Over the past few years, Epson has released several scanners, such as the Editors’ Choice-winning RapidReceipt RR-600W, bundled with software for scanning receipts, invoices, bank statements, and other financial documents. Now Canon has fired back with its own scanner and financial software bundle, the $449.99 imageFormula DR-C225 II Scanner Small Business Edition Powered by Receipt Bank. In addition to the usual document scanning and management software, you get Dext’s popular program for scanning financial papers and extracting pertinent data for export into your bookkeeping software. The hardware or scanner itself, compared to the Epson RR-600W, is as about as entry-level it gets. But if your scanning volume is low—say, no more than a few hundred scans per day—you can save at least $50 by opting for the DR-C225 II.
Upright Design, Small Footprint
Measuring 8.7 by 11.8 by 6.1 inches (HWD) and weighing 6 pounds, the imageFormula DR-C225 II is the same size and girth as the original DR-C225 reviewed here back in 2014 and the Wi-Fi-equipped DR-C225W in 2015. The advantage of the scanner’s upright design is that it doesn’t require extra room when you open the output tray.
Most desktop document scanners have input and output trays that extend outward from the chassis, doubling or tripling the machine’s footprint. Among the handful of scanners that come with software for importing financial documents, a few are portables without automatic document feeders (ADFs) that you must feed one sheet at a time. With that in mind, then, the new Canon’s closest competitors are three Epsons: the RapidReceipt RR-600W mentioned earlier, the WorkForce ES-500WR Accounting Edition, and the WorkForce ES-300WR Accounting Edition.
As an entry-level scanner, the DR-C225 II doesn’t have much of a control panel, consisting only of a power button and a Start or Scan button as shown below.
You configure workflow profiles that contain instructions, such as resolution, destination (local drive, a cloud site, a document management program, email, FTP, or whatever) via the bundled software, which we’ll look at shortly.
Documents travel on a U-shaped path from the 45-sheet ADF under the scanner and into the upright output tray. You can scan thicker paper such as card stock by flipping a lever on the right edge of the scanner. This straightens the path so that scanned documents come out through a slot beneath the device.
The Canon’s only connectivity option is USB, restricting access to a single computer. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets require a wireless network. The USB port is also located on the right side, behind the lever for changing the paper path.
Finally, the DR-C225 II’s maximum daily duty cycle is 1,500 scans. The Epson RR-600 comes with a 100-sheet ADF and its duty cycle is 4,000 scans, the same as the ES-500WR, though the latter’s ADF holds only 50 sheets. The portable ES-300WR holds 20 sheets and its maximum rating is 500 scans per day.
Solid Software Bundle
In addition to drivers, Canon’s software suite includes Canon CaptureOnTouch, Cardiris, and Kofax Power PDF. The first is the scanner interface. You use it to operate the scanner from your PC or assign a profile that executes each time you push the Start button (hence the name CaptureOnTouch).
Cardiris is a business card scanning interface and archiving program, and Kofax Power PDF is a PDF creation and editing app similar to Adobe Acrobat DC. And of course you get Receipt Bank, an application for scanning financial documents including receipts, invoices, and bank statements. The software then extracts the data for import into your bookkeeping or payroll software, including QuickBooks, Xero, or Sage. In addition to scanning data, you can use your smartphone’s camera and email attachments to glean data for import.
Unfortunately, you don’t get unrestricted access to the software. The Receipt Bank license is only good for one year, and you are limited to 300 receipt or invoice scans and five bank statement pages each month.
Epson’s RapidReceipt software, an add-on to the company’s ScanSmart scanner interface, works similarly to Receipt Bank in scanning financial data and helping you populate the fields in your financial program. I didn’t notice any difference in accuracy between the two solutions.
A significant difference between them is that Epson’s ScanSmart add-on sells for a one-time $100 fee and supports several of the company’s WorkForce and other scanners. Receipt Bank, on the other hand, requires yearly renewal.
Tepid Speeds, Impressive Accuracy
Canon rates the imageFormula DR-C225 II at 25 one-sided (simplex) pages per minute (ppm) or 50 two-sided (duplex) images per minute (ipm, where each page side counts as an image). I tested the scanner over a USB connection to our standard Intel Core i5 testbed running Windows 10 Pro. The DR-C225 II scanned our 25-page single-sided text document and saved it as an image PDF at the rate of 26.1ppm, and scanned and saved our 25-page two-sided (50 page sides) document at 54.5ipm.
The Epson ES-300WR portable was almost exactly as fast as the Canon, but the ES-500WR and RR-600W desktop scanners were more than twice as quick. For my second test, I timed the DR-C225 II as it scanned and saved our two-sided document to the more versatile searchable PDF format. Its time of 58 seconds was the slowest of this group; the ES-300WR took 55 seconds and the other two were significantly faster.
As I’ve noted before, today’s optical character recognition (OCR) technology is mature enough that all the scanners we’ve tested recently have performed well. The Canon scanned both our Arial and Times New Roman test font pages error-free down to 6 points. That result is about average and more than accurate enough for just about any business application. The three Epsons performed similarly, though the RR-600W was able to scan Arial down to 5 points.
I also scanned a few stacks of business cards into Cardiris. As I expected, the software did a good job of retrieving data from simply designed cards but struggled with cards with fancy elements such as shaded boxes, gradients, or other features that interfered with delineating text. With some cards, it’s more efficient to type the data yourself than to scan and go back to correct errors.
A Decent Entry-Level Contender
The Canon imageFormula DR-C225 II is a capable entry-level document scanner, but the reason you’d choose it over another basic model is, of course, the bundled Receipt Bank financial scanning software. If your application calls for higher volume or you don’t like annual software payments, you should check out our current favorite receipt scanner, Epson’s RR-600W. But if your scanning volume is relatively low and you can benefit from capturing and digitizing your receipts and other financial documents, the less expensive DR-C225 II may be right for you.
