NeatReceipts Scanalizer Professional 2.5 Mobile Scanner and Software

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.

I got this scanner 5 days ago, and I scanned over 400 documents (receipts + bills) already. I got it before the "expected" date of delivery (Thank you Amazon) and the product was great. The software installation took some time and has a large footprint. I generate a 1 to 2-inch thick stack of receipts each month of varying sizes (2x3 to 11x8) and I scanned one month's receipts/docs in a few hours. It is so easy, that my 5 year old scanned over 50 different sized receipts for me. Here are some "good" and "need for improvement" items:Goods:1. Can scan anything -- scanned very glossy paper receipts to crumpled ones to those that have staples (yes - you can push papers with staples with little effort). Scans Biz Cards also.2. For receipts, it recognized the information (date and totals) 95% of the time - a couple of times, it messed up the $ which is easy to fix.3. It has a multi-page scanning option to scan multiple pages into one document (e.g.phone bills) - the documents can be of different sizes.4. The scanning speed is not bad - better than what I expected for such a small equipment5. Allows you to organize scanned content into different folders6. Can export entire folder into many formats (tried only XLS and PDF so far) and it summarizes the XLS or creates one PDF with all the images - the PDF export is a neatly formatted report, with summary (categorization) in the first few pages, and images after that.7. Allows Color scanning too, but I used the B&W default only.8. Can scan very long receipts (tried 3-4 page long receipts successfully)9. Document (8x11) scanning is also reasonably quick (if you make the mistake of scanning a document, e.g. bill into receipts, it takes a long time to analyze the image for distribution - scan the docs into Documentation category and you are set).Needs Improvement:1. The software sometimes takes up a lot of CPU (>50%) of the machine2. If the receipt has a fold, it could turn during scanning, causing the image to appear warped - I would like to see a glide/support. Use your finger to act as a glide they improve the product.3. Vendor Name recognition needs some improvement - It recognizes some, but did not for most. Definitely does not recognize if Vendor name is in the logo (e.g. Sam's Club receipts) - so after scanning, I added the Vendor name.4. Scanning documents does not do any recognition - nothing is filled (date, name of doc, type etc).5. It does crash once in a while, and you lose your work - I periodically close the program after scanning 20-30 documents, and start again.6. Startup time of the software is rather too long.Overall, I would say I am very pleased to have bought this scanner. I need to wait and see what happens to their software when I scan a few more months of documents - will it become slow? only time will tell.