NeatReceipts Scanalizer Professional 2.5 Mobile Scanner and Software

• Easiest way to manage expenses, prepare for taxes, create expense reports and scan business cards--accepted by the IRS
• Scans permanent digital copies of all your financial papers
• You can keep track of all types of documents and pull them up as needed with the new Document Organizer feature
• Works with QuickBooks, Quicken, MS Money, Excel, PDF, Act!, and Peachtree
• Includes NeatReceipts software and a lightweight, color, portable scanner, USB interface

My only concern is that the included scanner could be quicker. Other than that, the product is quite good. I don't particularly care for its contact management features, but others might.

A little bit of background about me: I am a software developer for contact management add-ons for Outlook. As Neatreceipts uses MSDE for its backend database, I can actually tap into that database directly and integrate it better with my application.

I primarily use it to scan business cards. I get a lot of business cards and it is critical to get them into my Outlook as quickly as possible. Neatreceipts actually is remarkably accurate at recognizing the text on most business cards.

Neatreceipts also has features to automatically recognize text on colored background and how to combat the very light ink syndrome. In short, the fancier the card, the more painful it is to scan in. :-)

Prior to choosing this product, I considered other products as well. I wanted a portable scanner that could also scan in documents in addition to cards. This scanner does the job superbly. Additionally, Neatreceipts software will work with your other scanners, which is handy if you already have a high speed scanner.

I very strongly recommend this product to those who are tired of manually entering business cards.

I promised some tips.

Tip #1

It may be tempting to use the "Meeting Point" field to actually record that place of meeting. If you are like me and want that information to transfer to Outlook as a category, you'll be surprised that the field that is actually mapped to Outlook Categories is "Contact Type" and not "Meeting Point". In other words, record your place of meeting as a category choice in the "Contact Type" field to automatically export that record with a specific category.

I find that to be far more useful.

Tip #2

If you are scanning in documents that are not receipts, simply turn off the Scanalizing feature. This should significantly speed up the process. To do that, go to Tools -> Personalize, and then click on Rules. Then turn off the "Neatscan" checkbox.

Tip #3

While scanning business cards, just hit the scan button for the next card. As long as you are not looking at the "back" side of the card, the product will automatically assume that you are scanning in a new card.

Tip #4

Scanning business cards is faster if you feed them length-wise. The software will automatically rotate the image regardless of how you originally feed the cards. That means you don't have to spend time aligning the cards.

Tip #5

Every time you hit that "Scan" button on the scanner, the software will create a new record. You'll want to go through the records and delete duplicate records. You will do that by right-clicking on the right-most portion of the record's row and choosing Delete.

Tip #6

Be sure to backup the database frequently. Your records are automatically stored in a standard SQL database, so it is critical that this database is backed up.

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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 don't expect the world from this product. First, it hasn't been out that long, so yes, there is definate room for improvement. The scans sometimes don't 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. I'm 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 people's concerns I saw in other reviews:

First, I have no idea what they meant about having to reboot the system 3 times. Mine didn't 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 don't forget to do the calibration. While we're 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 don't 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 doesn't happen, I'd 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 isn't 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.

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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 isn't 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 they'll 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!

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Despite the ballyhooed compatibility with Quicken (which is why I bought this product), the export format is a now out-of-date *.QIF file which was phased out by Intuit sometime during the Quicken 2005 era. The only use of *.QIF files in Quicken 2006 or 2007 is for a cash account import, so scanning in receipts from credit card or debit card transactions is a "no go" unless you make a dummy cash account in Quicken, then recategorize each entry after import. After my query to NeatReceipts tech support about this pseudo-compatibility with Quicken, the only answer I got was a reminder that if it was less than 30 days from my purchase I could get my money back for the Scanalyzer.

I strenuously take issue with the "review" posted by the customer support representative from NeatReceipts; the employee gave a 5-star review while posting information about a software patch. This creates a bogus inflation of the Amazon.com product rating by a company representative.

To round out my review, the scanner does function well. Importing business cards is relatively easy as long as the format of the business card is traditional. The software update adding color to the scans was welcome.

In summary, don't fall prey to the claims of Quicken compatability at this point. If you're looking to document your expenses for a business trip this is probably not a bad option, unless you have to reenter the data at some point. Although I haven't tried it yet, Quicken 2007 is purported to interface with a scanner to attach receipt images to each entry. Maybe they'll get it right--NeatReceipts hasn't yet. . .

This scanner exceeded my expectations. It is very fast, especially if you scan receipts sideways (it automatically rotates them). It is also wide enough to scan letter-size paper, perfect for packing slips and receipts printed from online purchases. It's also very small (less than 2" wide, 1.25" high and 11" long).

The image adjustment tools are basic, mainly lightness and darkness. It would be nice if there were more advanced options, but they're really not necessary. I've only had difficulty with extremely faded receipts.

As for the OCR technology, it's better than I expected, but not quite perfect. It works very well with good quality receipts that use a standard format and font. If the receipt is yellow, faded, stylized, or very wrinkled, you will probably have to manually enter most information, but it's very easy and fast to do that. The best part is that the OCR seems to learn. It remembers the type of expense (e.g. meals) that you enter for a vendor and automatically enters it the next time it sees the same vendor. It's very easy to personalize the already extensive lists of vendors, purchase types, and expense purposes. My only complaint with that is there doesn't seem to be a way to delete more than one vendor at a time, and there are a LOT of pre-loaded vendors I'll certainly never use.

The business card reader is very good, unless the card has unusual graphics or background images. It's very consistent. It allows you to scan the backs of cards into the same entry. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to run the OCR software on the back of the card to add to the information already gathered from the front. This isn't an issue on most cards, though.

Overall, it's very fast, intuitive and easy to use. Highly recommended.

A word of warning: When you first install it, run the cleaning sheet and the calibration sheet through it before you try to scan anything. It can do some very strange things if you don't use the cleaning sheet.