year old kid who found it amusing to scan receipts into the scanalizer, while I quickly validated, corrected and/or refiled missing numbers. The job felt like it took shorter than it would have, otherwise. But be warned of software glitches: 1. Always check the Vendor, date and amount. Dont trust the software implicitly; it has a hit-or-miss rate of about 50%. 2. There was some kind of software memory leak bug that just wiped out 150 receipts that Id entered!! A good 4+ hours of work just disappeared. That Im still using the product (exiting and restarting after every 10 receipts) is a testament to the value of the product. So use it -- but dont trust it.

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.

I have a serious problem with receipts. First of all, I cant throw them out. What if I have to return something?? So, my handbag is full of receipts, old and new. Then, when I need to return something, I cant find the one Im looking for. Never fails. This cool little scanner solves all of my problems. Now, after shopping, I come home, empty my purse, scan my receipts and throw them all out...except for the ones that have a high probability of a return. Those I save until Im sure Im happy with the product. Still, if I ever need to return it or take a look at my receipt, all I have to do is pull it up on Neat Receipts. The scanner works amazingly well on receipts that are faded or wrinkled. A lot of the times the image recognition software doesnt read the information correctly - it doesnt recognize debit payments and always puts them in as cash. Its very easy to correct errors, so its no big deal. I have different folders set up for different stores that I go to a lot. Then I have general folders for food stores, clothing stores, shoe stores, etc. I LOVE THIS PRODUCT!! The other day a friend asked me how much an item cost that I bought at Sams Club. I brought up the program, went to my Sams club folder, and quickly found the receipt. It has a place to check off if its a tax deduction and even asks you the form number. Now all of my receipts are organized and Ill never be fishing through my handbag looking for that one stupid receipt that I cant find. BUY IT!!

I did all kinds of research online for a compact portable scanner to help me with document reduction. I finally decided to go with the Neatreciepts scanner after considerable research across all kinds of sites including watching the downloadable Martha Stewart review from their web site. My overall impression is that its a great concept but the way the product delivers is less than perfect. The Scanner: The one thing I will say about this product is that its compact. Its very small, much smaller than other desktop models Ive seen and it draws all of its power from the USB cable making it truely convienient. However, my big problem was with getting it to grab and scan the document. When you feed a sheet into the scanner, it prefeeds the document a slight amount to prepare for the scan. However, once you push the scan button (either on the scanner or in the software) it rarely pulled the sheet through without me needing to give it a push. I tested this with an 8.5 X 11 document and it only grabbed the sheet correctly 20% of the time. The Software: This is where I was most dissapointed. On their website the software was billed as a being able to categorize and database reciepts, documents, tax forms, business cards, etc. In reality this tool was built to categorize reciepts effectively and do other documents as an afterthought. This is most evident in the softwares single-minded focus on trying to categorize everything you scan as a reciept. I scanned in my paycheck and it categorized ny employer as a vendor and my salary as an expense. I had the same problem with scanning in documents. The categorization had to conform to the types of categories used for reciepts. Not good. You can turn off the OCR and manually categorize your information, but you still need to classify all documents as some kind of reciept. I saw this problem on the Martha Stewart clip where her recipe cards were classified as reciepts where the vendor was the name of the recipe - I should have realized then how big the problem is. Okay aside from the categorization issue the biggest problem was that many of the documents I scanned were returning errors when they were scanned into the system. This supposedly was with their most recent version of the software. The verdict: If youre looking for a scanner to scan only reciepts then this may be the product for you. Otherwise Id suggest you keep looking.

OK, I read all the reviews on this product and still purchased one. Here is my scoop: This product fills a great little niche for those of us with home businesses that need some help keeping track of our expenses and contacts. But dont expect the world from this product. First, it hasnt been out that long, so yes, there is definate room for improvement. The scans sometimes dont work, and yes, the software does hangup sometimes. But considering what this product does for me, I can live with that. Also, the real beauty of this is the software it comes with that has some great reporting functions. You will be able to hand your tax preparer all your expenses in a tidy report. The reports alone will save me a ton of time. And I love the business card scanning. Im one of those who just came back from a week long conference with a ton of cards I normally would have just pitched after awhile, even though it will definately be an asset to my business to be able to contact these people. I was able to scan them in and export them easily into Outlook in a short amount of time. SWEET! Now, to address some other peoples concerns I saw in other reviews: First, I have no idea what they meant about having to reboot the system 3 times. Mine didnt need to reboot at all, although it did inform me that a reboot may be needed in a couple of spots. And the software was a breeze to install. I have also seen no affect on the performance of my machine, and I run a TON of software and hardware. This may be because I have an up to date system with plenty of memory. Second, the software does hangup sometimes and lose all your data since your last save if you scan too many times in a row. Just save your data by doing a backup every few scans - it only takes a few seconds. Also, you will be prompted during the setup to be part of a test group that can provide feedback on the product - join it. This is a relatively new product that is a real timesaver - help the company fix the bugs in the product instead of just complaining about them. Third, make sure you perform all the upgrades it prompts you for, before you actually start scanning anything. This alone will save you a ton of headaches. And dont forget to do the calibration. While were on the subject, the program will start a little tutorial program after you install it - take a few minutes to go through it and you will save yourself a lot of headaches. Fourth, the accuracy of the scans is completely related to how good your original is. I scanned business cards with dark type on either a dark or light background and got 100% accuracy. The accuracy rate dropped to about 90% if the card or receipt had light print or any damage to it. Did I have to do some typing - yes, but not a lot. And hey, each field it fills in is one I dont have to type myself. Fifth, yes - you do have to give the receipt or card a little push most times to get it to start the scan. HELLO - this is a sheetfed scanner! If you can show me another sheetfed scanner where this doesnt happen, Id be very surprised. The software easily uses any scanner on your system (I have 3) so just use another scanner if a particular reciept or business card gives you trouble. I would not recommend buying this as the sole scanner for your system - sheetfed scanners do have limited abilities. In short folks, this is a great little product, but it isnt perfect yet. I am computer savvy and able to deal with the little hiccups it throws my way without any trouble. If you are one of those people challenged using scanners or computers in general, then this product is not for you. But if you have no trouble in these areas, then this baby can save you a ton of time and you can then throw away those shoeboxes of receipts and business cards you have.

The software and scanner were 2005 versions that do not work with Windows 64 bit software. I have had to spend much time with tech support. Very cumbersome to uninstall old version before installing the updated version. I had to actually delete files from my system registry AFTER uninstalling through windows. After this was successfully done the scanner still did not work. Contacted tech support again. Had to delete more files in the system registry. Scanner still does not comunicate with the software.