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receipts

Receipts are the new locations

I recently heard two different pitches from entrepreneurs who think that the business of focusing on physical restaurant or retail check-ins--in other words, Foursquare--is old fashioned and played out. At least as a business. They're pitching start-ups that check in your transactions, using the receipts you get when you pay.

The idea is not to get you to share your financial history with the world, as Blippy did at first. That was nuts. Instead, DailyGobble and RewardLoop are loyalty programs, in which you use your receipt as a virtual box top, a proof of purchase that gets you some consideration from the business you just patronized.

What makes these two services modern and smart is the way they're designed to take the hassle and friction out of making your claims. In the case of DailyGobble, the whole check-in process is stealth, which may appeal to people who don't want to appear to their dining companions to be coupon surfers. First, you find a restaurant deal you like on the DailyGobble site or mobile app. Then you go to that restaurant and have your lovely meal. Afterward, you snap a picture of the receipt from your phone and upload it using the app. Then you get a cash payback in your PayPal account.

What you have to do when you arrive and leave the restaurant: Nothing. DailyGobble execs pitch the fact that you don't have to present "embarrassing" coupons and potentially suffer "inferior service" from waitstaff who know you're dining below normal rates. I'm not sure that's a big problem, but I do like the simplicity of the DailyGobble deal flow.

Meanwhile, the restaurant gets your business, plus some details on who you are and what you ate. DailyGobble itself gets to build a dossier on your preferences and collect a per-seating fee from the restaurants. The business is like OpenTable's, but without that service's traditional recurring fee for its restaurant customers (a newer program, OpenTable Connect, is pay-as-you-go). It's a smart update on the aggregator/loyalty program model.

DailyGobble was part of the 500 Startups demo day in Mountain View last week. … Read more

Rental receipts and more

Any time you're dealing with amounts of money that reach into the hundreds--or thousands - of dollars, receipts are a good idea for everyone involved. Receipt Templates for Excel gives users an easy way to create receipts for rental payments and other types of cash transactions. It's a simple template, but it can give your receipts a neat, professional appearance.

The download comes with two templates, one for cash transactions and one for rental transactions. The templates come with three receipts to a page, making it easy to create multiple receipts if necessary and then cut them out … Read more

Get a NeatDesk document scanner for $269.99

Still think the paperless office is a pipe dream? Half the battle is scanning all your documents, which is a pretty big hassle with typical flatbed (and even sheet-fed) scanners.

That's what makes the NeatDesk such a cool tool: it quickly batch-scans documents, receipts, and business cards, then organizes them into digital filing cabinets. There's no other product quite like it.

Alas, such efficiency doesn't come cheap. The NeatDesk retails for $399.95, and it's rare to find it selling for much less. Today only, however, Woot has a refurbished NeatDesk desktop scanner for $269.99, … Read more

Quick copies for business travelers

Genius Scan+ is an excellent application for when you're away on business and need to keep track of expenses, letting you quickly use your iPhone camera to scan receipts for your records. It also comes in handy for making quick copies of documents, shopping lists, or recipes, for example, but really any time you need a quick copy, Genius Scan+ does the job well.

Upon launch, you have the option to use a picture in your iPhone library or to create a new one using the iPhone camera. Once you have your scan, you can use Genius Scan+ to … Read more

Cybercrooks create fake Amazon receipts

The bad guys have created yet another online scam, this one involving fake Amazon receipts.

Targeting Amazon and its retail partners, cybercriminals are using a phony Amazon receipt generator to print bogus receipts, and then are asking for refunds from the retailer, claiming that the items they ordered were never received.

Reportedly discovered by security vendor GFI Software, this scam comes at an especially bad time, as online retailers are dealing with the onslaught of the holiday season.

"The free program available online allows scammers to create an HTML 'receipt' for phantom Amazon.com purchases," Christopher Boyd, senior … Read more

Quick receipt creator

FSI's eReceipt provides all the tools you need to make and track a sales receipt. Its simplicity is ideal for small businesses or anyone who needs to give a proof-of-purchase on the fly.

We needed to take a quick tour of the program's tutorial Help file to fully understand our options, but we understood the interface fairly quickly. We were able to write up a receipt in a matter of minutes by filling in the expected information, such as product, price, and purchaser. This all combined to form a bland-but-serviceable sales receipt to print. The program did everything … Read more

Shoeboxed gets smarter e-receipt scanning

Shoeboxed announced this week that it has improved the way it handles digital receipts sent to its online filing system. The company, which scans and hosts paper receipts, business cards and full-size documents, can now pick out specific information from forwarded e-mails containing purchase information, and put it into one of the system's 15 purchase classifications.

Like users would do with purchases on travel services like TripIt and Worldmate, simply sending the confirmation e-mail to your Shoeboxed address means that it gets filed along with the rest of your expenses. The goal is to make it easier for customers … Read more

Shoeboxed now tags scanned receipts for you

Receipt-scanning service Shoeboxed just launched a new feature that automatically files scanned receipts into one of 15 expense categories. These include groceries, gas, and travel expenses, which you can view simply by clicking on them. Users can also create their own expense categories, although there's currently no way to have the service auto-tag expenses by keyword.

In addition to new receipts, users will find a good number of their old receipts categorized. Dan Englander, Shoeboxed's VP of Communications says some may not get the tagging treatment if the system can't find a match, but that a "… Read more

Zebra Technologies introduces G-series thermal printers

Zebra Technologies just announced their new "G-series" line of thermal printers. These little guys fall under the four-inch desktop printer category and, while not specifically for the consumer market, will still appeal to industries that deal with printing labels, receipts, price marking tags, shipping and return labels, boarding passes, ID wristbands and tags, and admission tickets.

The new offerings from Zebra include the GX420t,GX420d, GX430t, GK420t, and the GK420d. Across the board, these printers feature a wide range of convenient, easy to operate printing solutions in the work or home office. Notable specifications include:

Wireless: 802.11g … Read more