Receipt Scanner

Pghpooh

Senior member
Jan 9, 2000
791
1
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HI
I am looking for a document scanner. I want to find one that will help me organice receipts and keep track of the items on the receipts. I don?t have a scanner now. I did find this one at Newegg.

Neatreceipts

Are there other scanners I can buy??? And, if I bought a combination printer/scanner/copier is there software that I can buy that would sort the items on the scanned receipts and other documents?
Thanks
Pghpooh
 

jackschmittusa

Diamond Member
Apr 16, 2003
5,972
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The scanner in your link doesn't seem to be big enough to scan your 8½x11 receipt from Newegg.

Scanners create picture files (jpeg,bmp, etc.). The only way to sort them as they are is by name. Picture management apps will likely allow you to add keywords and allow you to search for them too.

There is also OCR (optical character recognition) software that will examine a scan and try to find letters and numbers in it, and convert it to a text document. This could be a problem with receipts since on some the printing might be too light to work well; stores may use custom fonts that might confound the app, etc..

My wife uses a flatbed scanner for receipts that involve a rebate (which works well), but she only files them without ever intending to sort them.
 

Leros

Lifer
Jul 11, 2004
21,867
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Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
The scanner in your link doesn't seem to be big enough to scan your 8½x11 receipt from Newegg.

Its 10.6" wide, I'm guessing the scanner portion is wide enough for an 8.5" wide piece of paper to slide through.
 

Zepper

Elite Member
May 1, 2001
18,998
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Well, any scanner is good enough for receipts, just OCR them into text files, keep them in one folder on your hard disk (e.g. Receipts-Invoices), and you can easily search them for specific items with any file search tool. Epson has a sale going in their Clearance dept (an extra 10% off and usually free shipping too) and always good scanner deals on eBay or perhaps in the For Sale/Trade section here. Least expensive on Epson is the refurbed V-100 scanner for $62. shipped and comes with OCR software.

I'd suggest downloading the free version of PowerDesk 6 (a Windows Explorer replacement w/ lots more functionality) from www.v-com.com as it has one of the best search tools available. However, if you already have Google toolbar or similar installed, that will work fine too.

.bh.
 

Kindjal

Senior member
Mar 30, 2001
750
1
81
I considered Neatreceipts too but I thought it was too expensive. Instead, I use a regular Canon scanner with Quicken to scan all my receipts. If you have to scan receipts on the road, then perhaps its a good buy.