I remember seeing something similar back when I had a 6100 Performa, but nothing for OS X? Also if anyone can tell me a mac-compatible scanner like the paperport at a reasonable price it would help tremendously.
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Is there a Mac App like Neat Receipts?
- Thread starter Punkwaffle
- Start date
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Also check out the program called 'Receipt Wallet' it allows you to organize and keep track of receipts. Can scan them using any scanner.
http://www.receiptwallet.com/
http://www.receiptwallet.com/
My Electronic File Cabinet Research, so far.
Fujitsu ScanSnap 510M
I get the impression this is a very good scanner. Both Yep and ReceiptWallet documentation mention it specifically.
Fast, scans both sides of paper at once, does OCR w/ bundled software to make the resulting PDFs searchable. Small footprint.
Not cheap. MSRP over $600. I've seen referbished as cheap as $295.
Good video on youtube. You can see scanSnap 510, scanSnap 300M, and neatReceipts for mac running side by side.
ReceiptWallet
Software (only, not bundled with a scanner) to put Scanned/PDFed receipts into a database. The software smartly recognizes receipt data - date, amount; but it can keep any old PDF.
Puts stuff in a database. As someone earlier pointed out, I guess it's not searchable at the OS level.
NeatReceipts for Mac
Scanner/software bundle. Software does the same thing as ReceiptWallet. I couldn't say which is better software, they both seem to be highly rated. However I kinda get the impression that NeatReceipts might be a little smarter. On the youtube video it looks like the software recognized the stores logo-like name; and in my using ReceiptWallet demo for a few scans, the store name was not recognized; but the jury is still out on that one.
v2.0 of software coming out early 2009 to make feature set more complete like pc version.
Scanner is good looking, compact. Price in the neighborhood of $160 - $190. The web site mentions refurbished units for $99.
P.S. neatreceipts DOES ocr your non-receipt PDFs. I read several reviews that say it doesn't. That is wrong. neatReceipts does OCR.
Yep
Very cool. "iPhoto for PDFs".
Automagically searches your entire hard drive for PDFs and gathers them up into a iPhoto-like interface. Arrange them in collections, add tags.
Yep recognizes only PDF formatted documents. Not MS Word, not Pages, not iTunes, not text, just PDF. This is great for archiving documents because of the universal acceptance of PDFs. Since the Macintosh can print any document as a PDF (it "prints" to your hard disk) this is not a limitation at all.
The PDFs don't have to be all on one hard drive.
These guys mention the scanSnap specifically as working well with their software.
Yep DOES NOT create a database of PDF files, which neatreceipts and receiptwallet do. With Yep, your PDFs stay right where you put them on your hard drive. This makes all your tagging searchable from the OS. In fact Yep uses Spotlight. I guess that's how it found all my PDFs in about 2 seconds, literally.
ScanHelper
A free utility that I downloaded from the receiptWallet web sight.
The way the scanner's software works, apparently, is that you tell it what application you want to scan to: Yep, receiptWallet, Adobe, etc. Well you tell it to scan to ScanHelper, and scan helper has a list (that you create) of all your apps that you can scan too, i.e. can handle a PDF document I guess.
Conclusions
I want to go as paperless as possible. That means lots and lots of scanning through all my file cabinets. I also want to capture receipt data for taxes and family budget tracking.
I think I'm going to go with a ScanSnap scanner. As the video shows Scansnap handles volume better, and everything I've read so far says it a good product and works well with macintosh.
I'll use Yep to catalog all non-receipt documents. I've been using the demo for a couple of days and I just like it. This looks like it will do the job. If there's better out there, well, Yep is more than good enough.
I'll use receiptWallet because I can buy it w/out a scanner. I did not see anywhere on the neatReceipts web site where they sell their software separately.
Fujitsu ScanSnap 510M
I get the impression this is a very good scanner. Both Yep and ReceiptWallet documentation mention it specifically.
Fast, scans both sides of paper at once, does OCR w/ bundled software to make the resulting PDFs searchable. Small footprint.
Not cheap. MSRP over $600. I've seen referbished as cheap as $295.
Good video on youtube. You can see scanSnap 510, scanSnap 300M, and neatReceipts for mac running side by side.
ReceiptWallet
Software (only, not bundled with a scanner) to put Scanned/PDFed receipts into a database. The software smartly recognizes receipt data - date, amount; but it can keep any old PDF.
Puts stuff in a database. As someone earlier pointed out, I guess it's not searchable at the OS level.
NeatReceipts for Mac
Scanner/software bundle. Software does the same thing as ReceiptWallet. I couldn't say which is better software, they both seem to be highly rated. However I kinda get the impression that NeatReceipts might be a little smarter. On the youtube video it looks like the software recognized the stores logo-like name; and in my using ReceiptWallet demo for a few scans, the store name was not recognized; but the jury is still out on that one.
v2.0 of software coming out early 2009 to make feature set more complete like pc version.
Scanner is good looking, compact. Price in the neighborhood of $160 - $190. The web site mentions refurbished units for $99.
P.S. neatreceipts DOES ocr your non-receipt PDFs. I read several reviews that say it doesn't. That is wrong. neatReceipts does OCR.
Yep
Very cool. "iPhoto for PDFs".
Automagically searches your entire hard drive for PDFs and gathers them up into a iPhoto-like interface. Arrange them in collections, add tags.
Yep recognizes only PDF formatted documents. Not MS Word, not Pages, not iTunes, not text, just PDF. This is great for archiving documents because of the universal acceptance of PDFs. Since the Macintosh can print any document as a PDF (it "prints" to your hard disk) this is not a limitation at all.
The PDFs don't have to be all on one hard drive.
These guys mention the scanSnap specifically as working well with their software.
Yep DOES NOT create a database of PDF files, which neatreceipts and receiptwallet do. With Yep, your PDFs stay right where you put them on your hard drive. This makes all your tagging searchable from the OS. In fact Yep uses Spotlight. I guess that's how it found all my PDFs in about 2 seconds, literally.
ScanHelper
A free utility that I downloaded from the receiptWallet web sight.
The way the scanner's software works, apparently, is that you tell it what application you want to scan to: Yep, receiptWallet, Adobe, etc. Well you tell it to scan to ScanHelper, and scan helper has a list (that you create) of all your apps that you can scan too, i.e. can handle a PDF document I guess.
Conclusions
I want to go as paperless as possible. That means lots and lots of scanning through all my file cabinets. I also want to capture receipt data for taxes and family budget tracking.
I think I'm going to go with a ScanSnap scanner. As the video shows Scansnap handles volume better, and everything I've read so far says it a good product and works well with macintosh.
I'll use Yep to catalog all non-receipt documents. I've been using the demo for a couple of days and I just like it. This looks like it will do the job. If there's better out there, well, Yep is more than good enough.
I'll use receiptWallet because I can buy it w/out a scanner. I did not see anywhere on the neatReceipts web site where they sell their software separately.
Nice information, but are you aware that you seem to be answering a lot of stagnant threads that are 6+ months old?
Out of curiosity, although a bit fearful of getting a "**************************" response: how can a tiny app developer communicate directly with any scanner? I know little about scanners under the hood and am assuming there must be a standard... Do scanner manufacturers always code into their drivers a standard method to communicate with their h/w?
Edit: nevermind. I have heard of TWAIN before and looked into it some more, apparently that is the or one of the standards.
Edit: nevermind. I have heard of TWAIN before and looked into it some more, apparently that is the or one of the standards.
Similar Comparison from Different Source
@RadarBob 12/20/08:
Thank you for the comparison. Helpful.
I found Terry White's Tech Blog 10/27/08 helpful also:
http://terrywhite.com/techblog/?p=1121
@RadarBob 12/20/08:
Thank you for the comparison. Helpful.
I found Terry White's Tech Blog 10/27/08 helpful also:
http://terrywhite.com/techblog/?p=1121