#NEAT RECEIPT SCANNER PORTABLE#
#NEAT RECEIPT SCANNER SOFTWARE#

Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. But when it comes to expense reports, man still beats machine. I would happily use these gadgets for business cards and general-purpose scanning. The NeatReceipts handheld scanner, in particular, is versatile, elegant and lightweight. By contrast, it took me only 10 minutes to input the same data by hand.Д«ottom Line: This technology is impressive. Total time to input five receipts from my trip, including classifying and editing: 22 minutes. Longer documents such as hotel bills took up to three minutes using a NeatDesk scanner hooked up to my speedy Dell ( DELL, Fortune 500) Latitude D830 laptop running Microsoft Vista. It took about a minute to scan each receipt. (The same goes for business cards, a particularly snazzy feature.) As I scanned and categorized each receipt, a digital copy appeared in my NeatDesk inbox. Taking NeatReceipts on your trip means you don't have to worry about losing receipts. NeatDesk thought it was 'general retail.' Hotel and airline receipts, however, posed no categorization problems. My second receipt, for lunch at Noah's Bagels, was more confusing. The system classified it as 'transportation.' I changed that to 'parking,' but it was a fair guess. The first receipt I scanned was for airport parking.

#NEAT RECEIPT SCANNER SOFTWARE#

For receipts, the software assigns billing categories. The optical character-recognition software puts everything you scan into one of three files: receipts, business cards and other documents. Installation took half an hour for both models, and the calibration process was simple.

NeatDesk ($499) is the larger desktop version and looks more like a top-loading printer than a scanner.

#NEAT RECEIPT SCANNER PORTABLE#

The NeatReceipts scanner ($200) is portable and resembles a wand. My goal: Beat the time it takes me to submit my expense reports manually. So, for my latest business trip I tested Neat's two most recent models. The only manufacturer that comes close to realizing this vision is The Neat Company, which claims its scanners and patented software can pull data from your receipts and drop them into spreadsheets such as Microsoft ( MSFT, Fortune 500) Excel or Intuit's ( INTU) QuickBooks. I've long dreamed of a device that could generate my expense reports at the touch of a button. And I'm no stranger to expense reporting, having previously run the corporate travel division of Expedia ( EXPE). SEATTLE (Fortune Small Business) - As CEO of a fast-growing internet ad network, WidgetBucks, I travel a lot.

Neat receipt scanner