Customer Reviews

NeatReceipts Scanalizer Professional 2.5 Mobile Scanner and Software

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(49)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(28)
1 star:		(29)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

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.

I purchased this scanner as a direct result of the positive reviews on Amazon. I was excited to receive this device as I do have a problem keeping up with my receipts... it sounded like the perfect solution.

After I received the device, I configured it according to the instructions (including calibrating the scanner). After going through the simple setup procedures, I started on my stack of receipts. I was very impressed with the speed at which I was able to get through about 30 receipts (less than 5 minutes). Unfortunately, this is where I ceased being impressed.

Upon reviewing the scanned receipts, I noticed that only 2 of the receipts contained valid OCR (optical character recognition) data. The data for a lot of the receipts contained wildly differing data than what was actually on the receipt... some contained no information. Because of the extremely poor quality of the OCR, you will be forced to manually enter information for each receipt.

In closing, I truly do not understand how people can continue to give this product positive reviews. It is a decent device if you just wish to scan your receipts; however, you are paying a premium for a device that is worth maybe $75... so one has to assume that the rest is going to the software.

Scanner (hardware)
==================
Pros:
-Lightweight and Small
-No External Power Requirements (powered off of the USB bus)
-Fairly quick scanning speed
-Great little scanner

Cons:
-Does not grip and feed the receipts correctly sometimes (if folded, etc)

NeatReceipts Professional (software)
====================================
Pros:
-Logical Interface
-Ability to create folders
-Ability to charge expenses to a client account
-Automatic tally of monies

Cons:
-EXTREMELY poor OCR
-Requires a lot of manual data entry to get the receipt data correct
-Requires MSDE Install (Basically Microsoft SQL Server)
-Sluggish (resource hog)

I did all kinds of research online for a compact portable scanner to help me with document reduction. I finally decided to go with the Neatreciepts scanner after considerable research across all kinds of sites including watching the downloadable Martha Stewart review from their web site. My overall impression is that its a great concept but the way the product delivers is less than perfect.

The Scanner:

The one thing I will say about this product is that it's compact. Its very small, much smaller than other desktop models I've seen and it draws all of its power from the USB cable making it truely convienient. However, my big problem was with getting it to grab and scan the document. When you feed a sheet into the scanner, it prefeeds the document a slight amount to prepare for the scan. However, once you push the scan button (either on the scanner or in the software) it rarely pulled the sheet through without me needing to give it a push. I tested this with an 8.5 X 11 document and it only grabbed the sheet correctly 20% of the time.

The Software:

This is where I was most dissapointed. On their website the software was billed as a being able to categorize and database reciepts, documents, tax forms, business cards, etc. In reality this tool was built to categorize reciepts effectively and do other documents as an afterthought. This is most evident in the software's single-minded focus on trying to categorize everything you scan as a reciept. I scanned in my paycheck and it categorized ny employer as a vendor and my salary as an expense. I had the same problem with scanning in documents. The categorization had to conform to the types of categories used for reciepts. Not good. You can turn off the OCR and manually categorize your information, but you still need to classify all documents as some kind of reciept. I saw this problem on the Martha Stewart clip where her recipe cards were classified as reciepts where the vendor was the name of the recipe - I should have realized then how big the problem is.

Okay aside from the categorization issue the biggest problem was that many of the documents I scanned were returning errors when they were scanned into the system. This supposedly was with their most recent version of the software.

The verdict:

If you're looking for a scanner to scan only reciepts then this may be the product for you. Otherwise I'd suggest you keep looking.

This product has great potential. However, I would recommend it only if you use no other accounting package and are happy with the features provided by the NeatReceipts software.

You can export the images, but that must be done manually one by one. Hardly a practical solution if you have more than a dozen or so reciepts. You can export the amounts, but again that must be done manually and is just too time consuming to be useful. The frustrating thing is that it would actually be very easy to get the data as it is kept in a Microsoft SQL Server database. However, NeatReceipts have gone out of their way to block us users from accessing our own data. I do not know what NeatReceipts were thinking when they did this - I guess they just don't trust users with access to their own data. Unfortunately the scanner was useless to me because of this and is now sitting as a white elephant on my desk.

The 1 star has been given on the assumption that there are users who are happy using only the NeatReceipts software and do not need access to their data for use in Quicken or other accounting software.

I have been waiting to get a NeatReceipt scanner since I first saw it in a flight magazine. Got one last week and am returning it :-( First, the unit is great looking. I like the weight and the ease of installing it. The software looks really friendly as well. I scanned one in and it was so easy and accurate I decided to scan a lot in. My first problem with it is the scan. While it seems to be recognizing the information, you need to check - the date can be wrong and a little bit of intelligence can go a long way, e.g. it scanned in a date of 1996 for a 2006 receipt. So check the auto scanned value. Then I scanned in another one upside down - it read it and the amount and date was all wrong! OK, that was not fair, so I re-scan the receipt into the same transaction. That's good but then I can't find an obvious way to tell it to re-scan the information for new date and amount. I ended up deleting the transaction and re-scanning it as a new one.

Next problem, after about 20 scans, the application hangs. It may not be the software since I have similar problems with Quicken. Anyway, I had to terminate the application from the task manager. After a reboot and restarting the program - I lost all the 20 scans that I just did!!! It is not clear what I need to do to recover. The irony is that I get a message at the start of the application saying there is no SAVE or ACCEPT button since it saves each transaction automatically :-) Anyway, I managed to repeat this scenario 2 more times. Support from NR came too late - after I decided to return the unit. Apparently you can recover those scans by doing a Fast Find -> Find all Saved Receipts. Hope that helps someone else. I like the ease of specifying different credit cards with the last 4 digits. THe organization of the folders seems nice as well. I got a folder name of the year, with end date as end of Dec and then the category is by use, e.g. groceries, household stuff, etc.

The decision to return this unit was made when I tried to export to Quicken. Quicken can read the QIF file but cannot distribute my transactions to the various accounts properly (even with the last 4 digits). The categories were not sync'ed up so there was too much rework - I had to pick an account to bring it in, then move the transactions and re-categorize it.

I would still recommend this to anyone who just wants to scan the receipts and manage the amounts in NeatRecipts. If your purpose is to use NR to do data entry into Quicken, save yourself some time and just enter the transactions into Quicken.

The other functions of the software is not a big gain. I returned this and ordered myself just the scanner since I already have Paperport to do my document management. I think Quicken or MS Money need to do some collaboration with NeatReceipts and if they do, I will consider it again.

Well, after reading all of the reviews, I decided that I would go ahead and give this thing a shot. I was really worried about the device's ability to recognize information and organize it properly. I didn't want to blow $200 on a piece of junk, but I also wanted to flexibility of being able to save receipts and push them into QuickBooks.

A couple of thoughts:

The upside: I don't know about everyone else, but my impression of the text recognition software is nothing short of surprise. I expected the device to recognize maybe 75% of the text on a card, and accurately map around 50% of it into the appropriate fields (name, cell phone, office phone, etc). Instead, scanning accuracy is closer to 90%, and its ability to map data to the right fields is close to 95%. Astonishing. I was really blown away. I wasn't using some sissy construction worker business cards either. Most of the cards I scanned had advanced graphics and some of them had 10-15 lines of text. It was able to determine all of the relavent information and put all of the b.s. into the "Notes" field. The biggest fear - transposition of a single digit of a telephone number or something to that effect - never occurred. After the 50th business card, I stopped checking phone numbers that I scanned in. I did note that the heavier the graphics or the older the card, the less accurate the results of the scan. However, at roughly 90%, that's still pretty dang good.

The downside: eats a lot of memory. My God, my computer slowed to a crawl when I installed the software (which took like 30 minutes to install). Running it is still a bear. Well, they must have had to do some sophisticated programming to get to this level of accuracy, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Still, it's not like I am going to power up my laptop and do a scan on one document when I'm on the road. I am going to have to save them and run them in batches. I'm even thinking about dedicating an office computer just for this thing, although that's probably overkill.