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
Handwriting Recognition Software
HANDWRITING RECOGNITION OPTIONS IN SIMPLEINDEX
SimpleIndex offers one of the easiest and lowest cost solutions for handwriting recognition and forms processing available anywhere. It is capable of recognizing printed and cursive handwriting, as well as traditional forms with letter boxes or combs.
Modern AI technology has dramatically improved the quality of handwriting recognition. In the past, software was only able to read clearly printed text where each character has space separating it from the others. And most data capture solutions were designed for very large enterprises who process thousands of forms per day.
Cloud-based OCR solutions employ AI and massive training datasets to allow recognition of any kind of text with remarkable accuracy. And their consumption-based pricing means that you can read 1,000 pages for the same price per page as 1,000,000, dramatically lowering the base cost for solutions.
SimpleIndex also offers a fixed-cost ICR solution for handprint and forms with no additional costs for processing volume.
SIMPLEINDEX WITH FINEREADER ICR
The FineReader OCR Engine offers handprint recognition designed for forms processing. it is optimized for hand-filled forms that use letter boxes or combs to ensure each letter is separated. FineReader will also work with underlined text as long as it is printed.
ICR features are enabled with the SimpleIndex Professional license, available in workstation, server, subscription, or concurrent.
SIMPLEINDEX WITH CLOUD OCR
The Cloud OCR feature enables the Amazon AWS Textract OCR engine, that has the ability to read unconstrained print and scripted handwriting with surprisingly good accuracy. It can be purchased separately or included with SimpleIndex Professional.
SimpleIndex Cloud OCR makes it easy to leverage Amazon Textract in your document processing workflow.
Textract is only available as an API, requiring custom programming to make it work. SimpleIndex turns it into a complete document and data capture application designed for easy batch processing on a workstation or server.
Extract text from typed or handwritten documents automatically, even on unconstrained handprint and cursive writing. Automatic extraction of form fields lets you identify key values without templates or training. Accounts payable invoice and receipt processing is also included.
Captured data can be used to organize files into folders for cloud storage apps, save to a CSV, XML or JSON file, export to a database, upload to a document management system, perform full-text searching, or even create bookmarks in PDF files.
LEARN MORE ABOUT HANDWRITING RECOGNITION
- Handprint Recognition wiki page for documentation and configuration settings
- Download the Demo
- Handprint Recognition Guide on SimpleOCR.com
- Watch the Cloud OCR Demo Video
WHAT IS ICR HANDPRINT RECOGNITION?
ICR stands for Intelligent Character Recognition and is the technology that allows software to interpret hand printed text on scanned images.
Forms Processing Software uses ICR technology to automate data entry tasks involving hand-filled surveys, applications and forms. It provides interfaces for scanning, recognition, data verification and export, as well as management and monitoring tools to track large volumes of documents and data through the workflow.
Forms Processing also includes OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to recognize machine printed text, and OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) for check boxes and multiple choice bubbles.
Traditional forms processing relies on constrained handwriting, where boxes on the form force the filler to write with separated, printed block characters. Modern AI technology has dramatically improved the ability to recognized unconstrained handwriting and cursive script. Hand printed notes, free-form comments blocks, non-segmented fields, historic documents, and more can now be converted to text with acceptable accuracy where these were impossible just a few years ago.
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. These can even be applied to the text in Office documents and PDF files to organize these files automatically and attach them to a database.
The SimpleCoversheet barcode printing application lets anyone in your company print bar-coded coversheets with all the information needed to identify a document. This is perfect for scanning with a centralized scanner or networked digital copier. SimpleIndex can then be configured to process these documents automatically without any user intervention whatsoever!
This level of automation is provided by SimpleIndex‘s command line interface. All the settings related to scanning or searching documents can be saved to “Job Files”, which can be saved to an icon and launched with a click of the mouse or a single line of code. These jobs can be configured to scan documents, read barcodes and OCR, generate folders and filenames and upload the index information to a database in a single step.
It is simply not possible to find an easier, faster way to process your documents!
Key Features and Recent Enhancements
- SimpleIndex Standard has Tesseract OCR and DTK Barcode engines. These provide good recognition on clean originals.
- SimpleIndex Professional adds ABBYY FineReader OCR Engine, ICR handprint recognition, ISIS Scanning, and Cloud OCR. These are able to recognize hard-to-read text and bar codes, and improve overall speed and accuracy.
- Process existing text in PDF files and MS Office documents in all versions.
- OCR
- Pro version includes ABBYY® FineReader Engine for faster, more accurate OCR
- Searchable PDF output
- Clipboard / Screen Shot OCR
- Point-Click OCR – Click on text to send it to an index field
- Enhanced OCR Options – match against other indexes, skip OCR on files with existing text
- Support for international character sets using Unicode
- Bar Code Recognition
- Multi-engine Barcode voting to boost accuracy (Professional version)
- Support for most 2D barcodes in all versions
- User-defined Barcode delimiter – no longer restricted to “|” for parsing multi-index barcodes
- Find/Replace characters in barcodes for matching or autofill
- TWAIN and ISIS Scanning
- TWAIN support in all versions. ISIS support available as an add-on or in Pro version.
- Improved real-time image processing
- Multiple scan windows when using ISIS
- Scan directly to a network folder (processing occurs during scan)
- Desktop Processing
- Selectively reprocess files
- Run multiple copies of SimpleIndex simultaneously
- Save any image region to a separate file for signature capture, etc.
- Server Processing
- Run multiple jobs on different schedules
- Run multiple copies of the same job for parallel processing and increased throughput
- Server licenses can be purchased in 1 Million Page per Year increments as an add-on to any workstation license
- Unlimited page barcode processing license available with Advanced Barcode Server
- Server processing compatible with Windows 7 or above and all Windows Server versions
- PDF Handling
- Support for reading and writing password protected PDF files
- Convert MS Office, HTML, XML and images to PDF before processing
- Searchable PDF output
- Native PDF Viewer – no dependence on 3rd party software
- PDF Auto-repair – attempts correction of bad PDF files
- Indexing
- Return MD5 hash values
- Configure default values for empty fields
- Export to XML
- Edit Fixed Fields – make changes to auto-generated indexes
- SharePoint Integration
- Compatible with all versions of SharePoint and SharePoint Online
- Append to or replace existing files in SharePoint
- Automatically match index fields to SharePoint columns to populate data
Website Resources
SimpleIndex.com is full of information and interactive content to help you learn what you need to know to implement SimpleIndex in your organization.
- Design Philosophy & Getting Started Guide
An introduction to the way SimpleIndex approaches document processing - Bringing Document Imaging to Everyone
How Simple Software solutions reduce the cost of entry into the Paperless Office - Sample Applications
Examples of different ways you can put SimpleIndex to use - Compare SimpleIndex to the Competition
Videos showing the same batch of documents being scanned and indexed with SimpleIndex as well as 4 top desktop document capture applications. - Top Features of SimpleIndex
Detailed information on the automated scanning and indexing features of SimpleIndex - Demonstration Videos
See how SimpleIndex automates indexing with OCR and barcode recognition - Simple Software University
Online training videos teaching all aspects of Simple Software configuration - Simple Software FAQ
Answers to common questions about Simple Software products - How Many Clicks does it Take to Scan My Documents?
Printable brochure in PDF format
SimpleIndex Applications in Your Industry
PDF brochures outlining some of the applications for SimpleIndex in various industries.
SimpleIndex Feature Highlights
Links to more information on the major features of SimpleIndex.
- Streamlined Document Capture
Ways that SimpleIndex helps reduce labor by streamlining the workflow and automating common indexing tasks - TWAIN and ISIS Scanner Driver Support
Use any scanner with SimpleIndex - Zone, Full Page and Dynamic OCR
Extract index data no matter where it appears on the page - Barcode Recognition
Read barcodes from scanned images to automate indexing - Optical Mark Recognition (OMR)
Read check boxes to find True/False or Yes/No values - Index Autofill
Populate multiple search fields with existing data from your database - Electronic Imprinting
Apply bates stamps and other image stamps/endorsements electronically - Database Integration
A full range of interactive database features allow for creative integration with custom database applications - Document Presence Auditing
Make sure that all required documents are present in the batch before it is released - Document Retrieval Options
How to find and view files once you have indexed them with SimpleIndex - Command Line Processing and Custom Application Integration
The SimpleIndex command-line interface makes it the easiest document capture application to integrate with your custom business software - Enable Distributed Document Capture
Companies with many remote locations can now afford to implement Distributed Capture with SimpleIndex
The Simple Software Imaging Suite
These applications enhance and expand the functionality of SimpleIndex by providing barcode printing, automatic uploading, quality control and direct integration with popular applications like QuickBooks.
Top Features
The following is a list of the Top 25 major document capture features of SimpleIndex, in no particular order.
- Indexing support for all file types
- Viewing support for any installed, OLE-enabled application
- No monthly page processing limitations
- Text processing support for OCR’d images, PDF files and MS Office documents
- Barcode Recognition
- Dynamic & Zone OCR
- Manual Zone OCR by indexing operator
- Full-Page OCR to text, MS Word or HTML
- Optical Mark Recognition (OMR)
- Unstructured data capture using Template and Dictionary Matching
- ODBC & OLEDB database connectivity
- Use any database to store index data for document management and retrieval
- Automatic population of index fields using database lookup (Autofill)
- Document Presence Auditing – ensures all required pages are present in each batch
- Clipboard / Screen Shot OCR
- Command line execution
- Input from any TWAIN or ISIS scanner or network folder
- Media Wizard to create royalty-free, searchable document CDs or DVDs
- Output images to TIFF, JPEG, PDF or PDF/A
- Page Order Validation: reads the page number from each page with OCR and compare it to the scanned page order.
- Double-Index Validation: compare the value of two fields during unattended processing and automatically route documents to exceptions when the values don’t match.
- Automatic forwarding of a copy of the first page: from each exported file a first page is forwarded to a separate folder for data processing.
- Integrated document separation: combines pages into multi-page documents without the need for a 2-step configuration.
- Output index information to database or comma-delimited text file
- Blank page detection and deletion
- SharePoint 2010 Integration
- Auto-Rotate
- Easy-to-use cropping and redaction tools to remove confidential parts of images
- Electronic imprinting and bates stamping
New versions History
Simple Software is always working on updating and upgrading. Here you can find change log for SimpleIndex.
Learn More:
- More products from Simple Software.
- How to create searchable PDF files using optical character recognition software?
- Convert scanned documents or PDF files to Excel, Google Sheets, CSV and other spreadsheet formats.
- Creating dataflow from text to Databases.
- Everything about Document Management
- Batch OCR for Full-Text Conversion & Searchable PDF.
- Enterprise OCR Servers let you perform OCR on thousands of documents at a time.
- OCR to process Invoices.
- What is OCR Data Capture?
- But what if I need to process a lot of specific medical forms (CMS 1500, UB-04, or J430 Dental Claims Forms)?
- OCR to process loan forms for Real Estate agents and Mortgage brokers.
KB Articles for OCR Features
- 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?
Patent ID and Title Extraction
To avoid manual data entry, pattern matching is used to automatically read the Patent ID Number and Title from any US patent application straight out of the box.
This job configuration is available for free for SimpleIndex users from the link below.
SimpleIndex Patents Demo Job Configuration
Learn More:
KB Articles for Patent ID and Title
- 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?
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!
Learn More:
Instant Integration With Any Application
SimpleIndex® provides a great alternative to “reinventing the wheel” using a document imaging SDK to implement scanning in your custom application. SimpleIndex uses a command line interface to enable developers to execute customized scanning workflows from another application. This lets you take advantage of SimpleIndex‘s TWAIN/ISIS scanning, zone OCR, barcode recognition and database export features without having to re-code them all yourself.
Whether you are an IT consultant creating an application for internal company use or a software developer looking to add scanning features to your application, SimpleIndex provides the easiest solution available.
To use SimpleIndex as a scanning front-end for your application, simply:
- Create a SimpleIndex job file configured to scan, index and save files the way you want
- (Optional) configure the database export to create/update document records in your DB
- Use a “Shell” command to execute the job file from your program
When you execute the job file from your program, SimpleIndex will scan, read barcodes, OCR zones, etc. and organize the documents into the folders and filenames your program requires. The database export can be configured to add or update records in your database with information captured from the documents as well as the image file path or binary data. Index values can be passed from your program to SimpleIndex via the command line. The whole process can be configured to run minimized so the user never even sees the SimpleIndex screen.
Learn More:
KB Articles for Integration
- Exclude Index Field from Index Log
- Turn Off Prompts and Pop Ups on Job Configurations
- Change the Font Size of Index Fields
- Large Documents (>500 pages) are Slow to Process
- Regular Expression (RegEx) - Syntax or Type
- Index With Non-Latin Character Sets
- Skip to Blank Index on Save Index
- Stop Autorun When Double Clicking Configuration
- Autonumber Increment Value
- Overlap of SimpleView Viewer in SimpleIndex Display
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 can justify the cost of 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.
Document Classification Wiki Guide – how to configure and run classification workflows in SimpleIndex.
Learn More:
Zone OCR and Dynamic OCR
Other document scanning applications in this price range use Zone OCR to obtain index data from the page.
SimpleIndex improves upon this time-tested but 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 extract values from anywhere 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
- Unwanted characters are ignored
- Find unique patterns of letters and numbers using Template Matching
- Use Dictionary Matching to find a value from a list of possible values
- Use Cloud OCR or ChatGPT to perform AI analysis and intelligent data extraction
Dynamic OCR and AI Assisted OCR
AI assisted OCR is the popular solution to the problem of unstructured and semi-structured documents. But there are many scenarios where simple Template and Dictionary matching provide much better results. And all of these solutions are much more expensive than SimpleIndex!
Often there are only a few key values that need to be extracted, and a wide variety of possible layouts. AI-based document training requires manual processing of several samples of each possible format before it learns how to read them reliably, where a Template could read them all with a single setting. Dictionary matching can perform advanced classification without analyzing thousands of samples.
When data extraction requires natural language processing, field label extraction, handwriting, AI document analysis, or other advanced features, SimpleIndex offers Cloud OCR and ChatGPT integrations.
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 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.
Got a preference for ABBYY Cloud OCR, Microsoft Azure AI Vision, or Google Cloud Vision OCR? These can be quickly added for a small customization fee. Contact Us for a quote!
Wiki: How to configure AWS Textract OCR in SimpleIndex
Handprint and Handwriting Recognition
SimpleIndex 11 adds handprint recognition capabilities to the FineReader OCR engine to allow recognition of simple form fields and printed text. It works best with constrained form fields, with letter boxes for each character like you see on tax forms and credit applications. And no additional licensing or per-page costs are required!
For unconstrained handprint and cursive handwriting, use the Cloud OCR option to achieve the best recognition accuracy available. This option requires additional AWS processing fees for each page.
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
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.
Learn More:
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
Language Pack for Standard/Tesseract OCR
Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Global Settings Wizard reference.
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
Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Languages reference.
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
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How to activate SimpleQB?
Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete SimpleQB Installation reference.
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?
Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete SimpleExport reference.
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?
Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Licensing & Activation reference.
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.
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.
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.
Learn More:
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
Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete OCR Options reference.
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
Is SimpleIndex for Windows only? I’m a Mac user.
Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Installation reference.
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