Reply to: Receipt Scanner Recommendations

[kingcook]

The general public might see it as a free lunch, but we know that the "the Cloud" is really just a stranger's computer, and should be treated as such. (Unless you are paying for the service under SLA - that would be a different story).

Cf. the journalist who stored precious work in a free Facebook "cloud". FB pulled it for [whatever] reasons. She had no comeback and no other backups, and suffered major career damage. Nothing surprising there, except her naive belief that a secure, guaranteed service was being provided for free.

Anyway I am not here to lecture my fellow techies. Whatever works. Personally I use cheap storage to make my own encrypted, offsite backups. For me it is easier than Dropbox faffing anyway. And Owncloud for sharing.

I tried ownCloud once. I immediately stopped using it when I set it up on a 2nd PC and it started deleting all of my files. Luckily i'd made a backup before evaluating it.

I wouldn't use GD if it wasn't for the syncing software that lets me sync a local copy to my laptop.

Whatever works for you

EDIT: I prefer something that "just works". I got fed up of messing around setting up servers for doing a simple task of storing files and allowing other users access to them. Life's too short....

[unixman]

I thought that too. But with the Google Drive app installed on your computer (or something like Insync Pro - highly recommended), if their service does go bye-byes, you have a synced copy on your computer.

Best thing about GD is having the off-site backup (it's in the cloud). I can also share folders with the missus and store all our family photos, all synced again to our laptops.

The general public might see it as a free lunch, but we know that the "the Cloud" is really just a stranger's computer, and should be treated as such. (Unless you are paying for the service under SLA - that would be a different story).

Cf. the journalist who stored precious work in a free Facebook "cloud". FB pulled it for [whatever] reasons. She had no comeback and no other backups, and suffered major career damage. Nothing surprising there, except her naive belief that a secure, guaranteed service was being provided for free.

Anyway I am not here to lecture my fellow techies. Whatever works. Personally I use cheap storage to make my own encrypted, offsite backups. For me it is easier than Dropbox faffing anyway. And Owncloud for sharing.

[kingcook]

I wouldn't go Google, personally. If they withdraw the service, pop goes your company records.

I thought that too. But with the Google Drive app installed on your computer (or something like Insync Pro - highly recommended), if their service does go bye-byes, you have a synced copy on your computer.

Best thing about GD is having the off-site backup (it's in the cloud). I can also share folders with the missus and store all our family photos, all synced again to our laptops.

[woohoo]

I use office lens on my windows phone to take a picture of the receipt. It also tidies the image up and then auto uploads it to OneNote and my expenses workbook.

Handy when travelling about. I'm guessing its only available on windows phones but who knows with Microsoft going all cross-platform.

[unixman]

Reader, Wave and Buzz did nothing to move people into the Google Cloud. One of the main reasons that Google kept saying that they didn't need to have an SD card on the Nexus products was because the content should be cloud-based - scrapping Drive won't help that vision at all.

Yeah but who wants to second-guess some foreign corporation? It's your data, take responsibility for it. Just my opinion as a grumpy old systems administrator .

[TheFaQQer]

Tell that to users of Google Reader, Wave, Buzz or any of the other services that Google has peremptorily shuttered in the last few years.
As for Google/Dropbox etc, they are just somebody else's computer and should be treated as such. Just my opinion.

Reader, Wave and Buzz did nothing to move people into the Google Cloud. One of the main reasons that Google kept saying that they didn't need to have an SD card on the Nexus products was because the content should be cloud-based - scrapping Drive won't help that vision at all.

[sal]

Tell that to users of Google Reader, Wave, Buzz or any of the other services that Google has peremptorily shuttered in the last few years.
As for Google/Dropbox etc, they are just somebody else's computer and should be treated as such. Just my opinion.

None of them was killed without ample notice, so your fear of loosing company data is groundless.

[unixman]

Paranoid much? The chances of your local storage get corrupted/stolen/lost is far grater than Google pulling the plug on Google drive. Besides nothing is stopping you from having local copy and/or off site backup in addition to Google Drive.

Tell that to users of Google Reader, Wave, Buzz or any of the other services that Google has peremptorily shuttered in the last few years.
As for Google/Dropbox etc, they are just somebody else's computer and should be treated as such. Just my opinion.

[FatLazyContractor]

Paranoid much? The chances of your local storage get corrupted/stolen/lost is far grater than Google pulling the plug on Google drive. Besides nothing is stopping you from having local copy and/or off site backup in addition to Google Drive.

Now if your concern is about privacy it's an entirely different matter.

I scan all my receipts through my printer/scanner and save them as PDF documents on Dropbox (synced with local folder and shared across multiple devices). Even if Dropbox decides to pull the plug, one will still be left with the local folder with "originals".

[sal]

I wouldn't go Google, personally. If they withdraw the service, pop goes your company records. Just get a wireless printer/scanner and use that. Mine hardly ever prints nowadays, printing itself seems to be a thing of the past.

And do some off site backups, none of yer cloud cobblers.

Paranoid much? The chances of your local storage get corrupted/stolen/lost is far grater than Google pulling the plug on Google drive. Besides nothing is stopping you from having local copy and/or off site backup in addition to Google Drive.

Now if your concern is about privacy it's an entirely different matter.

[unixman]

I wouldn't go Google, personally. If they withdraw the service, pop goes your company records. Just get a wireless printer/scanner and use that. Mine hardly ever prints nowadays, printing itself seems to be a thing of the past.

And do some off site backups, none of yer cloud cobblers.

[Boney M]

I searched for 'receipt scanner' and nothing relevant came up but thanks for staing the obvious.

Well maybe use different search terms and you will get the obvious

http://forums.contractoruk.com/accou...-receipts.html

[PerfectStorm]

Expensify is an app designed for just this purpose which scans and also outputs to spreadsheet, detects the vendor name and amount etc

[TheFaQQer]

Taking a photo seems OK if it's a small enough receipt, but if you've bought lots of things from Staples (for example) then it's all on a big long receipt, so you get lots of background.

Unless you manually crop out the background before converting it to a PDF, which seems like too much hassle for my liking.

I whack mine through the scanner in a batch each month and save the one PDF.

[FiveTimes]

Disagree - I'm using CamScanner (As previously recommended here) and it's fantastic for saving receipts for accounting purposes.

I've just downloaded this and its seems quite good.