Product Review - NEAT Receipts Professional
By Tip Diva | May 14, 2008
Categories: Banking, Budget, Cleaning, Computer, E-Mail, Files, Green, Home, Household, Mac, Money, Office, Operating System, Organization, PC, PDF, Papers, Products, Services, Small Business, Software, Technology, Tips, Work, Workplace
In the quest for an organized desk, I, Tip Diva, was excited when I stumbled upon NEAT Receipts Professional. The small desk scanner promised, “Organize your paper, simplify your life.” Well, I decided to test it out to see if it was indeed true.
And, boy, was I pleased.
The scanner arrived today via UPS and I immediately tore it open, ready to set it up. It looked simple enough - attach via USB, and good to go. I hastily went to plug it in, but was greeted by a “STOP!” sticker conveniently placed over the unit, reminding me to install the software (and read directions) before setting up the unit. Drats.
But the unit came with an extremely easy installation guide, so I was up and running in no time. The most difficult part was my trying to figure out how to disable my anti-virus program. But the overall installation took four minutes, tops, and didn’t require a lot of work from me. Bonus points.
The scanner is about 12 inches long and weighs perhaps a pound or two, so it easily found a place on my desk. It also comes will a wall/desk holder that allows you to store the scanner upright when not in use, further saving you space on your desk. Space is good.
You are required to calibrate the scanner before you by feeding a pre-printed calibration sheet, which was provided, through the scanner. Dialog boxes walk you through each step, so the set-up was a no-brainer. After reading through a quick Flash tutorial, I was ready to scan my first receipt, one for decongestant purchased this morning at CVS. Here we go…
The scanner grabbed my receipt and and within five seconds, the crooked and slightly crumbled receipt was staring back at me from the screen, standing straight and looking like brand new. To the right, the NEAT Receipts Professional software had filed the receipt into a personal expenses folder, noting that I paid $6.59 with no sales tax by credit card. Hmm, that was a little too easy. Let’s try tricking the program with a worn-out, crumbled, slightly torn receipt from Kohl’s.
And in five seconds, I had a receipt on my screen, noting that I paid $107.35, with 65 cents in sales tax, in cash. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but the receipt was misleading - it had two different tax lines, a discount line, and I paid with a Kohl’s charge. No biggie, because you’re easily able to correct the entries in the program. But I was impressed that scanner was able to tell the receipt was from Kohl’s, because that was the part that was torn.
My next test was to see if the CVS and Kohl’s receipts would export easily to Quicken 2008. By clicking on the folder containing my receipts, I was able to quickly export the information into a *.qif file in one click. I opened Quicken, imported the file, and voila - a seamless transition from program to program. I just about jumped for joy, because I was tired of manually typing in every cash receipt into Quicken. This just made my personal budgeting 100 times - no, 200 times - easier.
The next test was the business cards. As a journalist, I have quite a bloated Rolodex, so streamlining them onto the computer intrigued me. I picked five very different business cards with different orientations, colors and business logos. Let’s see if NEAT Receipts can handle that… and it did. Each card scanned perfectly into the system, with names, companies, titles, and contact information neatly organized into entries that can be exported into contact files, vCards, PDFs and more.
The “Documents” featured worked as well as the other two features, and I am able to group the scanned documents into as many folders as I please. The PDF capabilities of the program make digitizing and sending these documents even easier. The software also has a “Tax Reports” feature that I have yet to use, but am sure will prove helpful once the dreaded month of April rolls around again.
Click here to read the full feature list for NEAT Receipts.
Overall, I give NEAT Receipts Professional a 10 out of 10. No longer do I have to enter information manually into budgeting software. No longer do I have use my flatbed scanner, wait 20 seconds for the document to scan, then save a document into a non-searchable *.jpg file. This product truly does what it says.
The $229 price ($179 for Mac) may turn off buyers, but I believe it is well worth the price for the speed, accuracy and integration. The company also offers certified refurbished scanners for $99. If receipts, documents and business cards are taking over both your personal and business life, it will likely be worth your money, as well.
So if you’re looking to organize your office, reduce your paper usage or manage your personal budget, give NEAT Receipts Professional a try. It has Tip Diva’s enthusiastic stamp of approval.
Other Tips To Check Out:
Did the neat receipts actually scan the receipts into your checkbook register in Quicken so that you don’t have to manually enter each receipt into the register?
What is the scan rate per page of standard 8.5×11″ document? I am trying to scan 9point font legal materials.
Thanks.
Shawn
April - I don’t recall, since I deleted the original receipts. I tend to use debit versus cash/check for purchases and don’t need to use the checkbook register. Contact the company, they’ll be quick to help you.
Shawn - I would say 6-8 pages per minute. It was pretty quick.
I would *really* like to know how you did this. I just purchased NEAT Receipts and I have Quicken 2008; however, I have had NO LUCK with this process. The export / import uses .QIF which ‘is no longer supported’ by Quicken! If you have any suggestions or recollection on the process you used, I would LOVE to know!
Tracy - You have to create a cash account in Quicken in order to import the .QIF file. It will not export to checking or credit accounts.
Would also recommend looking at http://www.Shoeboxed.com. They do the scanning and ocr/data entry for you and give you prepaid envelopes to send everything in. I send in warranties and coupons in addition to receipts and they scan those as well. Its a web based, access-from-anywhere, solution (which I like).
easy to use if you have your Master’s degree in scanning. Way too many options. Took my 82kb doc and scanned it into a 3.6mb doc. Maybe with lots more time to play with it, the process will be easier.
I just bought the Neat Desk Scanner mostly for scanning in many mulitple-page documents and files and didn’t want to feed them one page at a time. This was my effort to become more ‘paperless’.
To my very large disappointment I find that the smaller version actually lets you scan into OFFICE and this does not!
This costs twice as much as the smaller version and yes has added features, but WHY would any business take away such an important feature such as being able to scan into OFFICE?
Plus, Neat Scan is compatible with Neat Desk software but Neat Desk Software is NOT COMPATIBLE with Neat Scan…where you can scan directly into Office.
Plus, I thought that if this worked well, I would get the smaller version to take with me when I traveled, but the software is not compatible!
It is totally mind-blowing that any business would have this get past focus groups!
At Customer support, they are very vague about WHEN the new software will be ready so we can scan directly into the OFFICE programs and then they don’t know that the software for the travel unit will be compatible with the desk unit when they finally add back in this much needed feature!
Bottom line, I can do some of what I need and now have NO IDEA when I can expect to get this to do ALL of what I thought it was going to do.
I am SO DISAPPOINTED!!!!!!!
an improved product should be just that…not cost twice as much and then taking away a very important feature…..the ability to scan directly into Office!.
Thanks for the positive comments — I’m trying to make a choice between this and the NeatDesk for Mac version. This one has a larger scanner which makes bulk/batch scanning easier versus using the smaller version - NeatReceipts.
What have you heard /perceive between the 2..? If the software is as compatible then perhaps the primary difference is the hardware? Would you upgrade..?
I’m with Sara. Very big disappointment at this point. Software crashes are constant, and file sizes are a mess. The lock-in annoys me. Yes, it makes PDFs but this is really not that helpful. I can get a feeding scanner on a printer for much less, and granted the receipt tray is nice, IT IS ONLY A PIECE OF PLASTIC. I’m pretty much convinced this was a purchase that overpromised and underdelivers.
For $400, the thing should work. This reminds me too much of Windows stuff.