4 Mice Review of ReceiptWallet!

A friend of mine sent me a copy of an article in the August 2007 issue of Macworld magazine (the print issue that isn't available on newsstands, yet, just to subscribers) that lists the most useful Mac applications. ReceiptWallet is listed in it and received a 4 mice review (that little blurb is the review). That's not too shabby for my little side project. I'm not sure why it wasn't a 5 mice review, but I'm pretty pleased. This definitely accounts for the nice sales increase this past week.

(I was going to call this entry, 4 rat review of ReceiptWallet, but decided against it. Way back when I worked in the print shop at my high school, we always used to joke around that the mice ratings were rat ratings; not that they were bad, but it was just entertaining to say things got a 4 rat review.)

Comments

July 26th, 2007
kd

I think only because it lacks OCR, the FAQ mentions the impracticality of it but Neat Receipts does it - and the NY TImes reviewed just how well it works. I think the first OCR for Mac’s going to win this one, I really hope its you.

July 26th, 2007
Scott Gruby

1) a commercial quality OCR engine is cost prohibitive as far as I know and there aren't (yet) any open source ones that can be used (you'll note that they received $5.5 million in venture funding last August, so they can afford it); I charge $29.95...maybe if I charged $49.95, I could include a full OCR engine. Google has an open source OCR engine, but I have no idea how it will work and an OCR engine only won't make a good OCR program
2) receipts differ so widely that no OCR software will be 100% accurate causing yiu to have to correct mistakes, Look at some of your receipts and see if you can identify the date, merchant and total
3) OCR won't pick up the correct total on restaurant receipts when you hand write a tip
4) ReceiptWallet autofills as you type, so data entry is fast and accurate, I can go through s stack of receipts in maybe 2 minutes
5) If NeatReceipts was serious about the Mac, they would have had a Mac version out by now, ReceiptWallet has been out for 8 months now and I only work on it in my spare time; a full time developer could easily have made a NeatReceipts for the Mac. If they're porting it to the Mac, may just be another Windows ported program that looks like Windows. I only write Mac software, so my users can be assured that it works like a Mac program.
6) Other reviews of NeatReceipts aren't so glowing with its OCR; any mistakes, in my opinion, defeat the purpose of OCR as you have to correct it

However, if NeatReceipts is interested in buying me out, I'd be more than interested in talking to them and then an OCR engine can be added.