You make no mention of how many receipts you're trying to manage...how often you need to scan them or how fast you need to get it done. Makes recommending a scanner difficult. I won't touch the 2nd question without knowing how much you're willing to spend. Everybody says they want "storage and speed", but many end up spending as little as possible and then are unhappy with the result.

It sounds to me like you want to trade a garbage bag full of paper slips, for an electronic garbage bag full of paper slips. That's no improvement, you're just making the same mistake a different way.

Whether you're doing your own tax work or someone else is, what you need is organization of transaction information, not of paper slips. A pile of paper or its equivalent as scanned images is of little value. You're going about it the hard way. Really the hard way.

Look into Quicken or Quick Books for your solution. If your business or personal situation is complicated, you might need an accountant or bookkeeper to get started. Most people can do it themselves. A bonus is that bank and financial institution transactions can be periodically downloaded (and properly captured automatically) in seconds.

Well I will try to answer best of my ability. We have a farm. I have a"million" little receipts, plus, feed bills, and everything else that goes with running this farm. It is so hard at the end of year to organize all of this. Makes me crazy. Now the cost of a new computer is moot as I want a reliable one with speed and storage. What ever the cost, so be it, but I don't want to break the bank so to speak. I could do the receipts by the month I guess, but I put it off, cause I hate it so much. After I get through putting all the figures of all expenses on paper, THEN it goes to the cpa. Does this help at all? Regards, PK

PK I am not sure a scanner will be of assistance because every scan will require a name. Each name will need to be significant in relation to other bills of similar nature and date. This will be time consuming, perhaps 3 minutes per scan. If it were me I would simply use 12 separate envelopes for each month, this will help create some order for you.

As regards the computer none are expensive like the old days when $3,000 was quite normal. Desktop computers seem to be vanishing at an alarming rate leaving us with laptops and seemingly soon just tablets.

More importantly you should consider whether you use any specific software related to your farm activities will be compatible with a new purchase. Then pick one that is above entry level and you should be good. Your purchase will have a write off value which will help at tax time of course. I presume US write offs are similar to Canada with 30% per annum for computers.

I recently bought an HP Deskjet 3510 for $75.00. It prints, scans, copies and faxes and works great. We have scanned almost 2,700 photos thus far with a few hundred to go and then we will tackle documents and receipts. It is a bit of work but it will be worth it in the long run.

Computer, need to know your budget.

well I don't know how much computers cost, but I would guess about $1200 or so maybe more if it had everything we need. No particuliar programs used for the farm except MS office Pro. I had seen an ad for the NEAT SCANNER and it said it can scan your receipts and put them in a folder all you had to do was enter one word to keep the seperate, like Farm Or Taxes. I am so tired of using a mag. glass to read the darn things, we have 100;s of them. Does this seem to help find me SOMETHING? Thanks so much, P.K. ps. I do have seperate folders for everything. like i,e,; utilities, phone,feed,vet, Sale items, etc. but I hate to do it by the month, lol

OK so as John wc notes printer/scanners can be had for well under $100. Your NEAT scanners are $400, not sure you will get any more benefits from those but that is your decision of course.

For scanner/printers HP or Canon have good reputations, Lemark and Epson seem to have lost some shine in recent years.

$1200 is a generous amount for a computer these days Take a look here assuming you are looking for a desktop type machine. I would buy a 64 bit machine with 8 gigs of RAM (memory), if an Intel processor then i5 or above or AMD Phenom II quad core. either will give you the speed you want and more.

Are you looking to buy just the tower or including a new monitor? Just curious here.

I just did a quick Google re farm booking and found a ton of info. It may or may be what your looking for .

Here is a link that might be useful: Farm book keeping etc

See, I toldyou I know nothing about the cost of computer. We have a new monitor.Thanks for the farm info. We were just thinking about a scanner that has th software to put the things we scan into a proper place, I guess it could be done with my Canon. Thanks P.K.

I pay $900. up to $1300. for my computers and don't think it is a waste of money. The $1300. one was for my son in case he got into gaming.

I do not know anything about running a business like you have, but my husband and I were land lords for a very long time. I just kept the receipts in a manilla envelope, making sure all the info was on it even if it was a garage sale receipt. At the beginning of the next year I would go through them and make up a work sheet of costs and income. Then the most important thing I found was to turn them over to our accountant. LOL I gave her the work sheet and all of the receipts in case she needed them.
Now with computers I would keep records there by date.

This post was edited by EmmaR on Mon, Apr 22, 13 at 9:56

If you have a Canon all in one printer/scanner/copier then you are good to go. Either look out the manual that came with it or is on the CD/DVD or Google the model number and add 'manual'. You will find Canon will probably dictate where your scans go but these can easily be moved in bulk once you are on top of your receipts scanning.

You also could check with your farm bureau/ag dept. We to have alot of farms here in ND and they put everything on computers. I have seen ads about farm shows, that include help with computers by companies that are farm related. Have you contacted your local farm associations? What type of farm do you have? If it is dairy--contact the dairy association etc. Even your local college might help. Then you could just put out reports, throw all the receipts in a box. Also a good CPA will tell you what you can keep and what you can throw away. They do that here with our farmers. Our farmers not only grow lots of variety, they drive the fracking trucks also along with driving and working with other farmers--so it is very diversified.
Good luck

Someone recommended this one to me: I do not understand all these letters and numbers, please tell me about this computer? Compare

Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p 2988-E2U Desktop PC - 3rd Gen. Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz, 4GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, DVDRW, 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7450, Windows 8 Pro 64-bit / Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, Keyboard & Mouse

Item#: T70-10213 : Model#: 2988E2U
Be the first to write a review

Watch the prices, Newegg and Tigerdirect are well under $900. Amazon is $958

This is a fast machine and will outdo what ever you have planned I suspect.

OWBIST, do you have any comment on the mfg. I know it is fast, but we don't want to have to buy another one, EVER, lol, Rgards and thank you for your advice, P.K. in La.

Now don't get carried away PK, of course you are going to have to buy another. Heck 3 or 4 maybe as you are obviously not too old seeing you are still giving those hogs a home. All electronics have built in obsolescence you know.

Lenovo is Chinese owned, they bought up IBM. I have not read much bad about the company, I think Mikie who hangs out here owns a Lenovo which he seems happy with.

You could Google 'Lenovo complaints' or 'Lenovo reviews' or even include the specific model and see what others think but be sure you read the complaints fairly as there are those who complain about silly things. Honest complaints are worth reading of course.

I've had a company-provided Lenovo Thinkpad for a few months and have no complaints.

I can find absolutely NO reviews of the Lenova on-line.So I think we will review our choices of mfg. Maybe looking at an Acer or an HP. My sis had too much trouble with her Dell, so they are out. Anyone have any ideas? PK

I found reviews for Lenovo: (About 94,100,000 results (0.20 seconds)
:-)

http://www.laptopmag.com/mobile-life/lenovo-brand-rating-2012.aspx

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Lenovo-Reviews-E8034.htm

Here is a link that might be useful: Reviews at CNET

Well I am glad you could fine the reviews, I could not. I not in the market for a laptop, but a desk top. One of the sites would not oopen, the other was for lap tops only. I have aleady been to c-net. Thank you so much. any other ideas.?

PK have a look here Lenovo reliability

Acer and HP seem reliable machines too. Cannot give you any personal experience because I have built my own for years now

Linked below is the latest Rescuecom computer reliability report. I would be comfortable with Samsung, Asus, Lenovo or HP.

Here is a link that might be useful: Computer Reliability

Well these last two web sites really gave me lots of information that I need. I want to thank each and every one of you that take the time to respond to posts here. I, for one, know nothing about computers, yet you have given me such valuable information and I really appreciate it. Regards, P.K. ps. I will get back when we decide which one we finally go with.