What are some good scanners for receipts?

Christopher

Christopher

Moderator
I am no where near the paperless stage, probably not for a while so I am dealing with boxes of receipts and need to scan them as they fade over time, especially the thermal type and the cheap ink type.

I saw the Neat receipts scanner where they feed through but I saw a lot of bad reviews and I don't have much faith in that brand yet.

I have seen some others out there that look similar and feed the receipts through so it saves a lot of time opening the lid, scanning, opening the lid to put another receipt there and then scanning again.

I am looking at some large file folder size boxes of receipts to scan.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.
 
Scanning is the smartest thing you can do with all your receipts, especially since receipts fade before the protection or warranty period is over. I found this out the hard way when my iPod classic went on the fritz 33 months in to the 36 month extended warranty I purchased at best (best=most expensive) buy. When I looked into my meticulous filing system I found an un-readable receipt. It took almost 3 hours of stubborn arguing and convincing for BB to find my purchase - as a consolation they switched it out right there without me having to wait for them to ship it to apple for repair.

That being said, I think you're jumping the gun looking for a scanner first! The question before scanner selection should be: "How am I going to manage the scans/info" after it is scanned!"

One of the problems I had with neat desk is that it only pulled the information recognized by neat desk. Bar codes, cashier codes, transaction #'s or codes, etc vary from retailer to retailer. So if I ever had to return something it took for ever finding the transaction at the store - if it was found at all.

I use Evernote to me increase my productivity, and file/document management. It's cloud based, so I can access it from my phone, tablet or laptop, or and web-abled device. It continuously syncs, so wherever I add or edit, I only have to do it once. If you want a how to pdf I have 2. Send me an email and I'll reply with them attached!

To finally answer your question,

Both fuji and canon have great evernote friendly scanners

I started with (and still use) the Canon p215. Biggest reason is it's portable.

Now I mostly use my HP officejet pro 8600 plus. It scans wirelessly flatbed or via document feeder (up to 50 pages at once)

I have folders and sub folders (in evernote: notes and notebooks) for everything, including receipts

With evernote, I can pull up any scanned receipt (as long as I tagged it right or put it in the right folder) right on my phone.
 
I will not be using software to do anything to the receipts, all I want to do is scan the receipts to save an image of them so if I am ever audited, I have an image of the receipts whether they faded or not. I can put receipts into piles of the same type of receipt category and even by month if needed when I scan them, I just want a copy of them as soon as I can.

I will not be using the scanners or their software to do anything but make an image of the receipts so I have a backup of the receipts in case they fade, get lost or destroyed.

I am not ready to do what you are doing with the receipts yet, maybe next year or later on, way too many irons in the fire to be messing around with software and other stuff when I have other things that are higher priority right now.

I am looking at scanning hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of receipts (many, many file storage boxes full of receipts) so I am worried that if I get one of those scanners that feed the small receipts through them like the Neat Receipts type scanner, they might wear out so I might have to buy the extended warrranty to be safe.

CL, have you scanned multiple hundreds or thousands of receipts with the Cannon P215 and it is still working ok or was it used once in a while? There really is a lot of receipts that need to be scanned and when I am done, I might have to help my brother with his many boxes of receipts for his business.

Again, this is just to make an image (picture, pdf or whatever type of document with the receipt on it) so it will be saved forever, not worried right now about manipulating the receipts into spreadsheets or anything else right now, maybe next year or later on, I just want to start this project and get it done.

Thanks for any help.
 
Neat looks good but wonder how good it holds up
 
CL Scott said:
Scanning is the smartest thing you can do with all your receipts, especially since receipts fade before the protection or warranty period is over. I found this out the hard way when my iPod classic went on the fritz 33 months in to the 36 month extended warranty I purchased at best (best=most expensive) buy. When I looked into my meticulous filing system I found an un-readable receipt. It took almost 3 hours of stubborn arguing and convincing for BB to find my purchase - as a consolation they switched it out right there without me having to wait for them to ship it to apple for repair.

That being said, I think you're jumping the gun looking for a scanner first! The question before scanner selection should be: "How am I going to manage the scans/info" after it is scanned!"

One of the problems I had with neat desk is that it only pulled the information recognized by neat desk. Bar codes, cashier codes, transaction #'s or codes, etc vary from retailer to retailer. So if I ever had to return something it took for ever finding the transaction at the store - if it was found at all.

I use Evernote to me increase my productivity, and file/document management. It's cloud based, so I can access it from my phone, tablet or laptop, or and web-abled device. It continuously syncs, so wherever I add or edit, I only have to do it once. If you want a how to pdf I have 2. Send me an email and I'll reply with them attached!

To finally answer your question,

Both fuji and canon have great evernote friendly scanners

I started with (and still use) the Canon p215. Biggest reason is it's portable.

Now I mostly use my HP officejet pro 8600 plus. It scans wirelessly flatbed or via document feeder (up to 50 pages at once)

I have folders and sub folders (in evernote: notes and notebooks) for everything, including receipts

With evernote, I can pull up any scanned receipt (as long as I tagged it right or put it in the right folder) right on my phone.
Click to expand...

Email it to me CL please
 
Andy, is that for IPHONE or the Droid phones?
 
Tried both the turbo and Evernote and looks like they save them to the photo library. Not sure I want some of the receipts and documents "out there" like that.
 
Christopher said:
I will not be using software to do anything to the receipts, all I want to do is scan the receipts to save an image of them so if I am ever audited, I have an image of the receipts whether they faded or not. I can put receipts into piles of the same type of receipt category and even by month if needed when I scan them, I just want a copy of them as soon as I can.

I will not be using the scanners or their software to do anything but make an image of the receipts so I have a backup of the receipts in case they fade, get lost or destroyed.

I am not ready to do what you are doing with the receipts yet, maybe next year or later on, way too many irons in the fire to be messing around with software and other stuff when I have other things that are higher priority right now.

I am looking at scanning hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of receipts (many, many file storage boxes full of receipts) so I am worried that if I get one of those scanners that feed the small receipts through them like the Neat Receipts type scanner, they might wear out so I might have to buy the extended warrranty to be safe.

CL, have you scanned multiple hundreds or thousands of receipts with the Cannon P215 and it is still working ok or was it used once in a while? There really is a lot of receipts that need to be scanned and when I am done, I might have to help my brother with his many boxes of receipts for his business.

Again, this is just to make an image (picture, pdf or whatever type of document with the receipt on it) so it will be saved forever, not worried right now about manipulating the receipts into spreadsheets or anything else right now, maybe next year or later on, I just want to start this project and get it done.

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

In your case I would use the canon. It comes with a built in card scanner. Scan 20 receipts at a time. I haven't had any problems at all. For comfort, buy from a store with a good return policy.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...B007_imageFormula_P_215_Document_Scanner.html

Doug Rucker said:
Email it to me CL please
Click to expand...

Sent

Doug Rucker said:
Tried both the turbo and Evernote and looks like they save them to the photo library. Not sure I want some of the receipts and documents "out there" like that.
Click to expand...

If it's on a computer connected to the internet... It's "out there" all ready!
 
Myself I really like the Neat scanners. If you pay attention when you are scanning you will have to correct some minor things such as it will pick up 0 as 8 on some and 2 as 7. But after you make the minor correction it will keep the date in order, copies the receipt, you can run reports by vendor, month, and several different ways. It is also great for keeping business cards, just be sure to scan them in color or they could be unreadable. Just don't let the receipts sit on the dash board of your truck or they will turn black then it is hard for the scanner to read. One of my granddaughters comes over on the weekend and does the scanning for me.
 
pdmcali said:
Myself I really like the Neat scanners. If you pay attention when you are scanning you will have to correct some minor things such as it will pick up 0 as 8 on some and 2 as 7. But after you make the minor correction it will keep the date in order, copies the receipt, you can run reports by vendor, month, and several different ways. It is also great for keeping business cards, just be sure to scan them in color or they could be unreadable. Just don't let the receipts sit on the dash board of your truck or they will turn black then it is hard for the scanner to read. One of my granddaughters comes over on the weekend and does the scanning for me.
Click to expand...

Love neat I have like 4 hardly use them because we just changed the way we do things. If you have a bunch of paper they are great
 
Ron Musgraves said:
Love neat I have like 4 hardly use them because we just changed the way we do things. If you have a bunch of paper they are great
Click to expand...

Do you want to sell one of them Ron?
 
CL Scott said:
Are you willing to take 1,000's of phone pics?
Click to expand...

I would probably put many receipts onto a table and take pics or like the scanner, lay out as many will fit then scan so it will go faster.

Again, this is just a backup in case the receipts fade, get lost or destroyed so I have something for my records.
 
I thought about scanning receipts before. Even tried it for a while. But after two full audits I think it's more beneficial to just print out all your records and provide paper receipts.

The auditor usually doesn't care about what your books say and they don't care too much about receipts until they've gone through your bank statements first.

Any receipts that show up in your bank statement are of little concern to them. They just mark them off and never look at the receipt.

They are going to start with your gross bank deposits, then go through the statements and add up what your expenses were, occasionally asking you what a line item is for.

I had piles of receipts that filled up a conference room sized table and they didn't even look at 1/5th of them. And they only looked at those at the end when there were some items on our bank statement that I couldn't account for. Then we had to dig into the receipts and match them up with the bank statement.

I spoke with 4 attorneys before our first audit and some of them wouldn't give me a cost. The one that did wanted $40k just to represent us after he asked how much money passed through the bank. So I just determined to deal with it myself and I'm glad I did.

I don't mind audits anymore. I just throw everything out on the table and tell them to have fun. The last one took two weeks of them sitting at a table from 9 to 4 and I got hit with a few hundred dollar fine for giving a part time employee a little more than $600 and writing it off without a w-2. I just gave him $40 here and $20 there and it added up to more than $600.

Otherwise we passed with flying colors.
 
Christopher said:
I would probably put many receipts onto a table and take pics or like the scanner, lay out as many will fit then scan so it will go faster.

Again, this is just a backup in case the receipts fade, get lost or destroyed so I have something for my records.
Click to expand...

you can always photo copy them. That's what I do on big purchases or items that I may have to return.
 
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