Mac Users - How do you digitize receipts?

[Charles Brown]

I'm sick of all the ten thousand paper receipts floating all over my shop, desk, and house. Is there an elegant solution that can be used to scan them? Something that can handle 8 1/2" x 11" paper receipts received in the mail and the ten-mile long ticker tape style receipt I get from doing POS transactions at stores. What is the best solution?

I'm looking at getting a Quicken style of accounting software for my small business but want something that will allow me to not worry about the puppy eating a receipt.

The puppy is 3 months old, by the way. Super cute.

256785

[Darius Ferlas]

Not a Mac user, but I use one that is also Mac compatible (http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/office/products/hardware/scanners/high_speed_document_scanners/imageformula_dr_m140_document_scanner#Specificatio ns).
Fast, reliable, duplex scanning, documents up to about 10 feet long.

[Charlie Watson]

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. I have one for my PC and bought my daughter one for her MAC. The software is the best and you can scan full sheets, receipts etc. Just put them all in a stack and run them through, scans both sides in one pass. I scan all my important papers and receipts now, quick, easy and generally flawless. I tried some of the others like the one sold by Staples but printing one of the scanned documents was way to difficult. With the fujitsu, just click and print.

[Charles Brown]

Charlie, an associate of mine has one and loves it. Has your daughter made any comments on its use with the MAC OS? Sometimes hardware / software are poorly translated or poorly supported over here on the dark side.

[Charlie Watson]

No problems yet and she loves it. I got it for her as a Christmas present and she has been using it ever since. Her accountant said she knows several people that have them and everybody raved about them. My daughter has her own PR firm and she is scanning receipts and contracts every day and it's doing fine. I bought both on Amazon without incident.

[Greg R Bradley]

The ScanSnap series works well on PC or Mac. The ix500 was one of the MacWorld 2013 Best of Show Winners. It is about $500 with software. The Mac will cause you no issues with scanning but will when you start looking for Accounting Software.

Integrating Construction Software with imaging, our desktop scanner of choice is the Fujitsu FI-6130z at around $900. I have the older version of that myself.

Canon makes great scanners also but Fujitsu beats them in the personal to low-end Workgroup area. Our production scanner is a Canon 5080C that was $8,000 10 years ago and is still going strong.

[Paul McGaha]

I'm sick of all the ten thousand paper receipts floating all over my shop, desk, and house. Is there an elegant solution that can be used to scan them? Something that can handle 8 1/2" x 11" paper receipts received in the mail and the ten-mile long ticker tape style receipt I get from doing POS transactions at stores. What is the best solution?

I'm looking at getting a Quicken style of accounting software for my small business but want something that will allow me to not worry about the puppy eating a receipt.

The puppy is 3 months old, by the way. Super cute.

256785

Liking those doggies Charles.

PHM

[Charles Brown]

Follow-Up

I bought the ScanSnap ix500 and really enjoy the interface. It has made scanning things quick and painless. It hands the crinkled up receipts I have as well as I could have imagined! I need to be better at not stuffing receipts into my pocket when I get them in order to avoid wrinkling them beyond recognition.

For those with ScanSnaps, is it possible to have the scanned file automatically save without having to click OKAY? I would like to just continually feed the machine receipts / sheets and have it automatically save and review them after. Does anyone know if that is possible?

[Rudy Ress]

Have you looked into Neat Receipts? Good for numerous things including making expense reports and scanning and filing business cards.

[Charles Brown]

Rudy, I have but to be honest, for my expenses excel works just fine. I scan everything, input it into a ledger for the respective job / company / etc. and then have the files on google drive. I haven't had to make an official expense report, per se, but that system has worked for me. My CPA and I decided that quickbooks would really be overkill given the limited amount of transactions I do each year. I just needed a way to keep receipts that was tidy-er than stuffing them into a banker's box.

[Michael Dunn]

Have you looked into Neat Receipts? Good for numerous things including making expense reports and scanning and filing business cards.

Is that the thing on those infomercials? They have two versions... The $200 one and the $400 one. Overpriced I think.

[Rich Enders]

Charles,

Noted the comment about the limited accounting software for Mac. Fortunately there is a gem called MYOB. Inexpensive, intuitive, and simple.

It can also be a full on accounting system with payroll, and it has an integrated inventory system if required. We have 4 small businesses that have been running it since the 90's.

[Rudy Ress]

Michael,
Your are correct. I like the small portable one, as it will fit into the laptop computer case and I can scan ay document as i need it. Obviously does not work with a book, but for individual pages, cards, etc. ti works great. For me it is the convenience of not having to "write down or type" the information.

[Rich Enders]

In reading the review of the ScanSnap iX500 it says that for Windows users it includes software that allows .pdf's made from scans to become text searchable. Does anyone know if there is a way to do that for a Mac based system?

[Charles Brown]

Rich, it does make searchable PDF's on the mac platform. I've had the iX500 for a week now and am very impressed. Going through boxes of paper records and tossing them out after scanning. Its pretty awesome.

[Darius Ferlas]

ix500 includes ABBY FineReader Express (http://finereader.abbyy.com/finereader_for_mac/) which is an OCR software for MAC, so you're good to go though I have no idea about the software's performance.

[Rich Enders]

Charles,

Thanks for letting me know that the iX500 can scan and create searchable pdf files. Throwing the paper out is unnerving as is how and where to store the digital records. I started with Paper Port a long time ago, and now those files from the 90's are almost un-retrievablle. Hopefully the PDF format will remain in the forefront, but which "cloud" will be around in the future?

Darius,

Noted the ABBYY software inclusion. The sales info sounds good. Do you (or Charles) know if it operates "automatically", or if I will have to OCR each doc after the fact?