There was a discussion a while back about tracking business expenses and come curiosity about the Neat Desktop system.
I've owned one for a few years and tried it for a bit and then didn't use it. There were some issues with the Mac software. I used it as a standard scanner and it worked great. When I redid all the software on my iMac last week I noticed that the Neat software had been updated to version 4, so I decided to give it a try and it looks like I've gotten a decent workflow going. Since folks were interested I thought I'd lay it out.
The Neat software now includes a mobile app for iOS and Android as part of a cloud service and some other things. This is what is making it work for us. I can scan receipts as I get them, then add the business expense category that matches what K tracks in Quicken, which is where we keep all of our books. I can also scan receipts immediately with my phone. K and log into the web interface and see a report of receipts which she can then use to make sure that she has the correct categories assigned.
In the long run we'll be able to shred all of the receipts and just keep the digital copies, but I want to give it a month or two before we go that far.
Ooh.
Glad to hear it, ND. I put it on the back burner because of all the other tech expenses that came up, but since donors ended up covering all that, I may put this back on simmer. I think it would be really helpful to me both in the initial catchup and the long term workflow. Does it integrate with Expensify as well as Intuit, do you know?
In my workflow I'm not trying to do any direct integration. It's being used as a double check and document archive. K downloads all of the statements from the banks directly into Quicken and then will use the reports from Neat to reconcile those statements and make sure that things are assigned to correct categories.
There is an option to export data in quicken format, but we have not played with it yet.
Okay, gotcha. That's probably close to what my workflow would be. It would replace the part of the process where I manually enter the data into Quickbooks from the paper receipts. I would still download and reconcile the bank statements.
I'm getting ready to do my first major remote deposit to my local bank, the last step in the migration away from the Big Bank. So far so good.
I love being a liberal except this one day per year.
Signed,
Just got my tax bill
This is where there are people for hire, right? I'm thinking about having someone do some quick-and-dirty Photoshop stuff for me because I don't know how to and don't really want to learn it. What would it cost to send someone a bunch of photos of my back yard and have that person paste various shots of different kinds of building materials shopped as retaining walls in various locations? I'd take the photo with string or whatever outlining the retaining wall area, and could send either photos of the materials I'm interested in seeing or references. If they look like a middle schooler cut and pasted them with scissors and glue, that's totally fine. I knew that I couldn't visualize construction things and now that I have two retaining walls where it is now obvious one would have been fine if I'd only been able to visualize it first, I'd like to try photoshop first for the rest of the hardscaping.
Strix's friend 'shopped my graduation photos (50% fewer chins!) for about a buck a minute (30 minutes labor, 2 photos, the easy one 10 min, the trickier one 20). But I think that must have been the friend-of-a-friend rate. Everyone else I checked with was WAY pricier, seems like nobody would even boot up their computer for less than 150-200ish.
eta: But that was very professional work. Maybe someone around here might have better help for quick 'n' dirty. Ginger was kind enough to take a pass at my photos first, but my linebacker neck defeated her, so I had to go pro.
Today is just a day for things being a pain.
I get it, my business is not run of the mill, but still, it shouldn't be this hard to maintain my general liability insurance. It seems that every couple of years whoever is my current underwriter decides that they really don't understand what my company does and they decide to not renew the policy. Now keep in mind, that I always pay on time and have never had a single claim. I'm in the midst of that right now, my current coverage won't be renewed next month and my agent is working on new underwriting and I'm in the middle of answering a seemingly endless list of questions about the business. I know it has to be done, and I am all for having full insurance coverage, but I'm just so tired of this end of the business. I have two art degrees and not an MBA for a reason!
Okay, done now.
