receipts

This is an update of a deal I wrote about many moons ago. Like, 19 moons.

If you're still chasing that pipe dream known as the paperless office, you know that half the battle is digitizing all your paper documents. It can be a major hassle, especially if you're working with a flatbed scanner (i.e., one that lacks an auto document feeder).

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. Though it's been around for years, there's no … Read more

Keeping track of everything you buy, especially if you run a business or get reimbursed for costs, can be really tedious. There are usually receipts in different sizes for each item purchased, and trying to remember to put them in a certain place doesn't always happen. Additionally, since many receipts are printed on thermal paper, their information may fade away before the next time you evaluate spending or when doing your taxes. So why not try a different approach to receipt and record keeping?

Lemon is a useful app for Android that will allow you to take snapshots of … Read more

Wondering what Uncle Sam does with your hard-earned tax dollars? The White House's Taxpayer Receipt page has been updated for 2011 to help answer that question.

To get started you'll need to enter the social security tax, medicare tax, and income tax that you paid for 2011. If that information isn't handy, you can estimate by choosing from a range of households and incomes, such as single with no children, married with one child, or married with two children.

In return, the site displays how much you doled out in tax dollars to the Fed for last … Read more

Shopping online has many benefits. You almost never have to worry about how many of an item a specific store has in stock, how bad traffic is at certain times, or having to deal with other shoppers who are angry for whatever reason. It also has its downsides. If you purchase a lot of items online, it can be easy to lose track of what you've purchased, when they're supposed to arrive, or how much they cost. Does this sound like a problem you've encountered before, or are currently encountering? Try out Slice for Android if it … Read more

Who uses those receipts for e-mails read? Most people either block sending receipts altogether or ask to be notified before sending a read receipt (a default setting in Microsoft Outlook and other mail clients). So read receipts either don't work at all, or they require acceptance by the recipient--no sure thing.

That doesn't mean that we aren't curious about when the messages we send are opened, and when the links they include are followed. For most organizations, this information can be a valuable asset. The Zendio add-on for Microsoft Outlook tracks the messages you select and records … Read more

I wrote recently that receipts are the the new check-ins. And now companies are emerging that are trying to roll up the receipt collection process for consumers. One smart new business doing this: Itemize. It scans your e-mail receipts to build a profile of your favorite brands, and then it sends you deals so you can get the stuff you like at a discount.

"We are receipt geeks," CEO Jim Thomas told me. He previously worked on analytics for MasterCard, which you'd think would have the mother lode of data when it comes to analyzing what people like. But think again: credit card companies know where you shop, but not what you buy. "I wanted to build a Pandora for shopping," Thomas said.

There are two challenges facing Itemize. First, it needs a diet of receipts to work. Pretty much everything you buy online will generate an e-mail receipt, which works to its favor, but things you buy in physical retail stores generally don't--except for, say, the stuff you get at the Apple store. Thomas believes more retailers will be following Apple's lead, though.

Itemize will get a physical-receipt-scanning app eventually. The iPhone app for that is being built. Thomas does think that physical receipts will eventually vanish, but not soon enough.

The other problem: So you have this mailbox full of e-mail receipts. How do you get them to Itemize? The service gets your receipts by scanning your live inbox. You give it access to your mail (it works on Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, and several other mail providers) and it watches for receipts. Thomas says the service does not keep your e-mail nor read anything that it doesn't at first determine is a receipt, but there will be consumers, like me, who don't like the idea of giving yet another third party access to their communication.… Read more

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

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

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