Optical Character Recognition to read index data from scanned images, convert documents to searchable PDF or text files, dynamic field extraction and other OCR features.
SimpleIndex is the perfect solution for small business and departments looking to manage their files from a single interface, developers who don’t want to reinvent the wheel and large companies with many locations looking to decentralize their scanning. SimpleIndex organizes scanned images and electronic documents into a single document management database your employees can access on their desktops. SimpleIndex takes the labor out of document imaging by providing powerful barcode recognition and OCR search algorithms that can find index values no matter where they are on the page. By providing these essential automations for a reasonable price, we make document management affordable for anyone. The most unique automation is our OCR template and dictionary matching search algorithms. This lets you find information like date, customer name, invoice number and other information on documents with different layouts.
There are plenty of different Features of SimpleSoftware products making your automation process more efficient.
- Streamlined interface – The Fastest, Most Accurate Scanning Solution
- Support for both TWAIN and ISIS Scanning drivers standards
- Introducing Dynamic OCR Feature and comparing it to the traditional Zone OCR
- Unprecedented Control of Database Interactions
- Ensures All Required Documents are Scanned Check
- Automated Processing & 1-Click Interface to make scanning process even more efficient
- SharePoint Document Scanning
- Document Classification – an essential first step for processing mixed batches with many types of documents
- MS Office & PDF Text Parsing – The template and dictionary matching capabilities of SimpleIndex‘s OCR function can be used to extract index information from the text of existing MS Office and PDF files
- Indexing Solutions with Barcode Recognition
- Optical Mark Recognition – lets you define check box regions on scanned images.
- Autofill – Automatic Indexing Using Existing Data
- Imprint, Endorse, or Bates Stamp Images Electronically – SimpleIndex‘s Electronic Imprinting feature lets you apply the bates stamp to the images after they are scanned, saving you thousands on specialized scanning hardware.
- Screenshot OCR – Indexing from Applications with Screen OCR
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
Take control of Sales Tax exemption forms
Automatically fill and file sales tax forms
Ben Franklin once noted, “…nothing is certain except death and taxes.” In the case of state sales taxes, they may be unavoidable, but managing your customers’ sales tax exemption forms and making sure you’ve sent current exemption certificates to your vendors doesn’t have to feel like a terminal condition.
SimpleIndex has the power to recognize the forms you receive from customers and file them automatically so you can find them in seconds.
SimpleIndex also fills out sales tax exemption PDFs from every state to create a complete set of your forms ready for emailing to your vendors.
Link both processes to your customer and vendor data sources to streamline the process. Even without those lists, the state, certificate number and expiration recognize automatically, leaving you with the simple task of clicking on the customer name to file the document away.
You’ll never have to dig through old emails or piles of paper to make sure you have that exemption on file again!
When it’s time to send your vendors the proper state certificate to get your sales tax exemption, simply open up the Fill Vendor Form job, select the vendor, and all your state exemptions are filled out automatically and assembled into one PDF file suitable for framing emailing.
Manage your customer sales tax exemption forms:
- Scan customer sales tax exemption certificates submitted on paper
- Process e-mailed PDF sales tax exemption forms
- Use OCR or read the filled-in forms from PDF files to file them automatically
- Search and view customer tax forms in seconds
- Receive automatic e-mail notifications when exemptions expire
Fill out and e-mail vendor sales tax exemption forms:
- Standardized, fillable PDF sales tax forms for every state
- Select a vendor and fill in all the relevant name and address information automatically
- One click fills in every state form with both your company’s information and your vendor’s
- Packages saved to bookmarked PDF files and e-mailed to vendors
- Receive automatic e-mail notifications when exemptions expire
Find out more!
The sales tax management solution is available for free to SimpleIndex users!
Download SimpleIndex – Download the Sales Tax Jobs
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 sales tax time thieves with SimpleIndex!
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 SimpleQB?
Activation Instructions
SimpleQB Option A – New SimpleQB Installation:
If you are installing SimpleQB on the Windows computer for the first time first download SimpleIndex from one of the following SimpleIndex Download Installation links below.
SimpleQB Download Link for use with SimpleIndex v9
SimpleQB Download Link for use with SimpleIndex v8
Once the SimpleQB software has been downloaded install the software from the downloaded installation file.
Open SimpleQB 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.
SimpleQB Option B – SimpleQB Installed on Computer Not Connected to the Internet:
If you would like to install SimpleQB on a computer that doesn’t have an internet connection an Offline Activation will need to be done.
First fully install the SimpleQB software without activation.
Open SimpleQB 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 “SimpleQB Offline Activation” window, which asks you to call or email for an Offline Activation.
Select the license version that you ordered in the “SimpleQB 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.
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.
How to activate any Add-on or Upgrade to SimpleIndex?
SimpleIndex Add-on Option A – New SimpleIndex Installation:
If you are installing SimpleIndex 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:
When you click Finish you will receive the Global Settings Wizard window to configure the general settings for SimpleIndex on the installed computer.
Move through the prompts to configure the Global Settings Wizard. Once complete you will receive a confirmation that the License was properly activated before the software opens.
SimpleIndex Add-on Option B – SimpleIndex Already Installed:
If you have already installed the SimpleIndex software then all you need to do is Activate the demo.
Click the SimpleIndex icon on your desktop or from your Windows Start menu.
Once SimpleIndex is open go to the Help menu and Select Activate/Transfer License.
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.
SimpleIndex Add-on Option C – SimpleIndex Installed on Computer Not Connected to the Internet:
If you have installed SimpleIndex on a computer that doesn’t have an internet connection an Offline Activation will need to be done.
First fully install the SimpleIndex software without activation.
Once it has been fully installed click the SimpleIndex icon on your desktop or from your Windows Start menu.
Once SimpleIndex is open go to the Help menu and select Activate/Transfer License.
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 “SimpleIndex Offline Activation” window, which asks you to call or email for an Offline Activation.
Select the license version that you ordered in the “SimpleIndex 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.
TaxStacker: Sort & Classify Federal Tax Documents
This is a great way for accountants and tax preparers to organize complex tax returns in a way that makes it easy to find specific documents. It can also be used to ensure all required schedules and supporting documents are present in the finished return.
Use our out-of-the-box TaxStacker configuration to automatically identify all the forms and schedules that make up a U.S. federal income tax return. These can then be sorted into separate PDF files or combined into a single file that has bookmarks to indicate each section.
Change the Dictionary Separator Value
This is used to change the dictionary separator value when doing thesaurus matching from the default character of | to any character(s) that you want. This can be useful in cases where the values you would like in your list or dictionary might include the pipe character or “|” or “Shift Backslash”
This setting is also used as the delimiter when parsing multiple index field values from bar codes (e.g. field1|field2|field3).
Instructions for changing the dictionary separator value:
- Right click on the Job Configuration file that you would like to suppress the prompt on and select Open With>Notepad
- Search the XML settings text open in Notepad for this term:
<OCR_DICT_SEPARATOR> - Change the value in-between from “|” to any other single character that you want.
- For TAB separation use %TAB%
Change the OCR Font or Type
This is used to changed the default OCR recognition font or type from the default, which is “To Be Detected”. This can be used to look for a specific type of OCR font and is especially useful for recognizing things like Dotmatrix, OCR A and OCR B.
Instructions for setting OCR Font:
1. Right click on the .sic file and select Open With a text editor (Notepad, Wordpad, etc.)
2. Find <OCR_TEXT_TYPE>. If you can’t find <OCR_TEXT_TYPE> then add the following as the last row in the text file:
<OCR_TEXT_TYPE>#</OCR_TEXT_TYPE>
3. Change the number in between: <OCR_TEXT_TYPE>#</OCR_TEXT_TYPE>
4. Number of desired font:
- 0 Normal
- 1 Typewriter
- 2 Dotmatrix
- 3 Index
- 5 OCR A
- 6 OCR B
- 7 MICR E13B
- 8 MICR CMC7
- 9 Gothic
- 10 To Be Detected
5. Close and save file
Document Classification
An essential first step to processing mixed batches with many types of documents is classification. Document Classification methods quickly sort documents by type using key content and layout attributes to identify them.
The most popular document classification systems are advanced AI-based machine learning algorithms that automatically learn how to classify documents based on samples and user feedback. These systems are very powerful but also very expensive. Only large organizations processing millions of pages each year can afford these enterprise solutions.
SimpleIndex naturally has a simpler way to do classification based on keyword patterns in the document text. Simply create a list of document types and assign one or more unique keywords or phrases that will only appear in that document type to each. Logical operators for AND, OR and NOT prevent false matches by requiring multiple keywords for matching or excluding documents that contain certain phrases.
Keyword-based classification works for the vast majority of applications at a fraction of the cost of AI classification.
After classification, SimpleIndex can automatically launch separate document indexing workflows for each document type found in the classified batch. This is especially useful when documents have different metadata requirements or business workflows associated with them.
Is SimpleIndex for Windows only? I’m a Mac user.
Unfortunately SimpleIndex is for Windows only. This is true of most high speed document scanning applications, due to the fact that most document scanners only have Windows drivers.
However, SimpleIndex can output to databases and file shares on a Mac server. The fact that it does not have its own proprietary file system and database makes it a very good choice for Mac networks, since only the scanning workstation needs to be a PC.
Likewise, many users have reported great success running Parallels or Bootcamp on their Mac to allow the use of a Windows OS
- Published in Licensing & Installation
How much do Simple Software products cost?
Click here for the latest pricing and online ordering information. You can also purchase full service solutions from one of our Authorized Dealers.
Click here for a PDF version of the price list and a feature matrix that shows which features are included in each version.
All applications are activated online by entering a serial number in the demo. The serial is emailed to you once your order is processed.
- Published in Licensing & Installation, LoanStacker, SimpleCoversheet, SimpleExport, SimpleQB, SimpleSend, SimpleView
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?
SimpleIndex version 7 solves this problem with the incorporation of the FineReader OCR engine. Full text in PDFs will now flow with the formatting of the PDF.
Legacy Versions: SimpleIndex can also be used with other OCR applications and servers to improve accuracy, formatting and performance. Use the OCR applications to convert the scanned images to text or searchable PDF, and SimpleIndex can extract index values from the text and automatically sort and organize the files.
- Published in OCR
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 do you configure full text searching in Retrieval mode?
On the Database tab there dropdown in the lower portion of the panel for Full Text OCR Field. Put the name of the field that will store the full-text data there. This must be configured both for Insert and Retrieval mode configurations. The database field needs to be sufficient length to store the entire text of your document.
Of course, the Insert Mode configuration must have “Enable Full Page OCR” checked to generate full text data from images. Text from MS Office documents, PDF files and existing OCR text files can be used without setting this option.
When designing your Retrieval Mode configuration, create a Text field to use for full text search queries. On the Database tab, set the corresponding “Database Field Name” to the full text database field.
When searching on your full text field, SimpleIndex finds the text you enter no matter where it appears in the document. It is able to match partial words. It does not perform boolean or natural language searches. The text entered must match the document text exactly.
- Published in Database & Retrieval, 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
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