Portable Scanners Blaze a Paper Trail

April 13, 2010— -- In 1994, more than a decade before the makers of the Flip Video camcorder turned video capture on its head, a startup called Visioneer sought to do the same to the scanner market with a product called the PaperMax.

So narrow that it could sit between a keyboard and monitor, the PaperMax was designed to digitize all the random bits of paper that PCs were supposed to have eliminated, but instead have proliferated. Nowadays, scanning capabilities have been built into many multifunction printers.

Nonetheless, according to NPD's Retail Tracking Service, overall scanner sales increased 18 percent in 2009. And the PaperMax paved the way to a number of portable scanners available today.

The Neat Company's $200 NeatReceipts scanner can accommodate a wide array of scanning tasks, such as scanning business cards or translating documents directly to PDF via a dedicated button, but it is optimized for capturing receipts.

NeatWorks can recognize receipt totals, sending expense information to a range of software products such as Quicken, Excel and TurboTax. The software is well organized and easy to use, but sections of it can be slow to launch at first.

The NeatWorks software even includes IRS tax information in its receipt databases, making it an ideal organization aid for tax time. But parts of the software can be slow to load initially.

For those who have large volumes of receipts or other information to scan, The Neat Company also offers the $400 NeatDesk, a larger version of the scanner that includes fast scanning and separate loading trays for scanning up to 10 documents, receipts and business cards in one scanning session. The tray can be removed to accommodate 50 full-sized sheets.