The Neat Company 03172 Receipts Mobile Scanner and Digital Filing System for Mac with Dust Cover

• Transform paper into information that works
• Automatically extracts key info from scanned receipts, can export to Excel and pdf
• Scans are IRS-accepted digital copies, making tax preparation a snap
• USB interface also provides power so no AC adapter needed
• Highly portable, and includes a dust cover to protect your Neat Receipts-Mac

I don't know how I got along without this now that I own it. It's the easiest scanner I've owned, and the filing system that allows me to sort my documents (.pdf format instead of .bmp...yay!) and print them as needed. It made short work of 20 pages of estate tax forms that needed to be saved for future reference. Granted, the desktop model is more convenient as it self-feeds. This portable version requires the user to feed one sheet/receipt/business card/photograph at a time and choose the format and location for archiving. But I truly don't have desk space for another permanent peripheral, and this little guy stores in the drawer without a problem.

I would like the software to be a bit easier to use. I haven't spent much time trying to figure out how to save the scanned files somewhere other than the "file cabinet" set up by the software, and I find manipulating the files within the cabinet to be a little time-consuming. On the other hand, it took me a while to get the hang of pre-configuring the format and all, so some of that is my own fault.

For those users who like to have backups of everything and aren't satisfied with one hard copy, this little tool is a real find. The files are clean, straightened automatically, and it accepts even the most crinkled receipt without spitting it back. Nice!

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The scanner mangles and crumples standard store receipts. The receipts cannot be fed in the middle of the scanner, and must be carefully aligned on the right-hand side, where they then mis-feed and get crumpled.

Receipts are not de-skewed, so they bend, are angled, and are sideways. The receipts are not cropped, so the receipts are scanned onto 8.5" wide pages filled with black, so when you print them out they consume gobs of ink or toner and are sopping wet on an inkjet. This, of course also means the OCR is startlingly poor.

In a test of about 25 receipts, perhaps only 20% of them had remotely accurate information. It almost never picked up the store name.

The software does not even attempt to scan and pick up line-item detail.

If you do not pick the "Receipt" profile it will not give you any data.

The scanner is slow, averaging about 15 seconds per receipt.

Overall, you will spend more time fixing up the Neat Receipts data than you would if you just keyed it in manually.

This software looks like it is what was typical 15 years ago and just never got brought into current technology.

Finally, Apple Spotlight was consistently unable to search the receipt data.

There are many alternatives to this scanner, and likely all of them are better.

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I got this for the portability (way less clunky than hooking up a huge scanner) and mostly for the software.

Not sure why this one is way more expensive then the PC version, but I got a rebate on mine for purchasing tax software at the same time via Fry's.

Figuring out how it works but it seems to be a life saver from receipt clutter...mostly because I am more likely to use it regularly than procrastination hooking up my 3 other scanners (yikes!--but I need one for each purpose and this one's for receipts)--very portable and like the other reviewer said you can put them in any direction provided it is face-down and they get straightened out. You can even scan in bed.

However, there's a 50/50 to 60/40 chance that you will have to input all the data after it is straightened out, and it often reads the amount, title and sales tax incorrectly so not sure how you could expect a batch scan to work. You have to input each one and check the data.

The biggest help though is that you label each receipt by tax category and it claims to sync with Turbo Tax which makes Quicken totally irrelevant. This software organizes and totals everything for you (but you do the work).

Also, there is a pdf button that I have yet to use but that could come in handy for automatically creating a pdf from anything you scan (you also have the option of creating one when you scan or exporting afterwards to: pdf, quicken, tax data, spreadsheet, image, or csv.)

You have to watch the delete button however in folders because if you've scanned to the inbox it is deleting out of there and not out of a specific folder. There is a recovery button which seems to pull from external files as well but not replacing what you previously scanned to your inbox. Now I am scanning to folders by year, although with the internal search functions you don't necessarily have to do that. You do specify where you want to save receipts, however. There is a save button, but it also auto saves as you create receipts, apparently. Faster than exporting to a pdf however is if you highlight columns, then drag to where you want them on your desktop and it auto-creates a pdf for each file in that location (figured this out by reading the manual, which you can download from their website; according to the manual that's how you save files, but when you restart the program all the receipts are still there and have had zero issues of program crashes.)

...Also, it comes with a cleaning/calibration kit.

I haven't used this device for too long so I will update it after I do my taxes in 2012. And I suppose I could have got the PC version, but on a mac it feels less like I'm doing accounting work and more likely to do it so I guess that's way I got this version, and hopefully there are less bugs.

I give it 3.5 stars, rounding to 4. Not really for stars but not as shitty as 3. When it can organize all your receipt clutter for the past six years by tax category and year and let you get rid of years worth piper piles, I give it an upgrade to four stars, for a computer device made up a bunch of 1's and 0's at least.

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Got this from the Neat folks:

Response Via Email(Brian Treadup) 03/16/2013 01:52 PM

Dear xxxx,

Unfortunately, Neat for Mac will not export to Quicken Essentials, and there is no workaround at this time.

Neat lists Quicken as one of their options for export (.QIF file format) but the only version of Quicken that use .QIF run on non-Intel OS systems.

This is obviously annoying.

I agree with the reviewer that said any other scanner would have to be better than this one. I have a small home based business and was looking for a way to organize my receipts for tax purposes, as well as eliminate the need for keeping so much paper. I bought this scanner right before tax season and did use it last year for scanning my receipts but my whole family wanted to run away from home after listening to my never ending complaints of frustration. My brother in law suggested that I buy this scanner, he really likes it. He uses it on a PC, so I'm wondering if the problems are more related to the Mac version. Do NOT expect this scanner to pick up any correct information from your receipt. Do NOT expect it to scan a receipt directly from the receipt itself. I must first copy the receipt and then scan the copy through the Neat Scanner. I type the name of the vendor and the amount of the purchase on the top of the copied receipt. Sometimes it is smart enough to pick up the name and amount from my typed heading but most of the time it is not.

Also, it is important to note that you can't transfer data from Neat into your Quicken Financial Software. This was offered at one time but is no longer available. For me, this makes the Neat Scanner even more undesirable, as I must enter the receipts into Neat, then again into Quicken. However, the Neat software does add up the totals in each category for me which I can use when doing my taxes. I haven't been able to figure out how to have the Neat software put my receipts into chronological order. So I must also do this step before entering them into the computer. Is it really too difficult to ask that the software be able to do this for me?

Since I was in the tax crunch last year when I purchased this I plowed through and used it. However, I am researching other scanners now. Surely someone out there can create one that is better than this! I wish Quicken would come up with one.