Invoice recognition

 

What it is

E-invoicing refers to the sending and receiving of invoices as data files. This type of invoicing is beneficial as it avoids organizations having to manually convert paper or PDF invoices into data. But as long as you and your suppliers do not make solid agreements about this, chances are that your suppliers will continue to send invoices mainly as PDF.

To ensure these PDF invoices are converted to data as efficiently as possible, an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) solution is required. Such a solution is capable of extracting data from information that is displayed on a (non-machine readible) PDF. Paper invoices must be scanned first in order for an OCR solution to do its work.

The ICreative Recognition Service is a tried and tested OCR solution, fully dedicated to extracting invoice data from PDF invoices. This includes the invoice date, invoice number, IBAN number, VAT number, and net and gross amounts. Once the data is captured it can be fed to your invoice processing software of choice.

Why use it

• No investments in hardware and software licenses
• No separate maintenance costs
• Unlimited scalability
• Performance and uptime guarantee
• Maximum security
• No use and maintenance of recognition templates (free-form technology)
• Managed Online Learning mode for optimizing automatic recognition
• Short implementation time, which includes interfacing with systems in place

 

Specifications

Platform and best practice

The core of the ICreative Recognition service is the Kofax TotalAgility software suite. Kofax has been named a leader in the Scan & Capture domain by independent research agencies for years. ICreative has gained a lot of experience in the last fifteen years in scanning and recognizing invoices with this suite.

Invoices are one of the most difficult types of documents to recognize properly, as there is a lot of information in a relatively small area. This knowledge and expertise is bundled in the ICreative Recognition Service, which essentially captures a proven invoice-specific configuration of Kofax TotalAgility.

Functionality

The main features of the ICreative Recognition Service include:

• Automatic collection of invoices from specific email clients
• Scanning of paper invoices via multifunctional or desktop scanner
• Assignment of correct entity / administration
• Determining the correct creditor based on IBAN and / or VAT number Read header data (e.g. invoice number, date, net, VAT and gross amount)
• Read line level data (e.g. quantity, price per piece, line total, description)
• Recognition of data in almost all languages
• Intuitive (web-based) user interface for validation of recognized values
• Managed Online Learning mode to improve recognition results
• Returning invoices that do not meet your requirements Interface with ERP and / or invoice processing system Export of XML + PDF in any format via any desired distribution channel

 

Safety

Security is oftentimes raised as a drawback of SaaS solutions. And although security is not secure by definition for on-premise solutions, the security for SaaS solutions is of paramount importance. Developments in information security are so fast that internal (IT) departments are often unable, or perhaps unwilling, to keep up. The ICreative Recognition Service is hosted and managed at Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is, in addition to Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure’is s, one of the world’s largest cloud services platform. At AWS, security and maintenance are part of everyday life.

Costs

The costs for using the ICreative Recogniton Service are based on an annual volume commitment and number of users. If the volume commitment is exceeded, an additional fee is charged. This is calculated annually in retrospect to number of invoices and / or invoice pages. A one-off set-up fee is charged as well. This includes the number of days of Professional Services for the intake, realization, test and training supervision and go-live, including project management.

Other documents

Although the ICreative Recognition Service is primarily designed for processing incoming invoices, it is possible to process other document types automatically within this service as well. Contact us to discuss the possibilities.