I used to watch with interest, the commercials of Neat, a scanning and digital filing solution. My interest turned to amazement when we actually installed one in our office. It is a perfect product for SMBs to transform expense receipts, business cards and all types of documents (legal, purchase orders, invoices, brochures and many other types) into an organized digital filing system.
For a small business, a paperless office is sometimes more a dream than a reality. Paper documents are being handled daily by these businesses, whether it is a healthcare provider, a CPA, a legal professional, a retailer or a manufacturing unit or another industry. These paper documents have a way of mysteriously vanishing when one requires them the most and that is because no matter how meticulously they are filed physically, paper documents are not searchable.
With the increase in mobility and work from anywhere, anytime culture, employees within SMBs have become more frequent travelers and telecommuters. Especially with traveling sales and customer support personnel there is a manifold increase in paper documents. Each traveling employee generates many different receipts which in most businesses have to be meticulously filed with accounting/finance departments. Neat, with its two different products, NeatDesk and NeatReceipts, helps a small business organize its paper clutter efficiently, effectively and seamlessly. Above all, there is no learning required.
Using Neat, small businesses can:
- Scan expense receipts – Neat product automatically parses, identifies the information and populates the items and amounts in the right fields. The expense reports can be emailed or exported into a reporting system
- Simplify tax preparation – scanned items and amounts from receipts can be assigned tax categories allowing for creation of pdf tax reports
- Develop a contact database – scan business cards and export to outlook or other contact management solutions
- Manage documents – invoices, purchase orders, legal signed paperwork and other documents can be easily scanned and filed into appropriate folders
- Search across documents – and when the time comes to look for a paper, Neat makes it really simple to search across documents
Information, after all, is critical for making informed, timely, relevant and strategic business decisions to drive growth and achieve overall business success. And Neat aids in that objective by screening and digitizing information for the small business professional. Neat calls it “information activation”.
NeatDesk sits quietly in a corner of an office desk, elegantly, ready to perform its task with one touch operation – scan or scan to pdf. It has three different feed-trays with do not allow for any confusion or paper mess - one for receipts, second for business cards and third for all other documents. The intelligence of the solution lies in Neat’s software which has been built to recognize type of document and content on the document. A rare feat indeed.
However, if this is not exciting enough, Neat is busy rolling out its NeatCloud and NeatMobile offerings. When available in Spring, the two offerings will allow small businesses to:
- Backup and sync their scanned documents securely to the cloud
- Access their documents from anywhere using any device
- Share files and folders with workgroups or departments
NeatDesk is priced at US$399.95 and NeatReceipts is priced at US$199.95 and believe me they are worth the money.
Neat is a neat product. Try it.
Anurag Agrawal
Techaisle