SimpleInvoice is a preconfigured solution that uses the OCR and dictionary matching functionality of the SimpleIndex scanning and indexing software to automatically scan, name, and organize incoming invoices into your chosen folder structure of searchable PDF files.
SimpleInvoice requires minimal configuration to get started. It comes with everything you need to index most common invoice styles. The customer and vendor lists, as well as your particular Purchase Order and Invoice number styles, can be customized for your company.
Use SimpleInvoice to:
- Automatically receive and enter invoices in your accounting software, especially QuickBooks
- Create full-text searchable invoice files
- Create an organized filing system for archiving invoices
- Quickly find specific invoices based on vendor, date, invoice number and other index fields
Please Contact Us to find out more about SimpleInvoice!
Zone OCR and Dynamic OCR
Many document scanning solutions use Zone OCR to obtain index data from the page.
SimpleIndex improves upon this time-tested but ultimately limited model with its Dynamic OCR feature.
Let’s look at the difference between the two methods:
Zone OCR
Zone OCR is used to read document indexes or tags from text on the page. It is a great way to automate the data entry associated with scanning documents.
However, there are several limitations to zone OCR that must be overcome:
- Index information must be in the exact same place on every page
- Documents shift and skew during scanning, causing the zones to not line up
- If surrounding lines or text on the document are too close, they can encroach on the zone
Dynamic OCR
SimpleIndex overcomes these limitations by using Dynamic OCR technology to locate the desired text even when it moves around on the page. Our simplified version of Dynamic OCR works great for many types of documents at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.
- Index information can appear anywhere on any page
- Unwanted characters are automatically ignored
- Find unique patterns of letters and numbers using Template Matching
(Social Security #, Date, etc.) - Use Dictionary Matching to find a value from a list of possible values
(Vendor Name, Document Type, etc.)
Dynamic OCR Examples
In the video we see how SimpleIndex approaches a typical Zone OCR example. With SimpleIndex you can use large zones that give a wide margin for error. Template and Dictionary matching are then used to extract the 7-digit Account Number, 6-digit Order Number and Company Name. SimpleIndex discards the surrounding text and keeps the correct value.
Another common example is finding a unique identifier, for example a social security number, that could appear anywhere on the page. Simply enter the template ###-##-#### and SimpleIndex will search the full OCR text until it finds a match. Since only one social security number is likely to appear on the page, a match on this pattern is almost certainly the required value.
With dictionary matching, you can give SimpleIndex a list of possible values and it will automatically search the zone or page for each possible value until it finds a match.
Many dynamic forms processing applications can be implemented using these simple algorithms. This makes SimpleIndex far more versatile than other zone OCR solutions that require the index value to be in the exact same location on every page. Yet SimpleIndex costs only a fraction of the price!
SimpleIndex‘s dynamic forms processing can greatly speed up data entry by eliminating a good percentage of indexing work. For many this can put the labor cost of scanning within their reach.
Dynamic OCR can also be applied to MS Office and PDF files, creating a fully automated process for intelligently indexing and reorganizing electronic documents.
Amazon AWS Textract Cloud OCR
With Textract you can capture data from almost any type of form, including handwritten ones! Textract identifies labeled text anywhere on the document and returns the label text along with the corresponding value. Map the labels to index fields in SimpleIndex and you are ready to capture that data no matter where it appears on the page.
Textract uses machine learning with a huge model based on the billions of pages processed using Textract to provide the most accurate OCR and form field extraction solution available.
By default, Textract is only available as an API and requires custom coding to integrate it into your document workflows. SimpleIndex turns it into a fully-featured document batch document and data processing app that is ready to use out-of-the-box.
Since there are no templates to configure or train, setup can be done in hours instead of days or weeks months required by other enterprise data capture solutions.
Pay-as-you-go pricing makes SimpleIndex with Textract the most affordable way to batch process forms for projects with less than 50,000 pages per year to process, especially if you need to read handwriting or have forms with many layout variations.
Wiki: How to configure AWS Textract OCR in SimpleIndex
Support for Regular Expressions
SimpleIndex OCR has a simple built-in template format, as well as support for Regular Expressions. Regular Expressions (RegEx for short) let you define complex search patterns to extract matching values from the text. This greatly enhances the functionality of the dynamic OCR in SimpleIndex, making it capable of finding variable-length fields with no distinct pattern.
Regular Expressions are a commonly used in text parsing applications. The Perl programming language makes extensive use of RegEx, as do UNIX utilities like “grep”. Many programmers and IT personnel are already familiar with RegEx and can create complex expressions without specific training.
Click here for a reference guide to Regular Expressions
New OCR Features in Version 10
SimpleIndex 10 includes major upgrades to the OCR and Bar Code engines
- Amazon Textract Cloud OCR option added, with settings for Text, Forms and Invoice & Receipt extraction.
- FineReader Engine has been upgraded to version 11. Offers improved accuracy and speed when processing large documents.
- Full-page OCR to Word (docx), Rich Text (rtf), Open Office (odt), Excel (xlsx), PowerPoint (pptx), ePub Zip (epub), FictionBook (fb2), HTML (htm), XML (xml), Alto XML (alto.xml).
- MRC Compression for PDF files (Mixed Raster Content).
- OCR language pack includes all available Tesseract languages including Hindi, Tamil, Arabic, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Hebrew and many more.
How to Configure SimpleIndex OCR
Our Wiki help has extensive information on how to configure OCR for various document and data capture scenarios.
- Zone OCR read data in a specific location
- Template matching to match unique patterns
- Dictionary matching to match a list of possible values
- OCR Options OCR job settings that apply to all fields
- File Formats that can be output by OCR
- Languages supported by OCR
- FineReader versus Tesseract OCR engines
- Searchable PDF with MRC compression
- OCR to Field for point and click OCR during verification
- Cloud OCR using Textract
Watch this Simple Software University training video to see how to configure and run an OCR job with SimpleIndex.
KB Articles for Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
- Language Pack for Standard/Tesseract OCR
- Languages Supported in SimpleSoftware OCR Engines
- What is Document Imaging?
- Change the Dictionary Separator Value
- Change the OCR Font or Type
- Regular Expression (RegEx) - Syntax or Type
- Autonumber Increment Value
- I'm using full page OCR. The information is all appearing in the txt file but it is losing format about half way through. Data to the right is ending up at the end of the txt doc. Can this be fixed?
- Is there a way to just use part of a bar code or OCR value? For example, extract "50" from the value "124450"
- If I have a form which is filled manually by hand, can SimpleIndex read the data from it?
SimpleIndex 10.1 with Textract!
SimpleIndex 10.1 is now available, and it adds a huge new feature — Amazon Textract!
The Cloud OCR License adds the Amazon AWS Textract Cloud OCR engine to SimpleIndex, unlocking a bunch of great new capabilities:
- The highest OCR accuracy of any available engine, using Amazon’s massive machine learning model
- Handprint recognition, including unconstrained and cursive writing
- Automatic form field extraction
- Accounts Payable Invoices and Receipts extraction
- Pay-as-you-go licensing
The form field extraction feature is pretty amazing. It locates any labeled field on the page and its corresponding value regardless of the page layout, even if the value is handwritten. It makes SimpleIndex able to do jobs that once required enterprise data capture software like Kofax, AnyDoc, or ReadSoft, but at a fraction of the price!
SimpleIndex works with your existing AWS account. For standard OCR it costs about $0.01 per page, for invoices and forms it is about $0.065 per page. This price can vary by region.
- Published in Release Notes
Accounts Payable Automation with RPA
In just a few clicks, you can an inbox full of invoices to data entered into QuickBooks Online (or any other accounting system) with SimpleIndex and Astro RPA.
The first step is to run our SimpleInvoice job to capture the data from your invoices. Then, with one more click, fire up the robot and grab a cup of coffee while it takes over the job of entering the vendor names, invoice numbers, dates, dollar amounts and expense categories into your QuickBooks Online company file.
Both processes require minimal configuration to get started, so an hour or two of configuration replaces endless time spent manually entering your bills into QuickBooks. End the tedium. It’s why we created robots, right?
Use SimpleInvoice and a Astro RPA robot to:
- Automatically process and capture the data from your invoices
- Enter the data into any accounting system (QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, NetSuite, etc.)
- Brew and drink instead of copy and paste
SimpleInvoice comes with any SimpleIndex license. Our Accounts Payable Automation Bot can be added and customized for your accounting software and workflow.
If your invoice workflow requires line item capture, GL coding, or other advanced features, check out these Enterprise Invoice Processing solutions.
Some initial setup is required, and we can help you out with that too. Our Professional Services department can have you up and running in just a couple of hours.
Please Contact Us to find out more about automating your data entry time thieves with robots made in Astro RPA!
Language Pack for Standard/Tesseract OCR
All versions of the SimpleIndex software include OCR with the Standard/Tesseract OCR engine. The SimpleIndex download only includes a limited set of languages with the installation. If the language you would like to OCR with SimpleIndex isn’t one of the languages included then you can download your required language(s). Once you do this you will be able to pick the language that you want to read with the Standard/Tesseract OCR engine.
- Go to the Tesseract Language Download Site
- Select the language you want and download or download all the language
- Copy the language files (unzip if downloading more than one language) to this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\Tesseract\v3.04\tessdata
- Close and Reopen SimpleIndex and the downloaded languages will now be selectable
Languages Supported in SimpleSoftware OCR Engines
SimpleSoftware OCR engines are using two different systems for language support. In the end languages supported by your OCR is based on your version of SimpleIndex installed, any addons (SimpleIndex Server, SimpleCoversheet, and so on) do not add any additional language support.
All SimpleSoftware products have Tesseract 3.02 OCR languages support. You can learn more about it and download additional language libraries HERE. And you can check and add more OCR languages libraries supported with Tesseract on your station here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\Tesseract\v3.02\tessdata
SimpleIndex Pro and SimpleIndex OCR are using FineReader engine. It has one of the largest libraries of supported OCR languages. You can check OCR languages supported with FineReader on your station here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\OCRLanguages.txt
Abkhaz
Adyghe
Afrikaans
Agul
Albanian
Altaic
Armenian Eastern
Armenian Grabar
Armenian Western
Awar
Aymara
Azeri Cyrillic
Azeri Latin
Bashkir
Basque
Belarusian
Bemba
Blackfoot
Breton
Bugotu
Bulgarian
Buryat
Catalan
Chamorro
Chechen
Chukcha
Chuvash
Corsican
Crimean Tatar
Croatian
Crow
Czech
Danish
Dargwa
Dungan
Dutch Belgian
Dutch Standard
English
English Australian
English Belize
English Canadian
English Caribbean
English Ireland
English Jamaica
English Law
English Medical
English New Zealand
English Philippines
English South Africa
English Trinidad
English United Kingdom
English United States
English Zimbabwe
Eskimo Cyrillic
Eskimo Latin
Esperanto
Estonian
Even
Evenki
Faeroese
Fijian
Finnish
French
French Belgian
French Canadian
French Luxembourg
French Monaco
French Standard
French Swiss
Frisian
Friulian
Gaelic Scottish
Gagauz
Galician
Ganda
German
German Austrian
German Law
German Liechtenstein
German Luxembourg
German Medical
German New Spelling
German New Spelling Law
German New Spelling Medical
German Standard
German Swiss
Greek
Guarani
Hani
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hungarian
Icelandic
Ido
Indonesian
Ingush
Interlingua
Irish
Italian
Italian Standard
Italian Swiss
Kabardian
Kalmyk
Karachay Balkar
Karakalpak
Kasub
Kawa
Kazakh
Khakas
Khanty
Kikuyu
Kirgiz
Kongo
Koryak
Kpelle
Kumyk
Kurdish
Lak
Lappish
Latin
Latvian
Latvian Gothic
Lezgin
Lithuanian
Lithuanian Classic
Luba
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay Brunei Darussalam
Malay Malaysian
Malinke
Maltese
Mansi
Maori
Mari
Maya
Miao
Minankabaw
Mohawk
Mongol
Mordvin
Nahuatl
Nenets
Nivkh
Nogay
Norwegian Bokmal
Norwegian Nynorsk
Null
Nyanja
Occidental
Ojibway
Old English
Old French
Old German
Old Italian
Old Spanish
Ossetic
Papiamento
Pidgin English
Polish
Portuguese Brazilian
Portuguese Standard
Provencal
Quechua
Rhaeto Romanic
Romanian
Romanian Moldavia
Romany
Ruanda
Rundi
Russian
Russian Moldavia
Russian Old Spelling
Samoan
Selkup
Serbian Cyrillic
Serbian Latin
Shona
Sioux
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Sorbian
Sotho
Spanish
Spanish Argentina
Spanish Bolivia
Spanish Chile
Spanish Colombia
Spanish Costa Rica
Spanish Dominican Republic
Spanish Ecuador
Spanish El Salvador
Spanish Guatemala
Spanish Honduras
Spanish Mexican
Spanish Modern Sort
Spanish Nicaragua
Spanish Panama
Spanish Paraguay
Spanish Peru
Spanish Puerto Rico
Spanish Traditional Sort
Spanish Uruguay
Spanish Venezuela
Sunda
Swahili
Swazi
Swedish
Swedish Finland
Tabassaran
Tagalog
Tahitian
Tajik
Tatar
Tinpo
Tongan
Tswana
Tun
Turkish
Turkmen
Tuvin
Udmurt
Uighur Cyrillic
Uighur Latin
Ukrainian
Uzbek Cyrillic
Uzbek Latin
Visayan
Welsh
Wolof
Xhosa
Yakut
Yiddish
Zapotec
Zulu
How to activate SimpleExport?
Activation Instructions
SimpleExport Option A – New SimpleIndex Installation:
If you are installing SimpleExport on the Windows computer for the first time first download SimpleIndex from the SimpleIndex Demo Installation Link.
Once the SimpleIndex software has been downloaded install the software from the downloaded installation file.
During the installation process you will be asked to enter your Serial Code or Serial Codes.
Single Serial Code:
Multiple Serial Codes (separate with a comma):
After you have entered your Serial Code(s) click Next to move through the installation process.
Once the installation is complete you will receive the following Window:
SimpleExport Option B – SimpleExport Already Installed:
If you have already installed the SimpleExport software then all you need to do is Activate the demo.
Open SimpleExport from your Windows Start menu.
Enter your Serial Number into the “Enter Serial Number to Activate” field in the Activation Window.
Click the Activate button to activate the license.
You will receive a confirmation that the license was properly activated and your license type will be displayed next to the “License Type:” section of the Activation Window.
SimpleExport Option C – SimpleExport Installed on Computer Not Connected to the Internet:
If you would like to install SimpleExport on a computer that doesn’t have an internet connection an Offline Activation will need to be done.
First fully install the SimpleExport software without activation.
Open SimpleExport from your Windows Start menu.
Enter your Serial Number into the “Enter Serial Number to Activate” field in the Activation Window.
Click the “Offline Activation” button.
Click OK in the “SimpleExport Offline Activation” window, which asks you to call or email for an Offline Activation.
Select the license version that you ordered in the “SimpleExport Version” drop down.
Then either call (865) 637-8986 option 2 or email support@simpleindex.com with the Authorization Request Code. We will the provide you with the Activation Key.
Enter the Activation Key and then click the Offline Activation button.
Maintenance is optional, but covers tech support and upgrades for the software. Please consider purchasing maintenance if you haven’t already. Please refer to Simple Software Maintenance Agreement for more information.
Will your SimpleQB allow me to scan in old invoices or bank statements directly into QuickBooks?
SimpleQB enables you to scan and link documents to QuickBooks transactions through a custom menu. When you have an invoice, purchase order, work order, bank reconciliation or other transaction open, simply click the Scan menu to scan a document and save it with that transaction.
To view the documents for a transaction, just click the View menu.
You can also use SimpleSearch to find and view documents scanned with SimpleQB without the QuickBooks interface.
- Published in Database & Retrieval, SimpleQB
Can SimpleQB be used to scan in receipts and invoices which are then matched to the files kept in the QuickBooks System?
Yes, That is exactly what SimpleQB was designed to do.
SimpleQB uses the information from your QuickBooks documents to file images under the appropriate customer/vendor, document type, document number and date. Simply pull up the corresponding file in QuickBooks and click scan!
- Published in SimpleQB
How do you train the OCR engine for better accuracy?
Training has been removed with version 7 due to the addition of the ABBYY FineReader OCR engine.
- Published in OCR
How can I improve recognition rates for my OCR fields?
There are several things you can do to improve accuracy for OCR.
- Scan at 300dpi, black & white for best results.
- Adjust the scan settings to remove background noise and improve the definition of characters.
- For Zone OCR, field recognition can often vary based on the surrounding white space and text in the zone. Try varying the size of the zone to achieve optimal results.
- For template matching, make sure all variations of the field format are included in the template list.
- For dictionary matching, add common variations and OCR mistakes to the “thesaurus” list.
- On the Zones & OCR tab (accessed from the Job Options) you can adjust the Max Errors setting to allow for more mistakes in the dictionary matching process.
- Use the Strip Spaces, Strip Characters, Replace Characters and Case Fixing options to standardize the field format prior to matching.
Please refer to the SimpleIndex Wiki for details on how to configure these options.
Related Links
- SimpleIndex.com – Zone OCR
- SimpleIndex.com – Dynamic OCR
- SimpleOCR.com – OCR Guide
- SimpleIndex Wiki – OCR
- SimpleIndex Wiki – OCR Options
- SimpleIndex Wiki – Zone OCR
- SimpleIndex Wiki – Full Page OCR
- SimpleIndex Wiki – Zones & OCR Settings
- SimpleIndex Wiki – OCR to Field
- SimpleIndex Wiki – OCR Text View
- SimpleIndex Wiki – Template & Dictionary Matching OCR
- SimpleIndex Wiki – OMR and OCR Document Separation
- Published in OCR
SimpleInvoice Invoice Processing Solution
SimpleInvoice is a preconfigured solution that uses the OCR and dictionary matching functionality of the SimpleIndex scanning and indexing software to automatically capture key information from invoices needed for Accounts Payable processing.
SimpleInvoice requires minimal configuration to get started, and comes with everything you need to capture most common invoice styles.
Use SimpleInvoice to:
- Capture data from paper and electronic invoices in a single workflow
- Automatically receive and enter Accounts Payable data in your accounting software
- Create full-text searchable invoice files
- Create an organized filing system for archiving invoices
- Quickly find and view invoices based on vendor, date, invoice number, or full-text search
- Direct integration with QuickBooks on-premise using SimpleQB
- Works with RPA bots to integrate with QuickBooks Online and other accounting systems
Uses Templates, Not Training
Most data on an invoice matches common patterns like dates and total amounts. The one exception is the invoice number, which has a different format for every vendor.
Using the Template Autofill feature in SimpleIndex, you to spell out the specific OCR pattern of a vendor’s invoice number as a column in your Vendor database. When processing invoices, it first identifies the vendor, then searches for the matching pattern in the text to find the invoice number.
This solution is far simpler than the machine learning algorithms employed by enterprise invoice OCR systems, which is why SimpleIndex is a fraction of the cost. It’s also simpler than other template-based systems that require you to locate every field for every vendor.
Enterprise Accounts Payable Automation
If your AP workflow requires advanced features like line item capture, GL coding, PO matching, VAT calculation, complex approval workflows, or if you have thousands of vendors to process, then an enterprise invoice processing solution is more appropriate.
Don’t worry, we can help you out with that too!
Find Out More
SimpleInvoice is included for free with any SimpleIndex license. Download SimpleIndex Now!
Some initial setup is required, and we can help you out with that too. Our Professional Services department can have you up and running in just a couple of hours.
Check out SimpleQB or our AP Automation RPA Bot to see how we integrate with your accounting software to automate the entry of transaction data.
Please Contact Us to find out more about SimpleInvoice!
Full-Page OCR Indexing Demo
This sample job demonstrates the ability for SimpleIndex to convert scanned documents to searchable PDF files and extract index data from the OCR text. It also demonstrates the multi-user workflow capabilities.
Step 1 uses a full-page OCR process on each image.
Field data is extracted from the full-page text using template and dictionary matching algorithms.
This is done in Pre-Index mode to allow unattended processing.
Data is saved to a database so it can be reviewed and corrected in Step 2.
Step 2 uses Database Update mode to find images with missing index values and allow the user to manually enter the correct data.
Step 3 uses a SimpleSearch configuration to search and view the indexed images, including full text searches.
Find Out More
- Download or get an Online Demo
- Dynamic OCR Features in SimpleIndex
- Full-Page OCR Wiki Pages
- OCR Features and Settings Wiki Pages
- OCR Software Guide on SimpleOCR
FAQ Related to Full-Page OCR
Zone OCR with Template Matching
This video shows the Zone OCR Invoice Processing sample job. Zone OCR is the traditional method for extracting index data from printed text appearing in fixed locations on every page.
The video also shows how Zone OCR is enhanced with SimpleIndex‘s Template Matching and Dictionary Matching features, giving you much more margin for error than other solutions.
Find Out More
- Download or get an Online Demo
- Dynamic OCR Features in SimpleIndex
- OCR Features and Settings Wiki Pages
- OCR Software Guide on SimpleOCR
FAQ Related to Zone OCR
- Zone OCR and Dynamic OCR
- Language Pack for Standard/Tesseract OCR
- Languages Supported in SimpleSoftware OCR Engines
- Change the Dictionary Separator Value
- Change the OCR Font or Type
- Regular Expression (RegEx) - Syntax or Type
- I'm using full page OCR. The information is all appearing in the txt file but it is losing format about half way through. Data to the right is ending up at the end of the txt doc. Can this be fixed?
- Is there a way to just use part of a bar code or OCR value? For example, extract "50" from the value "124450"
Video Demos
These videos demonstrate several ways SimpleIndex® can automatically index different types of documents. If you are new to SimpleIndex, watching these videos is the easiest way to see what it can do. You can follow along using the sample files included in the SimpleIndex Trial.
- Zone OCR with template matching
- Document barcode recognition
- PDF OCR text parsing
- Sort and index MS Office documents
- Indexing with full-text OCR
- Running jobs from an icon
The sample files are copied to your Configuration Folder when you run the SimpleIndex Trial for the first time. If you can’t find the samples, copy them with the Global Settings Wizard in the File menu.
Compare Major Scanning Solutions
Integrated Solutions Built with SimpleIndex
Zone OCR with Template Matching
Document Barcode Recognition
PDF OCR Text Parsing
Sort and Index MS Office Documents
Full Page OCR Invoice Processing
KB Articles for Optical Character Recognition
- Language Pack for Standard/Tesseract OCR
- Languages Supported in SimpleSoftware OCR Engines
- What is Document Imaging?
- Change the Dictionary Separator Value
- Change the OCR Font or Type
- Regular Expression (RegEx) - Syntax or Type
- Autonumber Increment Value
- I'm using full page OCR. The information is all appearing in the txt file but it is losing format about half way through. Data to the right is ending up at the end of the txt doc. Can this be fixed?
- Is there a way to just use part of a bar code or OCR value? For example, extract "50" from the value "124450"
- If I have a form which is filled manually by hand, can SimpleIndex read the data from it?