Home > Consumer Reviews > NeatReceipts Professional Mobile Receipt and Document Scanner and Software Combination Version 3.0

I give the product two stars after having it for only a few days. I say "beware" to the novice (like myself) for a few good reasons.

Portable scanner- it's not. There are two main reasons it's not truly portable. First, it's not self powered or contains any internal memory. It must be powered up by the supplied USB cable (which for a RH person seems awkward with the cable on top feeding paper from right to left- but we'll overlook that)thus portability is quite limited. You cannot attend a trade show and scan all those business cards they might make you think you can- unless you drag around the power supply also....

Secondly, while you might choose to lug around a laptop for powering this unit it will only actually work on a laptop (or pc) to which the full software program has been installed. Meaning you cannot tap a bit of USB from Bob at the Widget booth to scan his latest product card- unless Bob's computer has the Neat software installed. And even if you did...the scan will remain on Bob's computer after you scan it, not on yours!

For me this is somewhat counter productive as I'd hoped to scan receipts at my shop and work on filing them later at home. No can do! I'd need the software in BOTH computers then after scanning them at the shop I'd have to thumb drive them or such to take them home with me, then import them to file them. And later delete all the uselessenss on the shop pc. Far easier to haul all the paperwork home (again?) and do it there.

The software did not load as planned when installed. To their credit Neat was good with phone tech and prompt. They got me up and running after moving files around in the C-drive that were incorrectly loaded. (2yr old XP with modest specs) After working the software for a few hours and trying to figure out how to make a file system I began to scan about 40 receipts to take it for a test drive. Scans look clear but many were loaded into Documents and not receipts given they were full page. Neat did a reasonable job of reading true thermal paper 2" wide receipts but can't understand "tips" to get the proper total. Full page receipts were often (well over 50%) not to the proper amounts so each one needed to be edited before I filed it.

For me the jury is still out. So far I don't see any time really saved over my old school receipt filing. With the transfer of paper, the scanning, the moving of files in the software, then having to review and edit way many of them before done it's as much work (or more) than I had previously. Just different work.

I'll look for other uses but I'm thinking like other add-ons this one's another "cool idea" that's not ready for prime time.

The scanner I ordered worked great for small receipts, but full pages only scanned half the page. I went back and forth with the e-mail customer service, them having me recalibrate and switch cords on and on for a week and a half. Finally I called them and they told me they were going to send me another scanner, but it hasn't arrived yet.

I bought neat receipts just as i was upgrading all the computers in my house hold and was shocked to find that it would not work on Windows XP or Vista 64 bit (all my computers have 64 bit OS's including Linuix). I did get it to run on a old laptop using Windows XP 32 bit found it amazingly slow and rather inaccurate forcing me to constantly reenter information manually. Sadly i now have a 250 dollar paper wait and I am back to scanning receipts on a flat bed scanner and then manually entering my receipt data. Whats worse is.. the company seems to have no plans for supporting 64 bit even though almost all computers now have 64 bit processors.
Neat receipts is a great idea but unfortunately their product is weak, slow, and totally out of date.

Well, I certainly wish I could write a nice review for the Neat Receipts scanner, but I can't.

WHAT IT IS:

At barely around 12 inches long and only a few inches wide, the Neat Receipts scanner seems wonderful for those who wish to have a carry-anywhere portable scanner that they can use to scan documents, receipts, and other small texted based items into their computer. The theory is that you can scan these items via the scanner into the scanning software, organize the scans into folders, and have a nice databased of your purchases and expenses on file so that when you lose your receipts (which we all do), you'll have records to fall back on.

SETTING UP SLOW:

Setup was not the swiftest. You must disable all programs (including antivirus) and with the install CD in the drive, reboot your computer. Upon rebooting, the install continues. On my dual core system with 2 gigs of RAM this was a slow process, and during the install it checked for newer versions of the software and said there were none available. Ok, fine.

After completion, it goes through a series of further installs, and then asks you to plug in the scanner via the USB port. Once Window's recognized it, you continue by placing a "calibration card" into the scanner. The scanner pulls it through, and supposedly it's ready to go. Upon starting up the software, it then tells me that now there IS an update to fix "bugs" in the older version of the software, so I download and install that update and reboot.

Having all done, I start up the software, which is very slow to load up and get running. Once ready, your screen is divided into a main area where you can create folders, a detail area below, and on the left an area that is supposed to show you the actual scan once it's done - like a photo. You can then slip the front of a receipt (or document) into the front of the scanner, and press the "scan" or "PDF"(to create a PDF document) button on-screen, or on the scanner itself.

DEFECT DANCE:

The scanner pulls the document through, and at this point you are supposed to see a photo of it on the left. No such luck. All I get are gray lines. All was done correctly and placed in the correct way, but nope - no visual in place. Tech support is not available on weekends, so I took the unit back to the place of purchase and swapped it for another unit.

Same problem. This time I get gray lines where a scan of the receipt should be. Ok, so long story short, for those who buy a Neat Receipts that actually WORKS, then it seems like it's a handy device to organize receipts and documents. However, the girl at the store I took my first (and now will the second) unti back to did inform me that a number of them had come back as "dead on arrival" units. Whether this is simply a bad batch of them that went to a particular area, or whether the "Made in China" badge indicates low quality and a high number of defects, I don't know. I do know that two Neat Receipts produced two defective units in my case, so, I cannot recommend this product.

CONCLUSION:

If you already own a flatbed scanner then you can with slightly more effort simply do receipt scans with that, or for the $199 average price of the Neat Receipts buy a very nice flatbed (or save money and get a basic one) to do the same job. I vote "No" on the Neat Receipts due to reliability issues.

The product works fine if your keeping it within its own software. If trying to transfer to Quicken/etc.. the process is tedious and still requires quite a bit of manual data entry to properly categorize your purchases. The system requires a lot of memory on your computer, so if you do not have at least 1GB of RAM, your system will run extremely slow. Also, any graphic pictures from your receipts will not be transferred/read by the scanner.