receipts

Do you keep the receipts for everything you buy? Like me, you've probably noticed that the ones printed on thermal paper can begin to disappear over time. Soon, you're left with only a blank piece of paper that can't act as a proof of purchase or help you at tax time.

Wednesday's update to Google Drive on Android lets you easily store all of your receipts and even search through them. Doesn't a nice digital archive sound better than piles, folders, or boxes of receipts all over your home? Here's how to … Read more

Google Now's interface sensibilities are spilling over into other Google services.

The latest recipient of a healthy dose of the Now virtual assistant is Google Drive, which updated its Android app on Wednesday with several new features.

A new Scan feature lets you back up and track important receipts, business cards, and documents by using existing optical character recognition (OCR) tech already in Drive. Choose Scan from the "Add New" menu, take a photo of the document, and Drive will automatically turn it into a searchable PDF.

The new interface leverages the Cards look from Google+ and … Read more

In the Digital Age, receipts are more frustrating and harder to keep track of than ever before. They get lost easily and are time consuming to record and file away. So anything that helps to digitize them faster and consolidate them into a single storage space is a useful tool. Receipts HD is just such a tool, providing a number of options for saving, scanning, and recording your receipts. There are some severe limitations, but if you are in the app's target demographic, this tool could be very useful for you.

At first glance, Receipts HD looks needlessly complicated. … Read more

This is an update of a deal I wrote about many moons ago. Like, 19 moons.

If you're still chasing that pipe dream known as the paperless office, you know that half the battle is digitizing all your paper documents. It can be a major hassle, especially if you're working with a flatbed scanner (i.e., one that lacks an auto document feeder).

That's what makes the NeatDesk such a cool tool: it quickly batch-scans documents, receipts, and business cards, then organizes them into digital filing cabinets. Though it's been around for years, there's no … Read more

Keeping track of everything you buy, especially if you run a business or get reimbursed for costs, can be really tedious. There are usually receipts in different sizes for each item purchased, and trying to remember to put them in a certain place doesn't always happen. Additionally, since many receipts are printed on thermal paper, their information may fade away before the next time you evaluate spending or when doing your taxes. So why not try a different approach to receipt and record keeping?

Lemon is a useful app for Android that will allow you to take snapshots of … Read more

Wondering what Uncle Sam does with your hard-earned tax dollars? The White House's Taxpayer Receipt page has been updated for 2011 to help answer that question.

To get started you'll need to enter the social security tax, medicare tax, and income tax that you paid for 2011. If that information isn't handy, you can estimate by choosing from a range of households and incomes, such as single with no children, married with one child, or married with two children.

In return, the site displays how much you doled out in tax dollars to the Fed for last … Read more

Shopping online has many benefits. You almost never have to worry about how many of an item a specific store has in stock, how bad traffic is at certain times, or having to deal with other shoppers who are angry for whatever reason. It also has its downsides. If you purchase a lot of items online, it can be easy to lose track of what you've purchased, when they're supposed to arrive, or how much they cost. Does this sound like a problem you've encountered before, or are currently encountering? Try out Slice for Android if it … Read more

Who uses those receipts for e-mails read? Most people either block sending receipts altogether or ask to be notified before sending a read receipt (a default setting in Microsoft Outlook and other mail clients). So read receipts either don't work at all, or they require acceptance by the recipient--no sure thing.

That doesn't mean that we aren't curious about when the messages we send are opened, and when the links they include are followed. For most organizations, this information can be a valuable asset. The Zendio add-on for Microsoft Outlook tracks the messages you select and records … Read more

I wrote recently that receipts are the the new check-ins. And now companies are emerging that are trying to roll up the receipt collection process for consumers. One smart new business doing this: Itemize. It scans your e-mail receipts to build a profile of your favorite brands, and then it sends you deals so you can get the stuff you like at a discount.

"We are receipt geeks," CEO Jim Thomas told me. He previously worked on analytics for MasterCard, which you'd think would have the mother lode of data when it comes to analyzing what people like. But think again: credit card companies know where you shop, but not what you buy. "I wanted to build a Pandora for shopping," Thomas said.

There are two challenges facing Itemize. First, it needs a diet of receipts to work. Pretty much everything you buy online will generate an e-mail receipt, which works to its favor, but things you buy in physical retail stores generally don't--except for, say, the stuff you get at the Apple store. Thomas believes more retailers will be following Apple's lead, though.

Itemize will get a physical-receipt-scanning app eventually. The iPhone app for that is being built. Thomas does think that physical receipts will eventually vanish, but not soon enough.

The other problem: So you have this mailbox full of e-mail receipts. How do you get them to Itemize? The service gets your receipts by scanning your live inbox. You give it access to your mail (it works on Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, and several other mail providers) and it watches for receipts. Thomas says the service does not keep your e-mail nor read anything that it doesn't at first determine is a receipt, but there will be consumers, like me, who don't like the idea of giving yet another third party access to their communication.… Read more