NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner and Digital Filing System for Mac

(Product: NeatReceipts for Mac mobile scanner using 3.5.6 software update) My Two Day review - amazon shipping was quick and delivery was sooner than expected which was great, I got some time to play with the scanner over the weekend and here are my initial reactions to using the hardware, software and living with it for the past two days... (Ill hopefully update this review down the line, this is a product thats been in my crosshairs for a long time, but now that Ive finally gotten it, my first recommendation is - if you think you need to digitize your life, you probably do. Dont hesitat like I did, then try to reconcile boxes upon boxes of papers... its not fun, but its rewarding at least...) the package and unboxing: the packaging is pleasant and easy to open, easy to read etc - its surprising how some pieces of equipment are just laden with fine print - most of which is repeated in a booklet within anyway. the package came with the scanner, a usb A to B (mini) cable, the starter booklet which included a calibration card, dry cleaning sheet and wet cleaning cloth (in pouch, one time use) the install CD and a PDF program cd as well (PDF program didnt come with any documentation, but it will install and not run on OSX 10.6... time to upgrade i guess). the hardware: the scanner is ligher than it looks - it has a nice sleek build with quality hardware. a simple green led beside the PDF and Scan button (and not a glaringly bright LED either) notes when its on and ready to scan, and blinks for scanning. two rubber feet on the bottom keep the unit steady on the surface you have it on. the scanners feed rollers are something to touch on - they grip thin receipts pretty well and help smooth out wrinkles as you scan (i tried some pretty wrinkled fuel receipts and was impressed that the scan was legible and OCR was still able to do its job. even the most faded receipt was at least visibly legible even if OCR couldnt read the faded blue ink on white paper. the rollers have to be fed at one end with sheets smaller than a standard letter size sheet (feeds in portrait dimension) and can take a sheet as long as you care to send into it. a standard, color letter sheet will scan within 3 seconds and then OCR takes over (while which you can continue to scan additional pages). i had a few pages skew sideways in the rollers, but nothing that a little feeding techinque couldnt fix. the software: this is the crux of this piece of kit. i wouldve bought an automatic feeding, duplex scanning scanner if all I wanted was to create tons of pdfs of my papers, but to have the software pull some intelligent information while running OCR on those pages. the software isnt something ive mastered in the last two days, and ill admit, i think it shouldnt be this hard (I design buildings using 3D software, so im not thick when it comes to software. my best one-liner of this software is the itunes of pdf filing. it seems like they used itunes as a model for the program and went from there. the folders along the left column are like play lists in itunes. the window with file names and details are how youd view songs and the preveiw window is just like the single song/album art preview window in itunes... so anyway, thats a feel for it. I believe ive used the most basic method of filing so far and used the default folder types and form fields and pulled just basic information so far. I like that the software has default tax form data fields where you can selectively pull information that might apply to certain tax forms (from which you can export to turbo tax etc later) I did expirement with importing a single page pdf which it did nicely, the next two tests are multipage pdf files and using photos of receipts taken with my phone (will probably have to convert photo > pdf to import) As i learn more ill post up!

I love being able to go paperless and this is a great way to do it. So far it is easy to use and great for our office. My only complaint is that the scanning quality isnt the best but for what we need it to do it is great.

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.

Ordered this from Amazon and have spent the last two days with online support from the mfg only to determine that I have a defective product. It is really unfortunate because I fly back to Germany on Tuesday and so wont be able to replace it as no one seems to carry this product in stores anywhere. If you are thinking about buying this item...I would wait until they have worked out the bugs. Mine would not display any images....just black lines for receipts and completely blank for regular paper. All of the documents were inserted according to instructions (which by the way are opposite to the online video guide)and tried the way shown on the video as well just to be sure. Both garnered the same result. Great idea as I need help getting my receipts in order for biz trips and this is light weight and easy to pack but it just doesnt work.

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.

After I install the app I like the look. Its like Mail, and others. But first let me tell you about myself, and why I give this 3 stars. I have been a Mac user for over 9 years (before OS 10.0) and in the last 2 or so years Macs are the in thing; ipods and iPhones are great. But this app is like a teen learning its body. I really like the scanner and App but! The scanner is a little slow; thats not a big deal to me. The Software needs a lot more added to it. First I think the app should learn what you are looking for, I have pay stubs from Quiktrip. It should learn what I Im looking at and enter what I need entered. Moreover I think that the 2.0 is really 1.0 for Mac, in the PC world I can see that it would be 2.0. But in the Mac world I think we Mac users are looking for a app that is really a 3.0 when its a 2.0 in the PC world. If you want this and need it for receipts I think you will love this app. I scanned my W-2s in and it doesnt know what that is and I have to enter all the info. The App needs a way to move the info boxs, put them in the order you need them in. I could go on and on about the app but in time I will grow to really like/love this app . If you are looking at getting this, I would think if its really worth the money. If I had to do it over again I would test drive the app and see if it is really what I need. I will keep using it because I can make it work for what I want it to do. Im trying to free my home office of paper, and in time I can do it with this app. Could I have done it for free.... well ya the apps is like Mail, bento and so on. I dont know if this review helped but just think about it before you buy it.

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.

The scanner is pretty fast for a small desktop device and produces good scans. The device is portable and connects via usb. The software OCR is pretty accurate. The thing that makes the day is the software. It does a good job of pulling off the fields from the scanned item and placing them into the right place in the built in data base entry. But the thing that really is good is how easy it is to manually update fields or over ride the OCR. Just drag the info into where you want it and edit it for correctness. I am using the MAC version but I assume the PC version works just as well. So it does everything I wanted.

I would give it 5 stars but i think they still can improve speed a little bit ... putting receipts is tricky at the beginning but youll get the hang of it quickly. Reports are amazing, presentation is top-notch ... i carry the scanner everywhere ... this is a very nice tool for those of us who cant easily get organized.

Loved this at first but turned out to be junk. I have had it for almost 2 years and I only use it around tax time. It sits in a desk drawer and has very few hours on it. The first year the software lost all my scanned receipts after I did the recommended update. Hesitant to update again, a few weeks ago, I did after it could not locate my files. After the update my scanner started scanning black pages. Technical support logged onto my computer and tried to fix the problem. Conclusion: your scanner is broken and you need to replace it. So for $200 you can buy a scanner that doesnt last 2 years.