September 26, 2022

Receipt Data Extraction - Let Automation Help You!

Manual information extraction from receipts costs your business time and money. Learn how an automated system can work wonders for your business.

There are lots of data sources from which your finance team needs to extract information for their regular day-to-day activities. One of them is receipts that can often pose challenges and remain difficult to extract. In this era of automation, tools like Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) platforms are here to make your life easy. This article looks at how automation and IDP can help you with receipt data extraction.

 

Types of Receipts in Business?

Here are some types of receipts your business will have to deal with frequently:

Types of Receipts used in Business

 

·       Purchase invoices

·       Commercial letters

·       Bills of lading

·       Expense reports

·       Proof of transfers and cancellations

·       Material withdrawal slips

·       Tax assessments

·       Commercial receipts

·       Material withdrawing slips

 

Importance of Receipts in Business

Here are some reasons why issuing receipts are important for businesses.

 

Provides a Proof of Services Delivered

One of the most important things to remember when it comes to business is that it's all about providing proof of services delivered. It is especially true when it comes to receipts and contracts. A business owner should prove that their company provided a service or product at a certain time and date. Without proof, they cannot expect customers to pay the bills.

 

Avoids Legal Trouble

Businesses should keep their receipts for proof of purchase in case of a dispute. If someone says that a business owes them money, they can produce the receipts as evidence that the requested goods or services were provided. If a business doesn’t have receipts with acknowledgments, it can become difficult to prove themselves right in case of legal issues.

 

Allows Tax Deduction Claims

Businesses need to keep receipts for all their transactions, especially tax-deductible ones. You may not think your receipts are essential, but they can be the difference between a profitable business and one that loses money. Tax deductions reduce the taxes you pay and can help you save money on your business expenses.

 

Pay Appropriate Taxes

The tax authorities require businesses to keep receipts if they need to prove they paid appropriate taxes on their expenses. Businesses to keep receipts if they're claiming deductions for business-related transactions. Without receipts, the tax authorities can make assumptions about the expenses of a business and its taxes.

 

Manual vs. Automated Receipt Data Extraction

Receipt data extraction is extracting structured receipt data from unstructured text. Manual methods of extraction from receipts can be time-consuming. It requires humans to read through each document and determine and segregate relevant information. It can be tedious and time-consuming when your team deals with large amounts of data.

 

Another reason why manual methods of data extraction from receipts are not ideal is that they require humans to decide which parts of the text to extract as structured data versus the ones that should be left out. Human judgment is often subjective and prone to error, which means there can be errors in the extracted data.

 

Enter automation. Automated information extraction from receipts is one of the most helpful tools for your business today. It helps you save time and money by quickly extracting data from large volumes of receipts, which would otherwise take a lot of time to process manually. It's already finding use in many industries, including retail, healthcare, and manufacturing.

 

Problems with Receipt Data Extraction

Here are several problems your business can face with receipt data extraction:

Issues with Receipt Data Extraction

 

Noisy Pictures

Noisy pictures are a common problem in information extraction, and they can be due to several factors. One of the most common is too much noise in the picture itself, such as shadows or other objects that don't belong in the image. Another common cause is that the image is too dark or light, which makes it difficult to recognize the text it contains.

 

Camera Motion and Shake

Camera shake occurs when an image gets clicked with a camera that is unable to capture them accurately. The result is an image that contains multiple parts of the original object, but they are not in focus and may be blurred.

 

Camera shake is a problem that usually affects the quality of receipt data extraction from documents. It impacts the accuracy of the extracted information as image quality gets reduced, which leads to errors in the extracted information.

 

Watermarks

Watermarks are a common way to protect the intellectual property of documents. They often get applied to documents to prevent them from being copied or tampered with. Watermarks can be very effective at protecting documents, but they have some drawbacks that affect information extraction.

The first issue with watermarks is they change the document's appearance. It becomes harder to read and understand the text within the documents. Another issue is that watermarks may damage the underlying document if not applied correctly, leading to more problems than just illegible text.

 

Benefits of using an Automated Information Extraction Tool for Receipts

Here are some reasons you need to automate the process of receipt data extraction.

 

Improves Accuracy

When you use a manual tool, you are at risk of making mistakes or missing important information. But with an automated solution, your chances of getting everything right are much higher.

 

Automated information extraction tools use machine learning and natural language processing to process a document and extract relevant information. You can train the tool to identify the relevant information and ignore data that isn't relevant, which makes it more reliable than manual extraction.

 

Increases Productivity

In a world that is constantly changing, it's crucial to stay ahead of the curve. One way to do this is by increasing your productivity. When you use an automated information extraction tool for receipts, you can enhance your productivity.

 

You will be able to review data faster and more accurately. When you're not spending time on repetitive tasks, you can spend it on tasks that require your advanced skills. It will also enable you to make better decisions about how to spend your time and resources, so you can focus on what matters most—your customers.

 

Saves Time

When you're running a business, time is money. And if you're like most business owners, you probably spend a lot of time on tasks that can get automated. It is only natural to want to save time wherever you can—and one of the best ways to do that is by using an automated information extraction tool for receipts.

 

With an automated system, you can automatically identify information from your receipts, so it doesn't take up any more of your valuable time than necessary. Instead of manually scanning through all those receipts, copying down the information, and then inputting it into your system manually, you can upload them directly into the software and let the program do all the heavy lifting for you.

 

Reduces Costs

Automated information extraction tools are excellent for reducing the cost of information extraction. By using an automated tool, you can avoid hiring employees who would otherwise manually extract data from receipts. This is a cost-effective way for you to keep your costs down.

 

For example, if you have a team of five people spending 10 hours a week manually extracting information from receipts, that's 50 hours each week. That's a lot of wasted time. An automated tool can save you all that time and money.

 

How VisionERA helps with Automated Receipt Data Extraction?

VisionERA is an Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) platform that offers advanced capabilities to automate the entire receipt data extraction process. You can process receipts of any format, type, and size most seamlessly. VisionERA has training on real-life documents and features cutting-edge AI and ML algorithms.

 

These aspects help you remain assured about the low processing time and increased accuracy. A digitized receipt data extraction process will also allow your finance team to work on other crucial areas of the process that need more attention.

 

Besides improving the accuracy of the extracted information, VisionERA allows you to experience improved productivity and reduced costs. The results-based pricing of VisionERA is another reason you cannot miss it. You only need to pay when you start achieving the desired results for your business.

 

Contact us today, and we will schedule a free demo of VisionERA.

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