May 7, 2022
•
4 minutes
Are your team getting tired of invoice processing? Receiving invoices via email and manually inputting the data into your accounting system each day is a much hated task that never seems to be done. Even worse is typing the information into a Google sheet or Excel document, checking and checking again to make sure no one mistypes a figure that could cost your company thousands. There is a better way to complete invoice data extraction, and it doesn’t have to cost the earth. Did you know that you can automate data extraction from invoices?
Why Automate Data Extraction From Invoices?
Here are just a few of the reasons you should implement a software solution to automate data extraction from invoices:
Improve Efficiency
You might have the best team of professionals who are whizzes at manually inputting invoice data. No matter how good they get, it’s still a slow process when compared with invoice automation.
Automated invoice processing might take around 2 seconds per invoice, while manually inputting the data could take a few minutes. Manually processing 100 invoices, taking 2 minutes to do each = 3.33 hours. Automate data extraction from invoices, and it could be done in 3.33 minutes instead!
Digital Transformation
When businesses complete a digital transformation, often the last thing to go are paper invoices and manual input methods. Instead, leaders focus more on moving to a paperless document system and cloud-based storage. However, manually completing processes like data entry can really draw your people back to the old ways of doing things. To achieve a successful digital transformation, you need to move to a technology-led way of doing everything – including invoice data extraction.
With invoice capture software that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to recognise data categories, intelligent automation is the answer to your invoicing issues.
Cost-Effective
Think back to those 100 invoices that might take 2 minutes each to input – 3.33 hours of a staff member’s time costs money. By contrast, automated document processing costs anywhere from 10 – 25 cents per invoice; $10-$25 for the full 100. That’s a huge cost saving, plus your staff will be free to spend their time on more value-adding tasks.
How to Automate Data Extraction from Invoices
Interested in how you can start extracting data from unstructured invoices and turning it into structured data? The best way to automate data extraction from invoices is by using Affinda’s invoice extractor. There are two options for using this deep learning tool:
- Online Tool
The online version of the invoice extractor can be accessed and used by anyone. This is an excellent way to test out the software and see if this intelligent document processing solution is for you. We recommend that you take the opportunity to rigorously test the software by uploading a variety of documents – both scanned invoices and digital invoices, in various formats.
To try out the online tool, simply visit invoice extractor and upload your files. You’ll then be able to view the output from the invoices and check how the tool has categorised each section. Review this thoroughly to confirm that everything is correct, and then click ‘export all’ to save the results. You can download this in Excel, JSON, or XML format.
- API
Once you have tested out the data extraction tool, the best way to implement it in your organisation is by using the API. If you have a developer, they can integrate the API with your accounting software so you have just one system where you can upload an invoice and pull that data through to your software. Interested in how exactly you can automate data extraction from invoices? Contact us today to speak to an expert. Our sales team understands the technology in-depth and can explain to you exactly how to embed it in your organisation.
