After reading many of the reviews I was afraid this product would not do what I expected it to do, which was scan in documents and read the pertinent information I use for my taxes. The review left me feeling that there was only a 50% chance that I would like it or that it would even function. I am happy to report that it does that and more.I first want to state that I have a photo quality scanner so what caught my attention was the actual system the Neatdesk used for scanning, reading and organizing data. I am self employed and have many receipts that I have to organize so I can give to my accountant. In the past I would take all of my receipts for the year and painstakingly type in all the information to excel and organize it by expense type, date, store, what was bought, the total and mileage associated with each receipt. On average this is about 400 documents and took most of a weekend. All this data would then be sorted and totaled for each expense type and then the whole document was given to my accountant so he could do my taxes.I was able to install the software with no problems. I received the version 5 software with my package. The software did search and find updated software Version 5 (SP3) and downloaded it then installed that version. I installed onto a 1 ½ year old dual core computer running XP Professional.Some of the older posts stated that there needed to be a support for longer documents waiting to be scanned and that there was either no tray to catch the scanned documents or that it was not attached. The designers must have been paying attention because my scanner has an integrated extendable support built into the design and an equally adequate attached tray to catch the scanned documents.The documentation that was supplied was very basic and did not explain all the functions of the software. That being said I was able to figure out how to create files and sub files and named them as I would for my tax expenses with no problem. It took a little playing with the program to figure out how to arrange the data the way I wanted it to appear on the data entry screen and then again once I had the documents scanned in so I could do a report. I was a little dismayed that I after I finished scanning all 414 of my receipts and documents that I was unable to sort by the files I had created. You can only sort by document type, date, store, cost and others that are already in the system. I was able to deal with this by using the names of my files in the document type field. Once I did this sorting was great. You can also add data without receipts manually so all my expenses could be kept in a neatly organized fashion.The scanner was extremely fast. It could take a stack of different sized documents and scan with no problem 99% of the time. Plus it could scan both sides at the same time and keep multiple pages together if you specified this in the program before hand which was easy to change. There was an occassional jam but not too bad. It took a little while for the software to read and collect all the data maybe 30 seconds each. It uses a cue format so all the documents sit there while the OCR program is working. I was very impressed with how accurate the software was in recognizing the data on the receipts and documents. It was able to accurately pull the date, store name and total about 90% of the time with no errors. I scanned in a stack of receipts then made sure the scan was readable and the data was pulled correctly. On those receipts where the program was unable to recognize the store name, total or date I found that after I corrected the data the next time I had a receipt from that store the program was able to recognize these differences and collect the correct data. You might be able to find another scanner that scans but there is nothing else that can read the receipts and collect the data like this program can.When it came time to make a report I first tried to export to Excel. That worked however I was not able to export the comment fields. I made a report in the Neatdesk program and was able to manipulate it so I could sort by the document type (my file names) and then by the dates so that my data was all nicely organized the way I wanted it. You are given the option if you want a cover page which gives the totals of all the receipt types, the document information including page numbers, the image of the receipts and an image caption. I played with each of these and found I could get just the data done the way I wanted it. I could then save it in any format I wanted, one of those being Excel. This time the comments field was exported to excel. Since there was no area where I could enter mileage into the neat program, I created another column in Excel for mileage.When I printed the reports with the image and image captions I was very impressed. Each of the data entry lines are numbered in the order they were sorted. When the receipts printed they had a caption that included the corresponding number do the data entry line which makes it very easy to find the receipt again. Very impressive! No other program I'm aware of can do this!All in all I give this about 4.5 stars. The deduction is for the lack of documentation explaining how to organize the data and set up the fields. By the way what normally took me two full days to do only took one. Now I just have to do this monthly rather than at the end of the year and tax time would be so much easier.Just had this delivered yesterday and already I'm attached!! I scanned a big box of documents and receipts and was very impressed with how quickly I got through the huge stack. The software is slow - it takes quite awhile for it to process each scanned document and go through it's reconigition processing. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it does recognize traditional receipts. For the most part it was accurate at pulling the date and the amount. It's a little frustrating that larger receipts (full paper size or anything that isn't long and skinny) were not as readily recognized, and were often mistaken for documents (rather than receipts). This is a hassle because the software treats documents different from receipts, only pulling the most basic information. You can change the item type to receipt, but then the scanned item must go through the recognition process again, essentially doubling the processing time for each item. I strongly recommend, if you have a big stack of items, separating the receipts from the documents and in the settings changing it from "auto detect item type" to "receipt". That way the receipts will be processed as receipts and you won't have the trouble of re-classifying them after the fact. You can always change the setting back to auto when you're done. Changing one or two along the way would not be a hassle, but right now I have 100 receipts to review and more than half of them were mis-classified as documents. (honestly, it might be faster for me to delete them and rescan, but who wants to do that?!?)I plan to use this for our small business, as well as our personal use. I can organize receipts by customer, as well as keep track of credit card statements, tax information and other paper driven activities that clutter my desk. For a small business that does a lot of work with outside vendors, this machine is a must!! My husband is a contractor and is constantly bringing in receipts for materials. He has shoeboxes full of receipts. I suspect that this nifty little machine will pay for itself quickly, as I have no doubt that a lot of those customer receipts have beenn lost in the past and never got properly billed. Once we are organized, he can pull all the scanned receipts (that I have organized by customer) and be sure to not miss any.It's pricey, but so far worth every penny. If the software were optimized better so that the processing time was sped up, I would definitely give this 5 stars.UPDATED 1/18/12: After using this for a couple of months, I'm finding that the larger the database gets, the slower everything runs within the software. The scanner itself is fast, but you cannot load it up with new pages or it will crash. I've found it faster for me in the long run to scan things more slowly and let the software recognize them as I go. It takes more time, but it reduces the possibility of it crashing (e.g. I get a "not responding" message from windows and have to close it). Also, it's not great at multi-tasking. If you're scanning a lot, let it scan and go back when it's finished to organize/label/etc. On a good not, I have found that even if it crashed while there are documents in the queue, those documents are still there when you reopen the software, and the software continues working on them in the queue (in other words, no need to rescan).I wish that some time and effort would be spent on the part of the software development team to optimize the software and make document recognition and moving around within the application more optimal. Even if the doc recognition can't be faster (I understand that OCR is complicated) it's really frustrating having to wait for the queue to empty before you can move around within the software or view/update items already scanned in.One other complaint - while the backup/restore functionality is very easy to use and an very important feature, it takes FOREVER to backup or restore the database. At least 15 minutes to back up. When I'm scanning important documents I want to be able to back up periodically, but I have to wait until I'm finished working in the software, or plan to go have lunch while it's backing up. Some efficiencies there as well would be a welcome improvement.