Optimal invoice processing with OCR-as-a-Service

Although you would prefer to receive all your invoices as XML, streamlined and unambiguous, reaching this feels like a pipe dream. Invoices come in as PDF and on paper, sometimes with hand-written notes attached. These invoices are then scanned and/or imported into the system. This is before applying recognition, whereby manual optimization is simply part of the process.

Even then there are still bumps and pitfalls:

• The quality of the invoices must be sufficient for the OCR software – in other words, the legibility of invoices, quality of scans, but also whether the amounts are not in gray blocks, etc.;
• After many optimizations, a recognition percentage of 85% is within grasp, but then it is time to fill in the missing fields manually;
• Finally, the OCR must be trained.

Some time afterward, it is finally possible to start coding the invoice.

A time-consuming and error-prone job.

Quality, efficiency, and convenience

OCR-as-a-Service, part of Onventis Invoice Processing, takes over almost all these actions, thereby increasing the recognition percentage. The quality of this recognition – incorrectly recognized fields are even more annoying than unrecognized fields – is considerably higher than with a standard OCR on-premise situation.

Better quality – but how?!

The quality of the recognition is better on both the number of positions recognized and on their accuracy. This has two main reasons:

Industrial-grade capture

It makes little sense for an individual company to purchase its own OCR-machine and run it locally. Not only the costs to keep this service up and running but the memory and processor power is pure overkillfor one company. Because our OCR-service does the recognition for hundreds of companies it creates an economy of scale for a reasonable price.

Wisdom of the crowd

The fact that we do the recognition as a service for so many companies has another advantage for the customer. All optimizations that have ever taken place on the invoice layout of a supplier are centrally available. This allows new customers to immediately use all the optimizations that are already done before. What do you notice in practice? Little, except that you quickly have best-in-class recognition; performed as a service.

Time and costs savings

A standard set of invoices is picked up within one minute and available in the worklist within a few. This allows for time and costs savings from the get-go. And if you want to go one step further, you can also opt for guaranteed infallible results within Onventis Invoice Processing. This means up to 100% recognition.

How? Our validation service. With this service, we guarantee that all fields of imported invoices are recognized with the highest possible reliability percentage. We do this with our Onventis validation team. In this variant, all invoices that are automatically recognized first go to this team for manual validation. This allows your employees to deal with subject-related matters, instead of the necessary evil that invoice recognition is.

It is a prerequisite forlights out accounting. But more about that in our next blog…