NeatReceipts: Business Cards and (Almost) Perfect Scans

It takes about 10 seconds for business cards to get scanned and the data optically recognized, then displayed in the NeatReceipts scanner's software. (Just tuned in? Read Buried in Business Cards -- And Rescued by NeatReceipts.

After each card is individually scanned, it's shown as an image in one panel, with the contact info in another two areas. I found it amazing how NeatReceipts could extract information on the card and get it into the correct field.

NeatReceipts pulls out the usual stuff -- name, address, e-mail, and Web site. If the business card labels the phone numbers, NeatReceipts sticks them in the right fields: phone, mobile, and fax. Anything without a field, say, "Universal Remotes," goes into the Other category. I haven't played with it, but you can add custom fields.

Business card image and contact info.

I can scan in black-and-white or color, and if the card has a back side (behave!), I can scan that, too. The data on the back of the card doesn't get assigned into info fields -- the whole back is just read in as an image. I'm also able to attach anything else I scan to the contact info record, maybe a document or a photo. That's handy.

NeatReceipts recommends I scan the card in horizontally. Yet even if I stuck it in vertically, the software rotated the scanned image on screen so it was readable.

One small problem: Even though I paid attention, when I scanned a card with material on both sides, I often scanned the back first. Unfortunately the scanned image can't be reassigned as front and re-processed.

Are You Really Accurate?
There were a few times NeatReceipts failed to do a perfect OCR. It was mostly because the business card paper was very shiny or the lettering was angled. There were other NeatReceipts goofs, but I don't think they're serious. For instance, "SSPR" was changed to "Sspr;" some names dragged along an underscore ("Sunar_"); and "TigerDirect" became "LigerDirect." It was no biggie, and fixing the typos was a heck of lot less work than manually entering all the data.

I scanned about 60 cards in less than 30 minutes, and that included time scanning the wrong side, false starts (when I didn't push the card into the scanner far enough), and correcting any mistakes. I imagine as I use NeatReceipts more often, my scanning skills will improve.

So far, I'm seeing why so many people feel the device is a worthwhile business tool, and why it may be worth the $200.

Tomorrow: Scanning receipts and tax reports.

Update: With SP3's release, I have to push the next part of this story to next week.

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