Consumer Reviews

I am not someone who needs a scanner in my everyday life. My main focus for buying this was because I use USAA banking. USAA is an online only bank and the only way you can deposit checks with them to scan the check through a browser page on their site.

The problem was is that I never could find a list of mobile scanners that were supported and my first attempt failed miserably for me. So with no little amount of trepidation did I buy this. For all those USAA users, it works! Took a little bit of tinkering to make it work but it did great and my checks are being sent in now.

What I didn’t expect was my actual joy with the software though. In no time I found myself copying my important documents (tax returns, etc) into the device for storage. Then I found myself getting 2 year old credit card statements. A little while later I am saving my receipts. It is just so addictive and easy to store my documents electronically and free up physical space (who needs a file cabinet any more!).

My only major issue is that the database is getting rather unwieldy to load. As someone who programs databases I am not sure if it is just the hardware difference or if the programming wasn’t indexed or optimized. I have heard 4.0 is faster but I am unsure if it is worth an upgrade when this does everything I want after the initial start-up annoyance.

Either way you will be more than happy with this device.

As one who runs his own home based business, I accumulate a ton or receipts each year. Not only do the receipts take up their fair share of space, but they also, thanks to thermal paper, seem to “disappear” as time goes on. OK, maybe the paper doesn’t disappear, but the writing on the paper does. And what good is a receipt that can’t be read at tax time?

I began using the Neat Receipts Pro in late 2006 and haven’t looked back since.

The software is intuitive. You create a category (let’s say “Office Supplies” or “Fuel” or “Client Entertainment”) and then just scan the receipts after hooking up the scanner via your PC’s USB port. Scanning involves feeding the receipt into the scanner, waiting a few seconds and then seeing the receipt on-screen. For the most part, the software is pretty good at deciphering what the receipt says, including the sales tax and the total. It does have issues with the vendor at times, since many stores like to use their logo instead of writing out their store name. If there is any information that the software didn’t “read”, it’s just a matter of typing it in manually, which takes no time at all.

Once you have created all of your categories (and you can create both business and personal categories, and label them as such), and you’ve scanned your first batch of receipts, looking up a receipt takes no time at all. Simply highlight the category and look for the receipt, which is arranged chronologically. If you need a reprint of the receipt, simply select “Print” and it will print it out original size. You can also export to PDF, which is a feature added in the latest software release.

In addition to receipts, you can also scan in documents for putting into a “digital safe”. The software categorizes those items also.

I save up my receipts for the week and scan them on Sundays. Once I’m done with the scanning, the best part is coming up: the big pile of receipts gets shredded! Everything is stored on the PC. Obviously its a good idea to create a backup of your receipts and the program has that feature built in also. Since all of the receipts and documents are stored in a database, you simply select “Tools” from the menu, then “Database”, then “Backup” and it backs up everything into your My Documents\NeatReceipts folder. I then backup to an external drive nightly. Quarterly I copy the backup to a DVD and place it into a safe.

The Neat Receipts program also scans business cards and transfers the contact information, another neat feature (I see where they get their name now!).

The IRS accepts the receipts in digital format, so there is no issue come tax time.

Bottom line, if you like to have your life organized, and you don’t like to have a ton of receipts taking up space, this is one of the best investments you can make.

I have had this for a couple months now. I travel sometimes for work and this sucker does a great job handling the receipts. When I get back to my hotel or whenever I get a chance to scan the receipts, it scans them into a folder. I can add comments, so that I remember why the company has to bill it back. For me, I need to add contract numbers, who was in attendance (for meals), etc. I can add all of these things and even have it kick out a nice little expense report.

So far I have been happy with it, except for a few glitches with the software, and some lack of functionality.
…it has been fantastic for the following reasons:

1. It puts everything into a folder that I can name and add a date to. I do my expenses by the week, so I have weekly folders.
2. It will generate a nice little pdf with a cover page, a line by line listing of receipts, the comments about the receipts, and the actual receipts. I will have upwards of 30 receipts and still be under 1 meg.
3. They let you know that IRS accepts scanned receipts as originals. This means that every receipt that I need to keep until tax time can be scanned in and placed in a receipt folder for taxes for that year. Then when tax time comes, I can just generate one big pdf file for the whole year.
4. Everything stores in a database. There is some limited searching that you can do, but my main happiness is that I haven’t lost a receipt, yet.
5. This thing comes with a mounting bracket so that you can hang it upright. It’s a fantastic idea. I scan my receipts straight into the trash. Once they are scanned, they drop into the garbage.

…it has had some issues.
1. In the version 3.0 that I purchased, it would just not print out all of the comments if you had too many receipts. This was frustrating for the first month and a half. Then, since I had complained about it, they sent me a free license for the next version, NeatWorks 4.0.
2. They only let you use their scanner. This is frustrating because I come home, dock the laptop, but can’t use my home scanner that’s attached to the docking station. I have to drag out the specific scanner and use that. Apparently, Mac users can use alternative scanners. They need that with PC users. Currently, their software is crippled.

If you’re a traveler who needs to generate copies of receipts, then this is a great deal. If you have a workspace and already have a scanner, then this may be for you. Once they un-cripple their software and allow any scanner to work with it, this will be a much better deal.

I am an accounting and tax professional and I’ve got to say the Neat Receipts Scanner is the best tool I have ever come across. I had no trouble with the install on either my desktop or laptop. I am chronically behind in my personal bookkeeping and thought this might help me enter charge card receipts more quickly in my personal QuickBooks file. I was not disappointed. I have taken the scanner with me when I traveled (bought the case) and used it to scan tax records for preparing tax returns when I returned home. In reading some other reviews, I have found some potential answers to problems based on my own experience.

Some receipts have logos which the scanner can’t read & I had to put those names in manually. There was no real fix for this one but receipt without logos generally weren’t a problem and if it misread a name and I corrected it, usually it was correct on subsequent scans as the software learned.

I changed the expense and payment accounts once (if needed) and it remembered for the next time. For instance, if the software autocoded a Costco receipt to groceries but I actually only ever buy gasoline at Costco, it would remember that Costco was a gas purchase and then I’d only have to change it if it wasn’t gas. I was able to code the credit card account for specific cards by putting the last 4 of the card number in parentheses.

Some people claimed that scanning to pdf caused it to be blurry. I figured out why when I goofed on my scanning. If you scan a receipt directly to pdf, it blurs, if you scan a document to pdf, it is not blurry. If I want a pdf of all the receipts, I scan them as receipts and then print them to the pdf file… problem solved… clear copies.

Only lines and not an image of the receipt. Yep… had this happen to… thought something was wrong until I realized I was scanning the receipt face up instead of face down. I did it correctly and had no other problem. [I don't really understand why you put the calibration sheet in face up when receipts are scanned face down, but hey... it works]

I was able to sort my receipts by payment method and block & import to QuickBooks by expense category. Doing it this way recorded the debits and credits properly. My only critique on the QuickBooks is in using the option to download the entire expense folder into QuickBooks.When doing this, you can tell it that all of a certain Neat Receipts expense account is the same as a selected QB account allowing them to be tied together for the download. Same thing for the payment accounts. When I reviewed what was down on the download, I realized it had recorded each charge slip as a “bill” and then paid the bill using the given credit card account. This caused me to have twice the entries that I needed in my QB and also didn’t allow me to maintain “Other Names” as all payees had to be Vendors.

Overall I am very, very please with my Neat Receipts Scanilizer and have recommended it to a client who did purchase.

I love this product, recommend it highly and will never travel without it…

After reading these reviews, I decided to take a chance on this little machine. I understand why there are so many great reviews and so many warnings. It does what it says it does but I experienced most of the problems that someone else had.

My system is a Windows XP system. My first installation of Neat Receipts went well and the software and scanner worked. I scanned in about 80 receipts within an hour. However, the images were out of proportion and much narrower than they should have been. I never found out why.

I turned on my HP All-In-One and my laptop crashed, the NR database crashed along with it and I lost my data but I had a PDF file, which stopped me from cursing myself for shredding my receipts.

Second installation went well. The image for receipts had the correct proportion. However, my laptop kept showing “New Hardware Found” message for my HP all-in-one. I ignored it for awhile. When I took care of the problem, it took about an hour and a half. It was probably more of a problem with the HP printer than with NR. Afterwards, everything worked well together.

With everything working well, I was able to evaluate NR fully in several areas.

1) Installation is easy and not too slow.
2) The program does waste time. It starts up slowly because everything is done in connection with the database.
3) Scanning was a mixed bag.
3.1) Business cards: The scanner had no trouble with business. The image was straight or re-aligned to be straight by the software. The OCR picked up the name 90% of the time, e-mail 100%, address 99%, phone number 90%, address 95%. It would become confused with multiple names or multiple addresses. The export to Outlook was fast and efficient. You can also scan the back of the card or scan another attachment if necessary. This is great because I sometimes write notes when I met the person. The scanned version looked good and the speed was about 2 business cards per minute.
Business cards: A/A+
3.2) Photos: You can’t adjust the dpi on the scanner so I assumed it was scanning at 600 dpi in color. I scanned photos through the Documents tab and the Business Cards tab. Color scans looked grainy and the color matching was never quite right. B&W scans were okay. However, all my scans of photos were twisted even if the photo slid straight through. Half the photo would be straight and half would be crooked or squeezed. I could never fix this problem. My old flatbed gives much better results.
Photos: D+
3.3) Documents: I scanned 8.5 by 11 bank statements, and the scanner handled these well. The documents would mostly come out straight but once in awhile a crease would cause part of the scan to be crooked but usually not by much. The images were good but the saved files were huge. Instead of being 30 KB or less than 100 KB, the PDFs were 1.5 MB. That is a big difference if you e-mail documents. B&W or color didn’t seem to make a difference. The files were huge.
Documents: B+
3.4) Receipts: This was the worst feature. The scans were almost always crooked or disjointed. The OCR software never worked properly so I would have had to enter most of the information myself. The scans were always in B&W and the images were good albeit crooked.
Receipts: D
4) The PDFs were much larger than they should have been. The Database itself took up 1 GB or more. Because I re-installed several times to fix the HP problem, the database seemed to grow. I don’t know where the database was located but my C drive lost a total of 3 GB after all the installations. That is for an empty database.
5) I was able to use the scanner with ReadIris and Microsoft XP programs without any problems.
6) I was disappointed that there is no scan directly to PDF function. I would have to buy other software for that or always go through NR database which is much slower.
7) I don’t use Quicken so I can’t comment on that.
8) No PDF importing is a pain but I didn’t really need this function.
9) I bought my NR at Costco and its version has the NR carrying case which is great and would fit most portable scanners. In fact, the accessories are great to have for this little machine.

My overall opinion is that it is not what I need right now. If I traveled a lot, I would love the feature of logging my receipts even with the hassle of entering data and bad image(just in case I lose one), the feature of logging business cards with a quick export to Outlook and the ability to scan a document reasonably well. I think that I could put up with the bad quality in that case.

Although I am trying to buy more mobile accessories for my laptop, the quality is just not there to justify the purchase. In most cases, I can wait to scan documents at home and this little machine won’t replace my flatbed. I haven’t tried any other portable scanner, but I look forward to the next generation of mobile scanners with better software.