Neat Desktop - What The Heck Is Going On?

Neat Desktop – What The Heck Is Going On?

158 Comments

In the past few months I’ve been flooded with emails from people looking to migrate away from Neat Desktop for their receipts and document scanning and organization.

When you get one or two emails on a subject you assume it’s a coincidence. When it becomes dozens of messages, it’s time to see what is going on.

Neat Desktop Is Being Discontinued

Neat is getting out of the desktop software game, and that seems to have many people heading for the door.

Here is what they say in their support note:

Effective immediately, Neat will no longer continue developing feature enhancements, updates, and/or bug fixes for the versions of Neat desktop software listed below:

  • Windows – Neat version 5.7 and all previous versions
  • Mac – Neat for Mac version 4.5 and all previous versions

Neat has been developing their cloud system for quite some time, but until this year you have been able to continue using Neat on the desktop. Now they are pushing everyone to the cloud.

I asked one of my readers why they are switching, and here was the response:

Neat stopped their Legacy desktop support early this year. They are focusing and concentrating on their cloud-based application which gets very mixed reviews. In my opinion it’s not great.

I don’t have personal experience with Neat’s cloud service, so if you are a user I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below.

Neat Alternatives

For those that don’t want to make the switch to Neat’s cloud, what do you do? This is especially an issue for those that rely on Neat’s receipt extraction functionality.

Option 1 – Ride Out Neat Desktop Until It Dies

This is the easiest option, but as new versions of the Mac and Windows operating system are released it will eventually become untenable. Sooner or later something is going to stop working, and since there is no support there isn’t much you can do.

Option 2 – ScanSnap Receipt

Many users (based on my email inbox) are making the jump to the Fujitsu ScanSnap.

Modern ScanSnaps come with the ScanSnap Receipt software that lets you scan, categorize, and export receipts to Excel or Quickbooks.

Neat users will find one big feature missing in ScanSnap Receipts – reports. Unfortunately ScanSnap Receipt doesn’t have the nice reporting feature that Neat does.

Option 3 – Mariner Paperless

The closest software package to Neat is Mariner Paperless. It has receipt extraction, exporting, and reporting.

It has been quite a while since a major upgrade, but at least it is updated for macOS Sierra and Windows 10.

How To Export From Neat Desktop

If you want to get your PDFs out of Neat Desktop, here is how to do it on Mac and Windows. You can then bring those PDFs into whatever other system you decide to go with.

What Are You Planning On Doing?

Situations like this highlight one issue with using a proprietary system for storing your documents. You need to know how to get them out if you ever need to, and it will probably be annoying.

Christopher Price has an excellent writeup about what he has decided to do. Make sure you read the article and the comments.

If you’re a Neat user, have you made the jump to their cloud service? If so, how do you like it?

If you’re not making the jump, what are you going to do now that Neat Desktop is DOA?

Please leave a note in the comments and share your experience.

About the Author

Brooks Duncan helps individuals and small businesses go paperless. He's been an accountant, a software developer, a manager in a very large corporation, and has run DocumentSnap since 2008. You can find Brooks on Twitter at @documentsnap or @brooksduncan. Thanks for stopping by.

Leave a Reply 158 comments

Kevin - August 22, 2023 Reply

What a great resource this is! I’m looking for an alternative to Neat and this was one of the few posts I could find that actually had a bunch of great suggestions. For right now my Neat software is still working but the scanner itself is a little sketchy. I was thinking of getting a Brother DS640 or Epson ES50 but it looks like they only come with scanning software and nothing for document storage. Is there any other document storage software I might try that is similar to Neat? It looks like Mariner Paperless doesn’t exist anymore. I just want something basic that functions like Neat, where you can easily search through documents and receipts. Thanks for your help!

MV - December 24, 2020 Reply

I decided to stay with the classic Neat desktop software. Works fine on Win 10 20H2. I just changed my workflow. Instead of saving scans to the local Neat database, I choose PDF which creates good quality, small, searchable PDFs. I found that Paperless doesn’t work well with the Neat scanner. It doesn’t scan the way you tell it to, like color vs black, and does not trim documents as well as Neat does. I also tried the free Neat scanning software, and although it works well with the scanner, it produces massive size PDF files. Does not compresses them well. I also think it doesn’t do a good job with the OCR as the classic Neat Desktop software does.

So for now I just use the Neat software to scan and save the PDFs to my cloud storage. The cloud storage can search PDFs just fine.

sunni - December 24, 2020 Reply

Great article, just was researching Paperless by Mariner and it looks like a great option. However their website states that they offer a discount if you have been using an alternate software such as neat. They ask you to contact them for details, and when I did so I was told that they do not offer that discount. While I still may have purchased the software without the discount, the fact that customer service did not seem bothered by the inaccuracy on their website makes me pause as I am wondering what customer service will be like if I have a problem with the program.

Clive Woodhouse - October 31, 2020 Reply

@Greg. Hi, If you have the old desktop version of Neat installed you can do the following:
1. From the main window make sure your Cabinet is selected in the left panel.
2. Select view all from the “SMART FILTERS” in the panel just below.
3. Now sort the retrieved list by the first column “Item Type”.
4. Scroll to the now consolidated list of contacts (head and shoulder icon) and select them all.
5. Just above the list select the dropdown arrow next to the export icon.
6. An export settings window opens where you can set “Select Format” with vCard, Excel, or CSV as options.

Greg - September 11, 2020 Reply

I just want my biz cards out of the damn .nwdb file… I’m not willing to spend on a monthly subscription just for some old business cards. I haven’t found a single work around but if anyone knows how to extract them please let me know.

Gregory Stenstrom - July 29, 2020 Reply

Can anyone provide me a link to of copy of Neat 5.7 or earlier (preferably 5.2) EULA?

Mac - June 20, 2020 Reply

HI, all.

Is anyone familiar with the free download of the Neat Desktop Software v5.7.1 offered through a website called TechMate Tips (techmatetips.com)? I’m trying to determine if it’s legitimate or only a means to get desperate folks to download and install some malware.

The website does have some characteristics of those I would consider nefarious, and this just might be a too-good-to-be-true situation.

Can anyone vouch for it?

Backup Bob - April 27, 2020 Reply

I am migrating to a Windows 10 pro system from Windows 7 pro. I just bought a Fujitsu iX1500 scanner and ran into a problem.

The Neat ND-100 scanner does work with Quicken and Windows 10. I have not tried installing the Neat software because I have exported everything to PDF and no longer need it.

The Fujitsu iX1500 scanner with the Scan Snap software is wonderful in almost every way. The software is a bit simplistic but it looks as if will work for me. I can “attach” folders, which means putting a shortcut on the ScanSnap desktop, and it will scan to that location with a file name of my choosing.

The iX1500 has no WIA or TWAIN drivers and Fujitsu tech support says to buy the FI series instead. They are ridiculously over-built for my purposes and they are very expensive.

This means I cannot scan with Quicken. This is not essential but I have been using it and I would like to continue to do so. Quicken has trouble exporting files so maybe I am better off using ScanSnap instead.

It also means I cannot scan into Word. I would have to create a PDF and have Word interpret it. That could become a serious issue soon.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I could REALLY use a WIA or TWAIN driver.

Many thanks.

Jason - April 15, 2020 Reply

I mainly used Neat as a “digital file cabinet”. I did my bookkeeping in other places. For anyone still hanging on… Neat 5.7 still works in Windows 10 and should for a while yet. But I’m on a Mac now. I run Neat in a Windows VM since the MacOS side will break much sooner. In a Windows VM Neat works fine for now, but I know I’m way past end of life. So in my search for a Mac-based solution to move to I came across. https://www.receipts-app.com/

I don’t think I can migrate into it, but I can start the new year with it and just move forward from there. Meanwhile I’ll have to export my Neat data to a format to an intermediate format in case I ever need to access any data.

Backup Bob - March 14, 2020 Reply

Does anyone know how to make the ND-1000 drivers work with Windows 10?

The MSI installed and I have plenty of Neat driver files all over my hard drive. The only problem is that Microsoft does not see them.

If I go to install a device (not a printer) I see my Epson scanner / printer and a note to click if my device is not listed. Microsoft brilliantly takes me to a page on setting up bluetooth devices. There is no option to search for a device.

If I look for scanners in Device Manager there are none. My Epson works as a scanner but Windows does not see it as a device.

You cannot re-install the drivers because they are already there. Neat recommends removing a LOT of files from several locations and running a repair. That simply replaces the files I just deleted.

It is really possible for a company to screw things up this badly? Oh, forget that question. They already did that when they abandoned their desktop users.

Sandra MacMillan - February 19, 2020 Reply

I have been using Neat for a small business and home use for many years now and love it but just did not want to go to the cloud and pay a subscription per month. Plus I have also heard many horror stories about the cloud and other people seeing your documents.
What is going to happen when my scanner doesn’t work anymore? It already has an Error message at the top of the screen but it does still scan fine.
How can I get my stuff out to still be readable with something else?
Or am I just going to loose all of my information that is on my computer?

    Backup Bob - February 19, 2020 Reply

    Before exporting make a backup of the NEAT database. After I synced my data with the cloud I found the local database had been deleted. I was able to recover it through my backup software.

    You can export your documents to a JPG or to a PDF. With the desktop version you can export groups of documents into one file. The cloud version only handles one document at a time. The large PDF is not especially convenient but it does preserve the data. If you export each item separately you can name the files appropriately and then import them into new software.

    The export process does not pick up the information about the document. If you are running a new package at the same time you should be able to manually copy the data into the new system.

    The folks at NEAT are shameless. They took away an excellent product, replacing it with a package that was not intuitive or efficient. For example, if I entered the vendor “NERT Software” and scanned a few documents for that vendor, I could edit the list of vendors to “NEAT Software” and the records would all adjust. With the cloud version there is no means of editing or deleting a name. so I would have to create a new vendor and correct each record. For another example, exporting a folder must be done one item at a time.

    They automatically renewed my cloud subscription and when I complained they would not refund any money.

    As for replacement options, Fujitsu scanners come with good filing software and there are products such as Mariner that also work well. I have not found anything that works as well as the original NEAT.

    I am now scanning receipts directly into Quicken. I scan other documents into files in folders I have set up. Neither process is as friendly as NEAT was but neither is difficult. There is no way to organize the data within Quicken other than in its place in a register. As long as you make good comments the data should be easy to search.

    This business with NEAT has made me behave more like the people in the Bible. Remember the part about being in that place where is the constant wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth?

    NEAT was great while it lasted. Good luck with your data conversion. And try not to gnash your teeth too much as you go through all of this.

Joe - January 21, 2020 Reply

The link to Christopher Price’s writeup did not work for me.

Joe - January 21, 2020 Reply

So it seems some are having success with Win 10 and Neat. I lost my original CD and need to reinstall. Does anyone have a copy of the last CD version I could copy? I believe the last version that came on CD also required an upgrade file to get the “final” version that ran locally. Perhaps someone can confirm?? I see many “download” links for Neat but they all appear to be fake. Can someone point me to a good ISO and the upgrade file if needed? Thanks!!!!!

MV - January 4, 2020 Reply

I posted previously about my solution to document scanning after Neat decided not to support their desktop software anymore. I still use the classic Neat desktop software because I refuse to pay a monthly fee for their cloud service. I use the Neat Desktop software only to scan to PDF instead of a Neat database. The software works great on Windows 10 (1909). I know that at some point the software will stop working, so I proactively exported my Neat database to PDF documents and found they fit nicely in my Google Drive (free) account. So now I have all the benefits of the cloud, plus my entire library is PDF so it is not married to or locked in any particular product. Searching the PDFs works great in Google Drive on the web as well as on the iPhone and Android app even for queries for text within the documents that have been made searchable using OCR. I went through testing other products to scan to PDF but none of them worked correctly using TWAIN (Filecenter, Paperport and a couple others) because the Neat scanner has its own proprietary language that only the Neat software understands correctly. The other programs either scanned multiple pages in the wrong order, or could not scan in color even though it was set to scan in color, or did not crop documents correctly.

I recently discovered that Neat now has a free software called Neat Scan Utility, which is supported on Windows 10 just fine. I presume that after customer defection and so much pushback against the Neat Cloud, they decided to do something nice for a change.

The Neat Scan Utility is by far the best alternative to the classic Neat Desktop application. It works perfectly well, crops documents accurately, and creates searchable PDFs in the folder of your choice on your computer. So I simply point it to my Google Drive folder and it saves the PDFs there. I find the workflow very simple and quick. I think this would be a great solution for those with a Neat scanner and need some good software to scan to PDF.

So if you’re looking to get away from the Neat Cloud service, or are stuck with a local Neat database and are looking for alternatives, I suggest you export your Neat database to PDF right away and start using the Neat Scan Utility. That way, you can back up your documents to your favorite cloud service at no extra cost.

    Shy - January 17, 2020 Reply

    Can you please provide the steps that you used to get the documents scanned to Google Drive. I changed my laptop and I do not know where to start with my old scanner. I still like to use the business card scanner. Thanks, Shy

      MV - January 20, 2020 Reply

      Shy,
      When you install Google Drive it creates a local folder on your computer. All you have to do is point Neat to scan a PDF in the local folder for Google Drive. I believe the Google Drive software you have to install is called “Backup and Sync”

      Neat Desktop and Neat Scan utility have a way to change the scan destination. You can scan to Neat or Scan to PDF. When you scan to PDF the Neat Desktop software will prompt for the destination folder in your computer.

    MV - January 20, 2020 Reply

    I’m gonna have to reconsider my recommendation to use the Neat Scan utility. Here’s why: I recently scanned an 8 page document in B&W which I store in Google Drive. I then tested for OCR search and the search in google drive would not find the document. I then realized the PDF created by Neat Scan Utility was a massive 79MB! Keep in mind it was scanned in black & white. OCR was useless. What’s weird is that I have tested this before with other documents and it worked fine. Not sure what happened here. I had to delete this massive PDF and rescan with the classic Neat Desktop software which did a great job at creating the PDF, this time at just 2MB, and OCR search worked fine in Google Drive. Granted, the scan quality was higher with the Neat Scan Utility, but 79MB is just a massive bloat!

    I like the scan quality Neat Scan Utility gives me, but it does a poor job at trimming the fat out of the PDF file. I can always use Adobe Acrobat (paid version) and optimize the PDF to trim the file size, but that defeats the purpose of “free” and adds a step that should not be necessary.

Kolin McIntire - December 25, 2019 Reply

OK…I waited to long to transition and Neat Receipts has stopped working on my laptop. I now have over 10 years worth of receipts stored on my computer in Neat format….. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to retrieve all of this info for import into another paperless software program. I haven’t decided which yet…that may depend on the import capability.

Thanks in advance.

    Harald - February 9, 2020 Reply

    @Kolin: I did some tests about a year ago on the readability of the Neat DB from other programs. The database is SQL Server Compact (SQL CE), and the native file type for this is sdf (not nwdb as Neat calls it). You can then rename a Neat database file to SDF and read it with any tool that is able to real SQL CE files.
    I did my tests with a tool called CompactView, but there are probably a lot of other tools out there that can read SQL CE files.
    Neat keeps its data in two types of files: NeatWorks.nwdb and Imagedb.nwdb
    So far I haven’t started converting my data since I still didn’t decide on what format I will store it in. It will also be quite some work to sort out the data model (mostly in NeatWorks.nwdb – the other files only have images).

    If you starts playing around with the database — please make sure you have a good backup of the original.

    I will probably have to go through the migration myself now in 2020.

      Dave - March 15, 2021 Reply

      This worked for me. I had the 2012 version backed up from an old windows vista machine that finally died. I changed the .nwdb extension to .sdf, downloaded SQL Server Compact (SQL CE) and opened the file. All the data was there but not pretty. Each record was a database item. I copied each record into a word document (image) and got all my files and reports.

      Thank you for the info 🙂

Darlene Kuny - December 3, 2019 Reply

I’ve been using Neat Desk for some time. With the discontinued 7.5 support my only option was to go to the Neat cloud. What a disaster – it’s very $$$ and once you max out your plan, your options are pay .50 per scan or upgrade for more cloud storage. I selected 1200 per year and paid the full year to get a discount. No big surprise I reached my limit my only option is pay more. I should have stayed stand alone. I would live to hear from other Neat users for advice.

1,200 DOCS PER YEAR – $29/mo. – $23/mo. – BILLED ANNUALLY
3,000 DOCS PER YEAR – $62/mo. – $50/mo. -BILLED ANNUALLY
12,000 DOCS PER YEAR – $208/mo. – $166/mo. -BILLED ANNUALLY

Don - October 31, 2019 Reply

Just took DeskScan out of the box. Yes set unopened for several years..
I’ve read many posts. I’m currently running Windows 7 Professional, 32 bit.
Any software/driver suggestions so that I can use DeskScan. Currently nothing works as the product is not supported by Neat.

Roger - October 17, 2019 Reply

Maybe this will help someone else. I was able to get my old neat scanner working with the NEAT driver and NAPS2 software. I set it as a WIA scanner, and had to set the brightness and contrast up a bit in the profile, but I was able to get good scans repeatedly after that. My settings are 24-bit color, 250 brightness, 150 contrast.

    MV - October 18, 2019 Reply

    Roger, I thought your idea was a good solution until I discovered that using the WIA driver does not allow duplex scanning. So if you have a double-sided page, you can only do one side and then flip the page manually. Using the TWAIN driver has another problem, you have to use the driver interface to get it to scan in color. If you use the application interface, which is usually nicer, then it always scans in grayscale no matter what you tell it to do. With the WIA driver it works better but it doesn’t have the ability to scan 2-sided pages. It’s all the driver’s fault, not the application. If you try the same from any other application, the results are the same.