Ever since our fire in 2003, I’ve been obsessed with scanning everything. I’ve started scanning samples of my kids school work, pictures people give me, any bills or statements that can’t be retrieved online (although that is significantly less than a couple of years ago) and receipts. Yes, receipts.

I think before the fire you would’ve thought this was insane (and maybe some of you still do) but as soon as I got fed up with paper (about 2006) I started scanning every receipt I got. For two years I’ve been scanning everything on my flatbed scanner, but this past year I got busy and I have an entire years worth of receipts piled up on my desk just begging to be scanned. I dreaded the thought.

It was then that I decided to break down and buy a receipt scanning system from Neat Co. It’s a tiny little scanner (about 10.5x1.5x1.25) that is powered solely by a USB cable (a selling point on it’s own if you want to scan on the road). It comes with it’s own custom software called NeatReceipts. It “reads” the receipt and enters the information in a proprietary database that allows you to organize your receipts very nicely. The OCR software isn’t 100% perfect, but it’s close enough. I sat down, installed it and did almost ½ of my pile in just one evening.

By the way, the IRS has allowed the use of digital records (including scanned receipts) since 1997 and Rev. Proc. 97-22 (see page 9, column 2 of the linked document).

One thing that is starting to make me a little upset is the sales tax category. It automatically reads how much sales tax is on each receipt and puts the amount in it’s own category. I’m not upset at the software, but the amount of money I’m spending on sales tax (and sales tax on gas is not called out on the receipt)!!! It’s disturbing, but it might also be helpful when you go to take the sales tax deduction on your taxes.

Something like this might also be very helpful when tracking things like a large insurance claim. For example, if you’re tracking all of your replacement items to get the depreciation holdback, this software allows for you to organize your receipts, total them and print them back out. It even squeezes more than one receipt per page if the receipts are small enough to do so. If you can print to PDF from your computer you can print and email them to your adjuster or tax preparer.