eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Fast-growing Neat Company, which established its reputation with office and portable devices that scan documents and store them into PDFs and other file forms, has extended its business into the cloud.
In addition to storing business information, such as travel receipts, personal health records and others in a Neat device (go here for a detailed explanation of how this works), storage for all files for small business and individuals is now available in Neat’s own secure cloud for more access options.
NeatCloud and NeatMobile are the newest additions to the Philadelphia-based company’s Digital Filing System. With these services, Neat users are now able to scan, access and share documents, receipts and business cards in their Neat Digital Filing Systems from any connected device — mobile or otherwise.
Easier Way to Get Organized
“People need a better way to manage and organize the deluge of personal and business information they get. What’s more, we have all come to expect immediate access to information through our mobile devices,” said CEO Jim Foster.
Neat’s Digital Filing System consists of the Neat software platform, the company’s popular scanning solutions, NeatDesk and NeatReceipts, and NeatCloud and NeatMobile. With the addition of cloud and mobile services, the Neat Digital Filing System addresses paper, digital and mobile content in one system.
New and enhanced features of Neat’s Digital Filing System include:
NeatCloud: This is an online Digital Filing System designed to provide users with their own, personalized cloud-based information system. NeatCloud is one of the first cloud-based solutions to incorporate Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and parsing capabilities. NeatCloud can extract data from items in the Digital Filing System to create entirely new value for the user. By “activating” this data, users can search for and share important documents, manage eReceipts, create expense reports and digital contact lists within the Digital Filing System.
NeatCloud also syncs with Neat’s desktop software and mobile app to provide users with seamless access to all their important information no matter its original source or format.
Expanded Search: Users can now find information they may have stored in multiple cloud services including Google Docs, Dropbox and Evernote. Simply type a search term, pick the services you want to search and access the relevant search results from a single Neat interface. Searches can be saved and will automatically continue to add files that match that search criteria.
NeatMobile: With NeatMobile, iPhones and iPads can be used to quickly view all the information in a Digital Filing System from anywhere. NeatMobile also turns mobile devices into a Neat scanner by allowing users to “scan” images using the camera on their mobile device. In the same way Neat’s scanners use OCR and parsing to transform paper documents into actionable data, NeatMobile extracts information from mobile images. NeatMobile is available on Apple’s iOS and Android devices.
NeatVerify: Images captured with mobile devices may suffer from poor environmental effects such as a shaky hand, bad lighting or image skewing. For near perfect accuracy, users of NeatMobile can sign up for NeatVerify, a monthly subscription service that ensures that data taken from images is 99 percent accurate. The data extracted from the image is arranged in data fields which are reviewed and verified by real people and returned to the user’s Digital Filing System within minutes.
Other capabilities of the Neat Digital Filing System include Sync, the synchronization of information across all your devices; Share, the ability to share individual files or folders with anyone; Email In, in which users create Neat email addresses and to request vendors or others send receipts or documents directly into their Neat Digital Filing System; and Back Up, in which all files are securely backed up.
Pricing and Availability
NeatCloud is available as a subscription service with three pricing plans ranging from $5.99 to $24.99 a month.