AP Invoice Automation Data Capture That is More Accurate and Cheaper than OCR Software
If you are seeking AP invoice automation data capture that is more accurate AND cheaper than optical character recognition (OCR) data capture software and hardware, you have come to the right place.
Rather than investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in OCR technology, you can get automated and verified AP invoice data capture with accuracy rates approaching 100% with minimal upfront costs and a simple small per-invoice fee.
Sound too good to be true? It’s not!
Because whether you select our A/P One AP automation solution designed for small to midsize companies or our CoreIntegrator Enterprise solution designed for large corporations or organizations’ workflows, you can use our CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service to automatically enter and verify key AP invoice data into your system.
And now you can even use our Data Capture Service as a stand-alone product to capture invoice images and data to upload to your ERP or accounting system.
OCR is Better than Nothing…but Far From Perfect. Especially for AP Invoices.
If you have ever worked with OCR technology – or even had a demo of it – you know that OCR software does a decent job of capturing data. But it’s not perfect.
Although OCR technology has improved over the past decades and continues to improve, achieving 99% or 100% accuracy with OCR alone is still not possible.
This is especially true when it comes to AP invoice data. Invoices can be complicated documents. And no two companies’ invoices are the same.
Worse, sometimes the data contained in invoices simply must be ‘interpreted’ by a human.
For example, is the key invoice amount data ‘amount due’ or ‘balance due’ or ‘amount due now’? Or is it ‘balance due with early payment’!?
Another example: there are lots of dates on some invoices. Should the system read the ‘invoice date’, ‘date due’, ‘due date for early payment discount’ or ‘date due without penalty’.
OCR software is smart, but sometimes a human is required to decide what number or date is the correct one.
More OCR Software Increases Accuracy – But Also Cost!
There are many ways to optimize OCR accuracy including machine learning, increasing contrast, scaling size, binarization, removing noise, deskewing and zone analysis. And of course, the more optimized your OCR system is the more it is going to cost.
But even employing all of these techniques, most OCR software AP automation solutions advertise an accuracy rate of up to 90%. But in our experience that number is more like 70% on average. Which means 10 to 30 out of 100 characters will be wrong after OCR data capture.
And since a single missed decimal point on an AP invoice can translate to thousands of dollars in overpayments or underpayments, this level of accuracy is simply unacceptable when an organization is processing thousands of invoices.
So even after making all of these investments in OCR software and hardware, invoice data capture still requires detailed manual review and verification by your AP staff to achieve 99% or 100% accuracy. They’ll need to read through the whole invoice to double check every field for accuracy and correct between 10 to 30 data fields out of every 100.
It is true that AP invoice automation featuring OCR data capture makes your AP staff a lot more efficient. Rather than manually entering data they are reviewing, verifying and, where needed, correcting OCR-entered data.
But that’s not nearly as efficient as your AP staff could be with automated AND verified data capture.
CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service – Verified for More Accurate Invoice Data Capture than OCR Software
CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service combines technology with human review to achieve 99.9% accuracy on AP invoice data capture.
Using CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service, no expensive OCR software or hardware is required. Instead, your AP staff or your vendors simply upload or email invoices to our system. Invoice data then appears in your AP clerk’s work queue within 1 business day with important data automatically entered in your system ready to be processed.
And best of all, at least two humans verify the accuracy of that invoice data by the time it is loaded to your company’s AP work queue. And if there are any discrepancies then up to four humans will check, re-check and verify that your AP invoice data is accurate.
So CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service not only automates the data capture, it automates data verification!
See how the CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service can make your AP staff 500 times more efficient:
CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service is included with our A/P One solution. And it can be added onto our CoreIntegrator Enterprise solution.
We Alert Your AP Staff to Any Invoices Requiring Further Review
With CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service, we automate your AP invoice data through our rigorous automated AND human verification process. So you can rest assured that your data is 99.9% accurate.
And any time there is a discrepancy, a question, or even a doubt about a piece of data, we flag that invoice data for your AP staff to review.
Our goal is for you to have 100% confidence in the data provided by our Data Capture Service. Our zero tolerance for data errors means we err on the side of flagging an invoice for your internal review rather than pushing potentially wrong data.
We use a rigorous approach to data accuracy perfection. Yet we generally flag fewer than 2% of invoices for your internal review.
This means that your AP staff are truly freed from repetitive data tasks. No more data entry. And they can quickly review entered data and only have to verify flagged invoice data.
This positions your AP staff to spend their time on strategic procure to pay activities like data analysis and vendor relations rather than data entry and verification.
In addition, CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service allows your AP staff to process AP invoices from home. A critical feature during the COVID-19 pandemic and a key feature to any business continuity or disaster recovery plan going forward.
Cost of OCR for AP Invoices vs. CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service
OCR Systems Are Expensive
OCR systems can get very expensive. And the more accuracy you want from them the more expensive they get. Costs tend to run amok in an OCR implementation as the hardware and software necessary to power OCR are all complex and costly.
Because of this, OCR sotware that gets you to 70% to 90% accuracy can easily have upfront costs in the six figures.
And after paying to implement OCR you will still be paying your AP staff to carefully review, verify and correct every single data field for every single invoice anyway!
CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service Costs Less for Better Accuracy
CoreIntegrator Data Capture Services operates under a subscription model. And we have tiers starting at up to 250 invoices per month at around $2 per invoice. From there we offer escalating subscription tiers. And the subscription cost per invoice goes down as monthly invoice volume increases.
If you are not already a CoreIntegrator customer there may be an implementation fee for CoreIntegrator Data Capture Services that includes installation, configuration and training. But that fee is a small fraction of the cost of an OCR implementation.
Most importantly, with CoreIntegrator Data Capture Services your AP staff will only have to look at flagged invoice data. Which frees them to add massive value to your company in other ways.
CoreIntegrator Smart AP Further Automates AP Processing
CoreIntegrator solutions also include Smart AP robotic process automation (RPA) that further automates your accounts payable invoice processing.
Smart AP automation technology is fully customizable to your AP processes based on any variable you choose including vendor, company, department, GL code (and many more). Or even any combination of those variables.
Combined with Smart AP, CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service creates truly automated AP processing and verification.
Bottom Line – Better AP Automation Accuracy for Less Cost than OCR Software
When it comes to AP automation, at some point only the human touch will create 99.9% accuracy.
You can implement OCR software and hardware to automate data capture. But you’ll still need your AP staff to carefully review and verify every invoice’s data against the invoice.
Or you can implement CoreIntegrator Data Capture Service. Verified by up to 4 human reviewers for only a couple dollars (at most) per invoice.
