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NW Iowa. / SW Arizona | First off I seldom watch paid commercials on TV but as I was scanning the TV stations in the middle of the night they were advertising a product call NeatDesk Scanner. It is supposed to scan any receipt & automactically file it into whatever program you want that is compatible with it, such as Quickens. It pulls all the information off the reciept or any document, car titles, food recipes ect. & categorize it. It looked neat but not sure if it works as good as they say it does.
I did a google on it this morning & I see it is available in stores such as Staples. Retail price is $399.99 but I would guess at some point it could be on sale.
I would not want to replace my Farm Works accounting program with this machine but on the other hand would love to be able to find a receipt quicker rather then looking threw my file folders if I needed to down the road.
Anybody out there try this machine & if so what's your opinion on it? TIA Mark |
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central - east central Minnesota - | I think the IRS, still wants the real reciept - not a copy.
Then as far as fileing or finding the scanned reciept - you'd still have to search . .. . . Putting in key words or looking at the screen to come acrossed it . . . . . is it really any faster then looking in a paper file drawer?
On thing on filing, all new stuff gets put in the back of the file, that way, you know about where in the file it should be. A couple months back or just last week. . . . . . my 2¢ anyway ~ |
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. | I got the portable scanner version a few months ago. They cite an IRS code that allows copies the same as original; still I'm hanging on to my paper receipts for now. It does a pretty good job of reading the receipts. Setting up my categories, importing, etc. is a learning curve I hope to conquer by the start of next year. In my opinion it's a lot faster than digging through the drawer for a paper receipt, especially if you're like me and tend to buy a lot of stuff at one store, filed under supplies, and have a ton of receipts in there. |
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Texas | I have been using Neat Receipts for several years, since 2003. It does what they claim and is truly a great product. I use Farm Works for my accounting and keep most of my receipts in NR. It solves the problem of fading receipts and is very easy and extremely fast at retrieving the receipt for review or printing. I'll race anybody with a file cabinent when it comes to finding a record.
I open it on a split screen with Farm Works as I do my accounting and I have everything at my fingertips when reconciling the bank statements or recording the transaction detail. I have asked Farm Works to consider including an attachment option within the accounting program to allow the receipts to be scanned directly into FW. The idea is being considered, they say.
The IRS does allow a copy of the receipt to be used instead of the original. Just as a photo copy is acceptable, the re-printed receipts are acceptable too. Another thing to consider, if you have a receipt that has faded such as the many credit/debit card receipts that fade in about one year, you don't have any proof at all by the time an audit comes around. I much prefer to capture those receipts digitally and be able to print them clearly years later.
Another benefit is that I have all of my receipts backed up in case of a fire or other disaster. That's peace of mind for me.
Edited by Funacres 11/20/2011 10:00
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Rock County, MN | I use the portable @ $200 and if I were office bound would definitely get the desktop unit. I think you'll find the IRS wants electronic filings and hardcopy doesn't fit the scenario well. |
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BENTON, MO | Any one ever bought the rerurbished products from them. The price is tempting enough to try.
 (neat reciepts.png)
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 neat reciepts.png (86KB - 114 downloads)
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| I have had it for about 2 years now.
I will discuss the software first, the more I use it the more I like it. We run the Mac version and I think there are some things on the PC version that are not on the Mac yet, but they are slowly, I repeat slowly improving it. Had a couple problems with where the file was stored on an earlier version, support was barely adequate, hope I never need it again. As for automatically filling in the items, it will on some receipts, some it won't, but it is easy to drag across the things you want it to be able to search for at a future date. They say it will "learn" how to pic info from receipts after you drag items to the appropriate line, can't say this is true or not, I have not spent a lot of time trying to get it to "read" receipts. I set up a filing structure just like I would in a file cabinet and scan items into the appropriate folder. Start out with a new file for each year and then add sub folders under it. (didn't have the guts to just dump everything into a big bucket and rely on the search feature) I have a separate folder for our fuel receipts (IFTA), grain contracts, grain sold tickets, trucking invoices etc. in addition to the traditional a,b,c,d,e,f etc. With our trucking business we have to keep copies of all of the scale tickets, delivery tickets bol's etc. It is easier to scan them into NR than it is to make a hard copy to put in a file, I label each one with the invoice number where they were billed to the customer and then scan the invoice into the file also. I also scan my employee's log books into an appropriate file. Saves a bunch of file space.
As for the scanner, we bought the portable one just because we were not sure if we wanted the program at all and didn't want to use that much desk space. Reviews that I saw at the time were also questionable about the scanner quality from NR. Once we committed to using the program I decided to invest in a better scanner and opted for a Fujitsu Scan Snap. My daughter took the portable one to school with her and it does what she wants there. The Scan Snap was more money than the whole software program was originally, but in my mind it was more than worth it. Besides working with NR it will also scan to PDF files for items that I keep in a separate file for permanent records. It is not too big, fast, reliable and produces very good quality. I would do it again in a heartbeat. If they still sell the software without a scanner I would go that route and just skip the NR scanners entirely.
As for agencies accepting reprinted items, the IRS has no problem with it at all, hasn't for several years. From my experience the IRS is the gold standard and what ever they say other agencies will follow. The only one that I have found that tries to bluff their way through and says they require "original" tickets is the Kansas DOR and specifically the department dealing with IFTA fuel reporting. I have had originals for them up to this point, but from here on we are going to be paperless so they will have to get over it.
I tried some of the other paperless filing systems, looked at a lot of them, most are more money and more involved than NR. Some are a LOT more money. The only one I thought came close was Paperless, but in the end we figured that NR would be better if they continued to make some improvements to it.
Don't jump in feet first, get it, play around with it before you decide exactly how it will work the best for you. Wouldn't swear it was a lot faster than a good paper filing system, but it will save you a ton of storage space and make it easier to get to older docs vs having to go track down the box in storage somewhere.
Good Luck,
Ray
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NeatDesk Scanner,,,, helpfull or junk?
