There’s a new gadget available that is helping freelance workers, people based in home offices, and small to medium business enterprises the World over. It’s called the NeatDesk Scanner from the Neat Company and promises to help you manage and scan receipts, digitally file important documents, and also report on expenses in order to help you file tax returns more easily.
Weighing just less than eight pounds it looks like something Apple might have designed with its sleek black and white curved finish. It’s not just about the looks though, it also has some awesome functionality designed to help even the most unorganised employee or home worker get some order back to their desk and documents.
It’s very simple to operate and this is how it handles receipts. Simply place them into the in-tray and press scan. The receipts get fed into the NeatDesk, which then reads the text and details off them. This gets reported into the pre-bundled NeatWorks software which will then place all the receipt details into date order into a ready-made database. All this data can be exported to financial accounting packages such as QuickBooks and TurboTax – in a format that will be accepted by the IRS for end of year tax reports and returns.
It will also allow you to add different tax bandings to all receipt expenses, meaning that you can keep track or your own or employee expenses with ease. If NeatDesk makes any errors when reading the text off the receipt then you can even make small and quick edits straight into the database on your PC or Mac.
Apart from receipts, the NeatDesk will also act as a full digital file management and document scanning machine. So for example if you have a paper-based filodex business card system you can scan all the business cards into NeatDesk and it will read off the full contact details and create a digital contact management system for you using the NeatWorks software. It will happily scan and read even the most dog-eared of business cards letting you de-clutter what was once an un-manageable desk space.
Full document management can also be handled very well. Let’s say you have a 20 page business contract that is double-sided – you can place that into the NeatDesk tray and watch as within minutes it will do a full duplex scan and convert the document to a fully searchable PDF file. This can also get archived and managed into the NeatWorks database of documents for later reference.
To summarise NeatDesk works very simply in three steps and stages:
- Scan in receipts, business cards, or multi-page documents all in one batch as it identifies and extracts the important information.
- Get back expense reports, digital contacts, tax records, and all important searchable PDF documents.
- Send to Excel, Quicken, TurboTax or other applications – or simply browse the software database for more information.
Visit the Technology Worlds’ website for a full and complete NeatDesk Scanner Review which goes into great depth and includes a full library of products shots.