Neat vs QuickBooks for Receipts and Pricing

If your books are in QuickBooks Online, you already own a receipt scanner: Receipt Capture is included on every plan from Simple Start at $38 a month up to Advanced. Neat costs $200 a year on top and is worth it only if you want a searchable archive of receipts, bills, statements and checks outside QuickBooks. If your real problem is a paper backlog or receipts with many line items, neither one solves it well, and a batch extractor does.

That is the whole answer for most small businesses. The rest of this page shows the prices side by side, what each product actually reads from a receipt, where the Neat to QuickBooks sync stops, and which one to pay for at three common business sizes. Neat figures come from neat.com and the Neat HelpCenter, and QuickBooks figures from the Intuit pricing page and Intuit support articles.

Neat vs QuickBooks pricing at a glance

Intuit regularly runs a 50 percent discount for the first three months, so your first invoices may be lower than the list prices above. Neat publishes only the annual plan. A fully loaded Neat account with both add ons is $400 a year.

These two products are not really rivals. QuickBooks is the ledger. Neat is a document cabinet that can feed the ledger. The real question is whether the cabinet is worth $200 a year when the ledger already reads receipts.

What QuickBooks Receipt Capture already does

Receipt Capture lives in the Receipts area of QuickBooks Online and in the receipt snap feature of the mobile app. You photograph a receipt, upload a file, or forward an email to your QuickBooks receipts address. QuickBooks reads the vendor, date and total, drafts a transaction, and holds it in a review list until you match it to a bank feed transaction or add it as a new expense.

It has three limits that matter for anyone comparing it with Neat:

• One receipt per file. Intuit asks for a single receipt in each image or PDF. Three receipts in one photo become one transaction.
• Header fields only. It reads vendor, date and total. It does not hand you each line on the receipt as its own row.
• File rules. PDF, JPEG, JPG, GIF and PNG are accepted, a forwarded email has to stay under 20 MB, and iPhone HEIC photos need converting first.

For a business that captures receipts as it spends, snapping each one on the phone, those limits rarely bite. We cover the details in our page on QuickBooks receipt capture, including the forwarding rules that trip people up.

What Neat adds for $200 a year

Neat is broader than receipts. Its plan covers receipts, bills, invoices, bank statements, checks and business cards in one searchable archive, with receipts matched to tax categories and reports your accountant can use. The free Neat Desktop app also scans from the old NeatDesk and NeatReceipts scanners and from any TWAIN scanner, which matters if you still have one of those on your desk.

What Neat does not do is replace QuickBooks as the ledger your bookkeeper closes the month in. Its job is to hold the paper and push the useful part into your accounting software.

Does Neat integrate with QuickBooks?

Yes, but only QuickBooks Online. The Neat HelpCenter lists Simple Start, Essentials and Plus as supported, and states that QuickBooks Desktop is no longer a supported integration and that QuickBooks Self-Employed does not support integrations with other apps. On Simple Start, Neat can send receipts only, not bills. Only items classified as a Receipt or a Bill can be sent, with vendor, category, payment type, class and location mapped on the way.

If you run QuickBooks Desktop, that table settles the question. Neat can still archive your documents, but getting the numbers into your books means exporting and importing them yourself.

Do I need Neat if I have QuickBooks?

Most QuickBooks Online users do not. Receipt Capture already turns a phone photo into a draft expense and attaches the image to the transaction, which is what the IRS cares about. Neat earns its fee when you also want bank statements, checks and business cards filed and searchable in one place, or when you still scan paper on a Neat scanner and like the Neat workflow.

What each setup costs at three business sizes

This is our arithmetic from the list prices above, before any promotional discount.

At every size Neat adds between 12 and 44 percent to the software bill. The smaller the business, the harder that is to justify on receipts alone.

Where both fall short, paper backlogs and line items

Two situations send people searching for Neat vs QuickBooks in the first place, and neither product handles them well.

A backlog. A box of last year's receipts is hundreds of scans. QuickBooks wants one receipt per file and one review per transaction. Neat will read them, but you commit to a year of subscription to clear one pile.

Line items. A contractor buying from a lumber yard, a restaurant ordering from a food distributor, or a bookkeeper who splits one receipt across categories needs each line, not just the total. Both products stop at header fields.

That is the job a bulk receipt scanner does. ReceiptOCR takes up to 50 files per upload, including multi page PDFs with up to 25 pages, reads vendor, date, sales tax, total and every line item, and exports Excel, CSV or a QuickBooks import file that works with QuickBooks Desktop as well as Online. Starter is $49 a month billed monthly, so a backlog is one month rather than a year. If you still scan on a Neat scanner, our guide to Neat scanner software replacements shows how to pair it with a free scanning app.

Bank statements are a separate job again. If the reason you wanted Neat was to get old statements into your books, it is quicker to turn a PDF bank statement into a QBO file and import it straight into QuickBooks.

Which one should you pay for?

If you are also weighing an expense app, we ran the same comparison in Neat vs Expensify, and the Neat alternative page lists every tool people move to when they cancel Neat.

Frequently asked questions

Is Neat worth it if I already use QuickBooks?

Only if you use Neat for more than receipts. QuickBooks Online already reads receipts on every plan. Neat is worth $200 a year when you want bank statements, checks, bills and business cards archived and searchable in one place, or when you scan paper on a Neat scanner and want that workflow to continue.

Can QuickBooks replace Neat?

For receipts, yes. Receipt Capture reads vendor, date and total from photos, uploads and forwarded emails and drafts the transaction. It does not replace the Neat archive for statements, checks and business cards, and it asks for one receipt per file, so it is slower for large paper batches.

Does Neat work with QuickBooks Desktop?

No. The Neat HelpCenter states that QuickBooks Desktop is no longer a supported integration and that only QuickBooks Online can receive data from Neat directly. Desktop users have to export from Neat or use a receipt extractor that produces an import file.

Is QuickBooks receipt capture free?

It costs nothing beyond your QuickBooks Online subscription. Intuit includes Receipt Capture on Simple Start, Essentials, Plus and Advanced, so there is no upgrade needed to scan receipts. It is not available on its own without a QuickBooks plan.

Can Neat send bills to QuickBooks Simple Start?

No. On Simple Start, Neat can send receipts only. Bills need QuickBooks Online Essentials or Plus, according to the Neat HelpCenter.