it looks promising, but the price is still too high and the reviews are mixed. maybe next time.

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 has a 5 star reviews rating with its AutoQuality feature.

I have had a Neat scanner for two years now - and it has revolutionized my life. No more filing cabinets. Use it in conjunction with Dropbox.com and you can access your documents from anywhere on your iphone.

Ozzie2191 wrote:Pretty sure they won't give you a quality post for this, but I give you a +1 Oz Cookie for a great review!

I totally disagree. I love the neat scanner. It is a great scanner. Even great products are not perfect, and Neat is not perfect. But it does the job.

[quote postid="4357702" user="Greshmahg"]

Example: I go out to eat. I spend 75 dollars. It scans the receipt, knows to classify it as "meals", but puts it in a "non-deductible" category. But my meals ARE tax deductible. Which means that every time I scan a meal receipt, I've got to manually change the bucket the receipt gets dropped into.

Seeing as how I only scan my receipts once every couple of weeks, and I have to manually change buckets every time (via a scroll menu, which takes a bit of time), I end up spending a TON of time just moving the receipts to the correct bucket, because the software just can't learn that the tax deductible bucket is where the receipt should go.

Seems that you need a macro program to change your bucket quickly, at the touch of a hotkey. Anybody have a recommendation?

i bought the portable w v3 software here and I thought the OCR & software were great and I was looking forward to getting one of these for teh increased convenience of desktop-ness.

Clovemb wrote:Does anyone know if you can get this and then buy the Mac software separately to be compatible?

They will send you the Mac software for a fee. I think it's somewhere in the $40 - $50 range.

I've got a desktop Neat Receipts that I bought at Office Depot for about $300. It does not work nearly as well as advertised but what does? It's supposed to read the receipt and enter the numbers automatically into an Excel type spread sheet, but it rarely get's it right, so you end up mannually entering the receipt information anyway. This is especially true if your receipt is a little faded. For new, crisp receipts it scans well, but you still have to add the tax designation manually, so it's time consuming, but it does get my receipts far more organized than I've ever had them before.

Drumcat is right. I have one of these scanners. The software is a pain. For example, you can't remove the factory presets, so when you add your own settings (e.g., credit card accounts), the OCR chooses the factory preset half the time and your custom setting half the time. It requires constant monitoring & correction.

Before it's asked again:
"NOT COMPATIBLE WITH MAC"

does it work with windows 7 and is it twean compadiable

I'm also going to suggest the Fujitsu ScanSnap instead. Much better use of your money.

I guess it depends on what you want it for. I LOVE mine. I scan all incoming bills, etc. and drop them into a "current bills" folder. When I pay them I move them to a folder based on the type of bill. I have archived all my product manuals for household appliances, etc. I don't do alot of receipts, but I just scanned a 6 page receipt from the auto repair shop and the software found the price breakdown on the 3rd page and filled everything out correctly. The scanner itself is fast and feeds just fine for me. I file later, so I don't sit and wait for the software to process the images realtime (this can be slow). But note: THIS IS NOT FOR SCANNING PICTURES. This is a document management solution, not a picture scanner.

I got the NeatReceipts scanner off Woot ($80 instead of $199) however many months ago I first saw it and fell in love with digitizing all my office paper. Then I decided to switch from paper to electronic medical charts, so I got the duplex desktop version (refurb from Neat, 10% off the $400 retail price).

Love it.

I don't use the software at all, just the PDF function, with which I've had no issues so far. The OCR feature lets me copy/paste ID numbers from insurance cards directly into the billing system (way fewer typos). The duplex function with the "Remove blank pages" option selected lets me put a stack of old records in with some double-sided and some single-sided; handles them fine. Handwritten pages come out upside-down sometimes, which is more amusing than annoying. It takes awhile to process very large multi-page documents, but the six-document queue is fine.

I gave the little one to my receptionist for insurance cards, but I'm picking up this one for her today, as it's signficantly faster.

Bottom line: thumbs up.

I have the portable one, scans fine straight most time. Software takes a little getting used to but works ok. If they would work on the software and update it once in a while this could be great. But my receipts are much more org. now than ever.

Also if the scansnap is $1500 how can it be compared to this! It better be a lot better!

sorry for muti post but I see that was an s1500 model not $1500. Comparable price range. ok but does the software ocr them and such like neat software. Hope so as I may take a look at one

Just buy a $99 scanner, and use Evernote. This software sucks, I returned it even though i got it as a gift from my girlfriend and got grief for sending it back. Evernote does OCR, syncs to multiple computers (and online) and any old scanner will do. You can even scan things from your Android or Blackberry or Iphone, so you don;t have to take everything home and mess with it.

Dragoonadept wrote:We sell these at Staples for $299 new, they're tough to sell but seem to do quite well with the scanning and organizing of receipts.

Link? They show up 399.
http://www.staples.com/NeatDesk-Scanner/product_758317?cmArea=SEARCH

thanks bk553 going to check that out for sure

I am with you on the Fujitsu. I have had a scansnap for the past 4 years and use it every day. It is great, scans both sides and color too. Never a problem.
Mac compatible.

Clovemb wrote:Does anyone know if you can get this and then buy the Mac software separately to be compatible?

yes, you can.... Go to the NeatWorks website

Neatco.com

Has anybody gotten this to work with Linux under Wine or similar?

Seems a bit pricey for a "convenience" that could be attained with a few hours of prep work, a regular scanner, PDF reader/creator, and knowledge. I'll pass.

This was on Hoarders a few months ago. A man had tons of magazines, newspapers, etc. And the "interventionist" sat him down and told him about this great scanner and how he could still keep all his precious articles, etc, but he'd have to scan them in. The hoarder flipped out, and threw her out of his house, never to be allowed back in. It was hysterical. Or, really, really sad.

I got the Neat compact scanner last time it was on Woot. It wouldn't feed receipts. So, I contacted Neat support. They replaced it w/ another. Same problem. Support then refused to help me any more. I would be as likely to buy another Neat product as I would be to enjoy sticking shards of glass under my fingernails, and consequently whacking each said finger with a hammer.

...I'd be that likely to do it.

I would recommend the Fujitsu Scansnap instead of this, and it has a comparable retail cost. Two features that seem to be missing from the workflow on the neat scanner is blank page detection and document skew adjustment. Without document deskew, OCR performance will be poor. Especially if what one of the other commentors posted about chronic physical page load skewing is correct.

The Fujitsu also comes with Acrobat 8 Pro I believe, and ABBYY Finereader (a special edition).

The plus side to Neat seems to be the software which it seems is hit and miss with most people.

I own the portable Neat Receipt and I love it.

I own a business where we get multiple invoices per day. Once i have entered the invoices in QuickBooks I scan the invoice into neat receipts so I can throw away the paper invoice.

Contrary to posts in this thread neat receipts saves everything as a searchable pdf. So every item number, description, etc. is made searchable.

For my CC receipts neat receipts saves me time because I can scan my receipt in and then automatically port them to Quickbooks.

The bad? As previous posters have noted the software isn't the greatest at tax deduction categories. This isn't a problem for me as quickbooks does that and I would have had to enter it manually into quickbooks anyway.

The software IS a bit buggy. In 18 months time I have only had to restore from back up once though. DO BACK UP EVERY TIME THOUGH. If you are using this for storage of tax documents you can't afford to lose any. This would be true for any software.

BK553 wrote:Just buy a $99 scanner, and use Evernote. This software sucks, I returned it even though i got it as a gift from my girlfriend and got grief for sending it back. Evernote does OCR, syncs to multiple computers (and online) and any old scanner will do. You can even scan things from your Android or Blackberry or Iphone, so you don;t have to take everything home and mess with it.

Does Evernote automatically connect with Quickbooks and sync quickbooks with your scanned receipts?

I think this the best feature of neatworks. I would be interested in other software that does do this as neatworks software is a little buggy.

wtacey wrote:Before it's asked again:
"NOT COMPATIBLE WITH MAC"

I use it on MAC therefore it is compatible.

jag216 wrote:I would recommend the Fujitsu Scansnap instead of this, and it has a comparable retail cost. Two features that seem to be missing from the workflow on the neat scanner is blank page detection and document skew adjustment. Without document deskew, OCR performance will be poor. Especially if what one of the other commentors posted about chronic physical page load skewing is correct.

The Fujitsu also comes with Acrobat 8 Pro I believe, and ABBYY Finereader (a special edition).

The plus side to Neat seems to be the software which it seems is hit and miss with most people.

Does the Fijitus/Adobe combination automatically port your receipts to Quickbooks?

Neatworks does and that is what saves me alot of time using it. It is a bit buggy though and I am interested in other options.

Given the price, I would compare this to Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300.
Interesting to see which reviews are (much) better...

gnica wrote:Given the price, I would compare this to Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300.
Interesting to see which reviews are (much) better...

Does the scansnap software directly export to Quickbooks so you don't have to enter your receipts twice?

walshchristopherj wrote:I use it on MAC therefore it is compatible.

says right on the descript though man.

"NOT COMPATIBLE WITH MAC

In the box:

■Neat Company NeatDesk ADF Scanner and Digital Filing System
■NeatWorks Installation CD
■Power Cord
■USB Cable
■Quick Start Guide"

phacopida wrote:Anyone have experience with the NeatWorks database? Intuitive and user-friendly are the key words I'm looking for...

NOT intuitive and NOT user-friendly is the correct answer. I have had one for a year. It is fast and does PDF well. I have to re-boot my computer after using the Neat software, because it causes all my other programs to run very slow.

While I like the concept and think I might even find extra usefulness from this item, I just can't bring myself to shell out the bucks on the item. 200+ is hard enough to come by. I do wonder if I just had the software how well it would work with my current scanner. Anyway, just thought I would po in here and say, "Hey!".

Is this compatible with Mac?

matthewneilgiles wrote:Having bought the Scanner off of Quill.com a year ago, it has given me a new hatred of proprietary software. Nothing from Neat plays nice with any other software, including extensive work with Photoshop, Acrobat, or even cutePDF or other freeware scanning software.

Problems I had included Neat ignoring whatever I would tell it to do.

Le Ugg... pass on this unless you want to work entirely with Neat's software.

Neat works wonderfully with Quickbooks.

Neat is NOT a scanning product. It is a receipt and pdf organizing product. It communicates directly with Quickbooks so is great if you are running a business.

If you are not needing something like this and are just looking for a scanner there are alot of better options.

tracycaptain wrote:NOT intuitive and NOT user-friendly is the correct answer. I have had one for a year. It is fast and does PDF well. I have to re-boot my computer after using the Neat software, because it causes all my other programs to run very slow.

I'll second this. It isn't exactly intuitive per se. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

If you are just looking for a scanner this isn't the product for you. But if you need to keep track of receipts and invoices for a business and want something that will interact directly with Quickbooks (also does some others too) then you should consider it. You may want to start off with the portable though and see if you like it. I got my portable here for $80 and will be getting this scanner methinks today.

Last semester I worked in a logistical position for a company that sold Neat Desk products. The company as a whole had so many of this particular product returned to them as defective that Neat Desk issued a blanket RMA (an authorization number a retailer needs to return a defective product to a vendor to receive compensation).

I know that the store I worked for only sold one in the period that I worked there that was not returned as defective later.

However, having helped some of the customers with their technical problems it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they couldn't figure out how to turn it on and assumed it was defective.