New Toy

I have been pining over a product called NeatReceipts for a while now, but shied away from the $200 price tag.  It is a portable scanner that comes with organizational software that makes the documents you scan searchable.  The marketing is towards keeping tabs on receipts and the like (obviously), but I had other dreams in mind.

I have always wanted to move towards a paperless office.  No bills, no files, no articles piling up.  My flatbed scanner did not make this task easy.  First of all it is a clunky process of: 1) line up the document 2) overview 3) drag an outline around what you want scanned 4) choose type of file you want it saved as and name it 5) Scan 6) Turn over and repeat steps 1 through 5.  Shoot me now:(  And my scanning software would not let me save multiple pages to a file, so if I scanned a magazine article it would save separately as ‘article 1’, ‘article 2’ and so on.  A.noy.ing.

Then I found a brand new NeatReceipts for Mac on ebay for half the retail price!  It arrived on Saturday and Bradley helped me set it up on Sunday.  (Not quite user friendly enough for someone with my limited computer knowledge to be able to set it up correctly on my own – but that is one of the many reasons DH is a keeper:)  I guess the only drawback I realized after getting it is that it does not simultaneously scan both sides.  But it is quick and easy to feed the paper through and flip it over for another run-through.  The software allows you to batch things together to make logically organized, cohesive files.  It is also easy to name each file and provide details at any point during or after the process.

I am VERY happy with this device so far.  I am currently working on scanning all the greeting cards I have received over the years.  It will be nice to be able to look back on the cards people chose for me/us and see their handwritten notes without actually having to store the physical cards.  Next on my agenda will be magazine articles.  After that, no piece of paper in my path is safe.