Automated Invoice Scanning & Invoice Capture Software

This article discusses invoice capture software and its application in improving your business processes. It explains how does invoice scanning and capturing eliminate the need for manual keying of data.  

What is Invoice Capture or Invoice Processing?

For most businesses, the invoices from suppliers and vendors are in the form of PDF, photos, scanned images, etc. To make the payments, information from these invoices is extracted and matched against purchase orders for PO invoices or receipt matching may be done for non-PO invoices. This process of data extraction as structured data from an invoice and processing it automatically is known as invoice processing. It is the typical back-office task for most mid-sized and big enterprise businesses.

Why do you want to invest in Automated Invoice Capture Software?

Digitizing the workplace is what you need to succeed in today’s world. The business world has changed over the years, the paper filing cabinets that used to occupy the whole office space with a minimal data capacity have now been replaced by optimized databases. The business process has revolutionized from printed documents to digitized data. 

Most invoices today are in digital formats. The business processes have become swift as well as the need to store the data physically has been put to an end. However, this process is not as effortless as it may seem. The bigger problem of data extraction from these files still prevails. Questions like how can we extract hidden data from these invoices? Where does the extracted data belong? How to store this data and use it later on? can arise.

The answer to all these questions is to choose an automated invoice processing software like DocAcquire. The key data of these invoices important for business planning, accounting, and resource management can be handled using Invoice scanning and data capture software. This data can then be transferred to ERP, repositories, and other accounting systems.

Invoice Capture Software or Invoice Scanning Software is an automated data entry solution designed for the use case of invoices. The primary intention of Invoice Recognition Software is to find the key data from the invoices and convert this information to structured data. Once the data is transformed into an easily handled Excel spreadsheet, XML sheets, and JSON, you can reuse it in various other applications thus, eliminating the obsolete process of manual re-keying of the data. 

Some of the advantages of invoice processing automation for businesses are:

1. Reduces back-office cost: It has removed the need to hire more payable clerks as most of the work is done automatically.
2. Employees can focus on other important tasks: Manual data entry and re-keying is a cumbersome task that slows down the work process. With the integration of Invoice capture solutions, employees can focus on higher-level tasks than wasting time on in-house data entry.
3. Improves accuracy of extraction: Invoice Capture software is a smart solution for data extraction. It reduces the chances of mistakes and errors.
4. Allows faster processing of invoices: Invoice Capture software can reduce the time incurred in data capture and data sorting.
5. Helps in audits: Invoice Capture software makes it is to keep track of documents from which the data is being extracted.

How accurate is Invoice Capture software?

Automated invoice scanning and capturing has still not been explored to their fullest. There are many more advancements to be made in this area. Since the data is mostly related to invoices and terms like invoice number can have many forms like Invoice Number, Invoice No., Invoice #, so sometimes the capturing software may not have full clarity and the results extracted may not be up to the mark. This ambiguity is solved via machine learning techniques. These techniques are evolving and becoming more intelligent, however, multiple page capture has still not been expertise.

So, how accurate are these invoice capture software? The answer to this question is as complex as the question itself. The accuracy of the software closely depends upon the invoice from which data is being extracted. In some cases, the extraction process can be as accurate as 99%. However, in most cases, accuracy ranges between 80% to 95%. The best way to evaluate a data capture software is to use one and see for yourself.

1. Are the invoices text-based PDF files or scanned images? 
   Text-based PDF files are expected to be more accurate as (optical character recognition) OCR technology may introduce some scanning errors.

2. Are the invoices scanned using a good scanner?
   The resolution of the scanner has a lot to do with OCR accuracy. A good scanned invoice can help in easy OCR data extraction from PDFs.

3. Do you need to capture line item details?
   Capturing line items is relatively a challenging task especially if the file has multiple pages. The conversion of PDF invoices to structured data is a challenging task for modern systems as well. Invoices can range from crude receipts to well-tabulated data even though most of the invoices have an explicit format and follow a hierarchical logic yet it is not possible for capturing software to extract exact data. Machine learning and artificial intelligence have made huge progress in cracking complex patterned data from invoices. However, these solutions need more refinement to solve the problem entirely.

The more important question that needs to be addressed is whether the invoice capture software can be of use to your business. Some questions that need to be answered are:

1. Are the invoices scanned images or searchable PDF documents?
2. Do these invoices have the perfect alignment and overall good quality?
3. Is it necessary to process a picture of the receipts as well?
4. Whether you need to extract just the key data or will have to look at line-item granularity as well?

These questions give rise to a bigger question of whether automated Invoice scanning and capture is a reliable solution or not? In short, the answer is “It depends”. However, for a more detailed answer, keep reading.

How to choose your Invoice Capture vendor?

Several checkpoints need to be checked before choosing an invoice scanning and invoice capture software. These are:

1. Data privacy policies: Data policy is the first thing to be checked while collaborating with an invoice capturing vendor. Go for a vendor whose data policy matches your company’s policies. This can be a major bummer if your company does not allow the use of external API for invoice OCR processing. You must also check the period for which the vendor will keep your data. Some companies store the data for an extended period while others clear out the data just after processing it.

2. Accuracy of data extraction: Checking the accuracy of data extraction is a crucial process. No software is cent percent perfect, however, it is better to check the capabilities of the pdf extraction software. You can opt for vendors that provide a trial version of the software so that you may get some clarity on data extraction from PDFs. Like DocAcquire provides a 15-day free trial license for customers to see the efficiency of the software for themselves.

3. Pricing: Most invoice capturing and processing software charge per invoice processed and integration fee. You can compare different vendors and choose the one that meets all your criteria. 

4. How the software learns: Check how efficient is the software in learning your capturing information. For software like DocAcquire, the invoice processing software will remember your data capture process, and its machine learning capabilities offered by the software can make the integration process easy.

5. Ease of use: Since your staff will have to use the software, it is necessary to see the user-friendliness of the software. It is also important to check how minor modifications are handled by the software while extracting data from a scanned document or pdf.

6. Data entry service: Some vendors have a human verifier in the loop. A verifier can verify the extracted data for you. So, you will be getting a fully automated data extraction service rather than validating the data in-house.

7. Integration with other software: Since the invoices come from multiple sources and that data extracted from an invoice can be used by different software, therefore, you must know about the integration policies of the software. Most invoice scanning and data capture software like DocAcquire has multiple integrations possible like with Zapier, mails, etc. You can also download the data as an Excel Sheet.

8. Software adoption & customer success stories: You must check for the reviews of the vendor before using it. Many reviews from other clients will give you an insight into the data capturing system. 

When automated invoice processing software is a viable solution?

Automated invoice scanning and processing is not a complete solution, however, it solves problems to a great extent. Many technical drawbacks need refinement, still, invoice processing automation provides the best use-case in the two situations elucidated below:

1. Scanning loads of invoices from a limited number of suppliers and vendors.
   For most businesses, the majority of invoices come from a limited number of fixed suppliers and vendors. In some cases, hundreds of invoices are generated by a handful of vendors. This states true for eCommerce shops, brick and mortar businesses, the wholesale industry, etc. If you run a similar business, where you receive hundreds of similar invoices, then invoice scanning is the best solution for you. You can make your business process invoice by opting for invoice processing software like DocAcquire. The software can recognize the format of your invoice and extract the data from the invoices.
   Techniques like Optical Character Recognition and pattern matching are used to get accurate and reliable results. This process helps in locating the data points in the invoice and makes the extraction process easy. The whole trick lies in training the invoice OCR software. It means that you have to define the areas where you expect the key data to be. After training, all the other scanned invoices of a similar format will be automatically recognized and processed by the invoice OCR processing software. The extracted data can later be stored in a structured format.
    DocAcquire offers an efficient way to use OCR invoice processing solution and setting up the software will take just a few minutes. Also, invoice processing software can extract the line items from an invoice. This means it is possible to extract the detailed merchandise data along with data like invoice data, totals, invoice number, etc. The most essential use-case of this software is that it converts the data into a structured form that can be later used in advanced crunching, ERP, etc.

2. Extract key data from a variety of unknown layouts 
   When hundreds and thousands of invoices of varied formats have to be processed, then training a computer is not the optimal solution. A different method is needed to get fully optimized results. Instead of training the OCR scanning software based on the position of key data, one has to make use of intelligent filters that can recognize and extract the data from varied locations. These filters work by identifying the keywords nearby the key data. For instance, the key data for the amount will be identified by the dollar sign. The method of extracting the data based on keywords suits well for data like tax, total, net, invoice date, invoice number, etc. However, extracting line items can be trouble in such cases. The reason for this is the different formats in which the table data is present. In this case, if you are ready for manual validation of the extracted data, then DocAcquire is the best solution for you.

How DocAcquire helps in easy invoice capture?

DocAcquire has the best data extraction filters that let you build a custom template in a few minutes. There are two ways of utilizing this software to extract data.

• Extracting the key data from invoices
• Extracting the line items from invoices 

In both these scenarios, DocAcquire provides an easy solution that can help you to automate the scanning invoice and capturing process. After setting up the template as per your requirements, you can import bulk invoices through the app, send them via email, or let DocAcquire automatically fetch data from Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, etc. With the help of the built-in cloud integrations, sending invoice data to your ERP system or any other application is a piece of cake. And, you can also download the invoice data in Excel format and use it in various other applications.

Are there any alternatives to Automated Invoice Scanning?

If you don’t want to avoid the problems related to invoice scanning and capturing solutions, then you can switch to EDI. EDI or Electronic Data Interchange was introduced 30 years back. The main idea of this technology is to exchange data between machines. So, transaction data from company A will be sent to company B directly. This technology had its fair share of popularity but most companies are now replacing it with invoice processing software as invoices are present in the form of PDFs. Another alternative to invoice processing solution is manual re-keying of the data. It is a very cumbersome method as it involves a lot of manual effort, time, etc. 

Conclusion

This article clearly explains how Invoice Automation Software provides the best solution for your business. The use case of the software can depend upon the solution you want. It gives a clear insight on how to optimize your business process by making one wise decision. If you want to know more just reach out to DocAcquire. We will be more than happy to help you.

Claim a Free Trial of DocAcquire today.