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After going through almost nine years of immigration paperwork, it is hard to break the habit of keeping every piece of paper we are issued. Now that we no longer have any need to prove who we are on a consistent basis, we are at a loss as to what to do with the documents created by everyday life. We use dsBudget for our monthly budgeting, but when we came across the NeatDesk
Getting started with the NeatDesk was pretty easy. Watching the instructional videos for the NeatDesk is a big investment of time, but well worth it. You can certainly dive in without instruction, but you will get a lot more out of the machine and its software if you watch these videos. The user guides and video tutorials are available online. Further support is provided on the community forums, where you can troubleshoot with other users and find different ways to use the NeatDesk. The community is a great resource if you have a question that isn't as black and white as you would find in a user guide, or if you dislike customer service!
To begin with, the NeatDesk is an excellent scanner. It scans simplex and duplex in greyscale, color, or black and white, has an automatic document feeder, and scans at a rate of up to 24 pages per minute. It has a resolution of 600 dpi and accepts paper sizes from one inch squared to 8.5" by 30". It has a capacity of fifteen business cards, fifteen receipts, and fifteen letter-size documents in one feed, or it can take fifty letter-size documents if you remove the paper tray. The NeatDesk weighs 4.4 pounds and has a footprint of 10.8" by 7.5". As a comparison, my husband worked in a professional print shop for eight years, his auto-feed scanner was four times the size and weight, about twice the cost and produced the same quality documents.
While the hardware itself is value for money, it is the NeatDesk software that makes this device more than just your run-of-the-mill scanner. With Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and perhaps most impressively, Intelligent Text Recognition (ITR), the NeatDesk scans and extracts information from documents, receipts, and business cards.
- Documents can be scanned and stored within the program, which extracts information so that you can define and run reports. Once scanned, images can be saved in the most popular formats, notably jpeg and PDF. Information can be uploaded to Excel®, Outlook®, Quicken®, QuickBooks®, and TurboTax®. There has recently been a flurry of Facebook activity concerning a software update glitch with regard to these uploads, so I would keep an eye on the community forums for fixes.
- Receipts can be scanned and the ITR will extract information so that you can keep track of itemized expenses and tax.
- Business cards, once scanned in, create a directory of contacts that can be stored within the program itself or exported to Outlook or Plaxo. You can also export the contacts to .csv or .nab and convert them to your own email provider.
There were several things that I wanted from the NeatDesk, and I was pleased with the results. First, I tested out the scanner's ability to read my phone bill, from a local company not a national branch. I was curious if a less easily recognized document might stump the NeatDesk. Information was successfully extracted from my bill with the exception of the company's name, which was embedded into its logo. I simply went into the database and filled that field in. I then scanned in a bill from the same company, from several months later. This time, the scanner used the data I had entered to read and include the company name in the information it extracted. I also scanned the bill in upside down and it pulled all the information. I ran two bills through simultaneously, one upside down, one right side up. It pulled all the information from both sheets, and corrected the document so that both sheets faced the same direction.
Secondly, I scanned in some of my recent grocery receipts, and it read all the information, pulled the store name, the total, and the tax. The receipt was crumpled, but the information was still extracted. I fed it through upside down, the information was still extracted. You can assign categories to receipts, and use this to create your own expense reports. This is great if you have a business, but also great for home use. I can keep track of how much I spend on birthday presents, parties, and Christmas with ease and transparency. My boys each have a bank account from their grandmother, and I can use this to keep track of what I spend on them, so as to know what to transfer. Over the course of the next year I predict that our family will be able to come up with a much tighter budget than we currently have, as the NeatDesk helps us see what we actually spend and where, as opposed to what we intend to spend and how we think of it. One disappointment was that the software does not allow you to enter income, so whilst you can track expenses well, you cannot keep a running balance of available funds.
Thirdly, I ran my business card through. It pulled through at an angle, but still read all the essential information. The cards I have for GeekMom are printed at home, the NeatDesk did a little inventive transposing, but once I had made a few corrections to the first one it had fewer problems with the next card. My office business card, scanned through with no problems and filled in all appropriate information. I foresee the elimination of many a Rolodex.
There are two other things that I am now using the NeatDesk for that I had not anticipated. I am scanning in old recipes that I have collected over the years. In this way I have searchable PDFs for things I would be loathe to lose, but rarely utilize. Using the Cloud storage offered by Neat, I will be able to use my laptop in the kitchen to access all my recipes. I am much more likely to do this than dig through my overflowing recipe basket. I am also toying with documenting my son's education using the NeatDesk. Toby started preschool recently and is bringing home several adorable things each day. What do you keep? Well with this software, I can scan everything in, share it with his grandparents in England (in full color) and then be selective about what I retain, whilst retaining everything. For our home budgeting, we will still be using dsBudget, as the NeatDesk digital filing system is much more geared towards expenses than income. But we will now be able to budget in dsBudget whilst maintaining easily accessible paperless records, a huge improvement.
I liked working with the NeatDesk at home so much that I pitched the idea of going paperless at work, and purchased one for office use. While by night I am GeekMom Extraordinaire, by day I am the Accounts Payable Specialist for one of the largest school districts in the State of Maine. Every year I use two full size, four drawer lateral filing cabinets in my office, and each year's records are retained for at least six years! In addition I send out paperwork that in turn fills at least eight two drawer vertical cabinets, and countless folders across our eight schools. Within just a month of using the NeatDesk, all of this is gone. The NeatDesk has saved myself and various administrators around the district so much time and paper, that on a daily basis I am shocked to still find ways that this machine is helping me.
- I no longer have to look up an invoice in our accounting software and pull the paper invoice to check details, it's all on my hard drive.
- I no longer have to alphabetise and numerically order up to 200 purchasing documents a week, the computer does it for me.
- I no longer have to copy, sort, and mail copies to each administrator.
- I have removed a filing cabinet from my office.
- Upon request I am able to email documents within seconds.
- Audits are no longer a week long paper chase, but an afternoon of Ctrl+F and printing.
This three minute video quickly summarizes the advantages of the Neatdesk, though there is far more to the machine and software.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OkrGnb8csY[/youtube]
To enter for a chance to win a NeatDesk you can do one or all of the following, just remember to leave an additional comment for each entry, this will ensure you are entered three times:
- Leave me a comment letting me know why you want a NeatDesk and what you would use it for.
- Like The Neat Company on Facebook and leave a comment linking back to this post on their wall.
- Tweet about the giveaway on Twitter.__ I want to win a NeatDesk from @neatcompany and @geekmomblog.
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The giveaway will end on Friday, September 14th, 2012 at midnight and the winner will be selected at random from the comments on this post.
I received a NeatDesk for review purposes, but persuaded my boss to purchase one for office use!
