Let us set up a scenario for you: You’re a business owner and must keep track of hundreds of transactions every day. All your customers are provided with a receipt for proof of purchase. You keep a copy for internal auditing.
With us so far? Okay. You come to the end of the month and discover that your turnover (or net sales) is below what you anticipated. You even know personally of transactions throughout the month that don’t have a receipt.
How can you stop this problem happening again? Easy. Employ expense data extraction technology.
What Is EDE Technology?
So, to put It simply, EDE technology is the evolution of standard data capture extraction that extends optical character recognition (OCR), AI and deep learning techniques to identify and extract information from unstructured content.
Take the format of receipts, for instance. A receipt will typically have the following information:
- Name, address and contact details of the retailer
- An order ID – a unique code of letters and numbers
- Where the goods or services were purchased (in-store or online)
- The name of the sales assistant who took payment
And that’s just the first aspect of a receipt. Underneath these details you’ll have:
- The number of and name of your purchase(s)
- Subtotal
- Sales tax
- Order total
The you’ll have:
- Method of payment underneath (debit/credit card, PayPal, cash etc)
- Authorisation code
- Maybe a Thank You message or marketing message, say ‘Get 20% off on early doors specials on Wednesdays
That’s eleven separate lines. Now, here’s the most important part: Although most receipts have a similar format, they’re never the same. If nothing else, the date and time will always be different, especially is the transaction is counted in seconds!
So, you start to see then issue. Extracting information from different types receipts is not an easy task and needs a degree of ingenuity that only intelligent OCR for receipt recognition can accomplish.
Fortunately, when you use the latest AI-driven intelligent EDE to capture receipt or document data, like that employed by Tabscanner, not only will you never have to worry about losing a receipt again but, document data will be identified and transferred to a digital format. We should know, we’ve successfully extracted more than 100,000,000 receipts worldwide!
OCR Is the Key to Efficient Expense Data Extraction
OCR technology has evolved exponentially over the last few decades. The technology can now deliver 98% accuracy when transferring paper expense data to digital format.
Indeed, such is the prowess of the technology, employing OCR-driven EDE is now a requisite for any business to manage their finances. Better still, the technology benefits business of all descriptions and sizes.
AI and deep learning OCR are the only technologies to return accurate line items from any POS receipt in the world. Seamless software integration can be achieved through a reliable and robust API (application protocol interface) meaning that EDE is as easy to use as it is efficient across various platforms.
Benefits of EDE You Need to Know
Let us explain the benefits as straightforward as possible. Once you’ve read them all, we’re sure that you’ll be thinking, ‘how do I get hold of EDE platforms?
- Eliminates time-consuming data entry – automating tasks allows you to free-up valuable employee time, allowing them to concentrate on more important aspects of their role
- Money saving – business can save money by having to employ manpower to manage data entry or purchasing duties
- Enhanced storage and accessibility – extracted data is stored in the Cloud. This means that important data will never be lost and can be accessed with ease 24/7
- Reduced capacity for errors – manual entry is problematic because of human error and a single wrong digit on a spreadsheet can cause
- Optimal compliance – businesses can integrate their expense policies into EDE OCR software which makes adhering to operational compliance a breeze
Tabscanner has developed the world’s most accurate receipt OCR. Power your software with diligent line-by-line data extraction, lightning fast Cloud API, and intelligent data capture with multi-lingual support.
For complete transparency with all your business finances or manage myriad of transactions confidently, you need EDE OCR for receipt recognition. Period.