Life has become so busy that everything is shifted to the digital medium. To cope with the increased burden of work, the manual performance of tasks has benefitted the organizations to a large extent but now it has turned to be unpreferable because business processes are accelerating at a speed that is beyond the limit of human efficacy. The shift of trend to digital working has given rise to more breakthroughs happening in the technological context. For instance, in the old times, accounting records were maintained through a filing system which was handled by a human hand. But now, new competitive software has taken that place. One of these advancements includes the emergence of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology.

Data Processing in OCR

OCR technology is used to extract information out of image documents and handwritten textual data. The accounting software possesses the inbuild functional feature of OCR. The optical character recognizer automatically picks up the data out of the invoices. It helps to reduce the time of employees and involves minimum human involvement. It makes the process error-free and fasts altogether. OCR-based software is able to take out data from hand-written invoices, and printed documents. It can take out the data from mobile images. All that is needed to do is to define the fields in OCR software.

The remaining will be done in a blink of an eye. The fields that specifically need to be defined in OCR. It can pick information from the invoices accordingly including the date of issuance on the invoice, the reference number that is labeled to identify the invoice, the amount in accordance with the currency, and finally the due date on which the invoice is meant to be paid.

All this information needs to be defined with the help of field labels so that OCR then extracts the data for further use. 

This data can be transferred to other software solutions like enterprise resource planning. The invoice data can also be converted into digital document formats like PDF and CSV. In this way, OCR proves to be quite helpful in transferring data without any chaos.

Strategies to Choose OCR for Invoicing 

OCR solution is preferable in accounting processes if there is a large number of invoices that need to be sorted. Otherwise, it can prove to be a costly tool for those businesses which operate at a small level. For instance, startups and SMEs do not have any complexity in their accounting tasks thus it is not recommended at this level. Moreover, OCR is integrated into invoice processing so that the data could be entered in different languages as per the needs of the business. AI-supported OCR tool for invoice management helps to reduce duplication and manual mistakes that may arise in the case of manual book-keeping. Moreover, the AI technology comprises deep learning and possesses digitally-enabled neural pathways which are designed with the incorporation of millions of handwritten notes at the time of designing OCR for invoice reading.

This software is competitive to read the manual text. Even when the text is clumsy or unable to be read with a human eye. So, it is better to invest in AI-based OCR for invoicing because it offers additional benefits

Benefits of Integrating OCR with Invoice Management

It offers some compelling benefits. It makes the first choice for many firms that deal with invoicing on daily basis.

Reduces Time

OCR technology when used for invoicing process, eliminates the hustle of sitting straight for long hours to analyze the data from manual invoices and record it separately one by one. Instead, OCR captures the data and does the recording of data in seconds. It improvises the process and thus does the organization’s efficiency. 

Increases Accuracy

Manual data management is subjected to a lot of human errors. It may not only hinder the performance at the organizational level. But also create discrepancies in the published financial reports. It can raise serious questions of manipulation for that business. Because it is quite obvious that if the manual calculation states the wrong amount of invoice in the report. It will influence the business relationship with the vendor at a drastic level. The business has represented itself to lack transparency in its financial data.  

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Minimizes the Risk of Data Loss    

A manual invoice is quite easy to get stolen, or it may get misplaced at some point in time which raises concerns for data security. In contrast, an OCR-based invoicing software helps to save the data in a server where it is nearly impossible to be stolen or manipulated. It confirms data security which can save the business from catastrophic results in case of managing large amounts of data. On the psychological side, OCR helps to manage invoices without having the fear of data theft or data loss. As a result, it helps to improve organizational productivity.

Final Thoughts

Optical character recognition technology has changed the outlook of data management. It has unveiled new dimensions of innovation in accounting software. They can be combined with OCR multiplying the efficiency of the process. Thus, OCR can play a significant part in handling scattered invoices belonging to different suppliers. It also brings them to one place where it is safe and error-free.