Get organized for tax time with NeatDesk

I can vividly remember the start of tax season when I was growing up. Starting early on a Saturday morning my father would haul a large brown paper grocery bag out of the bedroom closet, grab the latest bills and receipts from the weathered gray container and sit down at the kitchen table for a marathon of tabulation and calculation.

While it got the job done, my parents' decidedly low tech solution to taxes is time consuming and comes with a higher potential to miss an important receipt. For those of us who would rather do taxes in a more 21st century style, there are two cool new products from Neat called NeatDesk and NeatReceipts to help.

NeatDesk ($399) and NeatReceipts ($199) are scanners, one made for your desk and the other small enough to tuck in a briefcase, that work in tandem with NeatWorks software to organize your life. The NeatWorks digital filing software is able to pick important information off of your receipts, business cards and important documents; making it search-able and file-able on your computer. It even lets you mark expenses with the coordinating IRS deduction for easy reporting come tax time.

If like my parents, and myself, you have a pile of tax related documents at home, it's not too late to make use of either of these products. In testing out the NeatDesk scanner I found that I was able to quickly scan in tax forms and accumulated receipts to prepare a file for my accountant, so even "shoeboxers" can make use of a scanner for taxes.