While it's not perfect, the NeatReceipts Scanalizer (US$229) can shave some time off this chore. This software/hardware bundle from NeatReceipts Inc. includes a skinny, ultraportable sheet-fed scanner called the Scanalizer. Through the magic of optical character recognition (OCR) the software turns scans into editable database files that can be sorted, searched and used to generate nicely formatted reports, or exported to a variety of applications, such as QuickBooks, Excel and Word.

In addition to wrangling receipts, NeatReceipts Professional also includes a Business Card Organizer that extracts text from scans of business cards and pops it into a contact manager that can be synched with Microsoft Outlook, as well as a Tax Organizer that can generate reports by tax form. It can also be used to quickly generate a PDF. Simply scan a document and save it as a PDF file.

I recently pulled over this product for a Scanalizer test with mixed results.

Setup and installation doesn't sound particularly difficult. You install the software and plug in the scanner via the included USB cable when prompted.

However, you'll want to grab a cup of coffee before you get started because the process involves a lengthy software install, a required reboot and a shutdown of antivirus software. Then I was prompted to download the latest upgrade of the software, a hefty 80MB file that required another lengthy installation. Ugh.