Help me digitize our invoices

August 19, 2021 2:28 PM

My workplace sends out invoice paperwork with our delivery drivers. I'd like to scan those signed copies when they return.

We send out 100 deliveries a day so as you can imagine there are boxes upon boxes of signed invoices that one has to dig through if one wants to find historical information. I would like to digitize these as they come back in. I would like your advice on how to do this.

- invoice paper copies are from two-part tractor-feed carbon paper so they are flimsy and don't necessarily go through auto-feeds well (in our photocopier, for example)
- there is possibility of moving to regular laser printer paper and if scanability would only be possible with regular paper then this might be our incentive to make that shift
- invoice paper copies are on pink paper (for now)
- I would like software with fairly robust OCR and the ability to identify where certain fields appear on the page so I can, say, search for a particular invoice number, sales rep name, item name, invoice total, etc.
- I have no preference in local document storage vs cloud storage
- Our shop is mmmmmostly Windows-based

From here everything else is open. Do I need certain scanner hardware for an office person to accomplish this task? Does it become mobile app based and the drivers take care of it as soon as delivery is done? All suggestions on options are welcome.

posted by komara to Technology (12 answers total)

Sorry if this is a dumb question but are the generated invoices not searchable in the software that creates them? Do you specifically need to be able to search only signed copies?
posted by bleep at 3:06 PM on August 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

ScanSnap
posted by Jacqueline at 3:06 PM on August 19, 2021

Fujisu ScanSnap (or its equivalent from Brother, Epson, etc.) Basically a single page feeder that scans into Windows. The paper path is pretty straight so even flimsy paper should not have problems.

Alternatively, a Brother Multi-function. If it won't go through the auto feeder you can always open the scan platform and scan it that way.
posted by kschang at 4:54 PM on August 19, 2021

I have good experience feeding that kind of flimsy tractor feed carbon invoice paper through my ScanSnap. Sometimes I have to do them one at a time rather than putting a stack in, especially if they are folded weirdly or wrinkled. But it works. I use it with Google Drive, though, so I can't speak to how good the Windows software is.
posted by primethyme at 5:21 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I also came to say ScanSnap!
posted by jdl at 7:21 PM on August 19, 2021

Another vote for ScanSnap - and possibly its receipt-handling software might work on these invoices. On top of that, the ScanSnap ix500 is super fast!
posted by TimHare at 7:31 AM on August 20, 2021

Response by poster: Sorry if this is a dumb question but are the generated invoices not searchable in the software that creates them? Do you specifically need to be able to search only signed copies?

My apologies for forgetting to address this. We need to be able to pull up the visual of the signed returned copy to note out-of-stocks, breakage, receiving manager name, and so on - information that's not necessarily on the original printed copy.

Thank you all for your ScanSnap recommendations. I will look into it.
posted by komara at 7:53 AM on August 20, 2021

ScanSnap again. We don't have any trouble with the flimsy paper in the feeder. The OCR is good, but I don't know that you're going to have a ton of luck "locating" the fields on the page to make them specifically searchable. What system is generating these paper invoices? Is that system searchable? How often do you need to reference a hard copy/scan of a hard copy? Because a scan of a paper invoice is never going to be the best source of searchable/reportable information.

Are you open to electronic solutions (i.e. the drivers have a tablet and get a digital signature, no hard copy ever)?

However you store the docs, make sure you have an automated offsite backup of your data.
posted by zibra at 7:54 AM on August 20, 2021

What's your workflow like right now for handling the paper copies? If you generally like your paper system, I'd have an admin person process these daily. So that person would review each slip, capture any action items (make sure there's a backorder noted for that customer in the system, or a replacement order for broken items, or enter the manager name in a field in the invoice-generating system), then scan the physical return copy with a consistent file name (like "YYMMDD Customer Co. INV1234").

If something like that would work, you shouldn't ever need to reference your scanned copy because it's been "dealt with" pre-scanning. Of course I'd save the scan, but I'd try to minimize the need to reference it.
posted by zibra at 8:00 AM on August 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks for your continued input. I feel there's some derail happening.

I would like to clarify that because of reasons that are far too complex to go into here our reps in the field do not always have access to the original information in the system. Also, the important thing here is the visual of the signed copy post-delivery and any notes that may have been made on it.

I can only potentially change so much about our workflow at once. I can not implement new tablets in the field or any other such things.

I just need to know how best to scan a lot of paper copies so that they are accessible digitally and not from pawing through file boxes.
posted by komara at 10:36 AM on August 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

I use ScanSnaps at work. They are pretty reliable. I don't find the software particularly useful, your mileage may vary on that. I use freeware to drive one as a scan platform and save images as .png files. On a second one I use an older version of the ScanSnap software to scan to PDF's. Both are older units I found on Craig's List for <>
Another way I use ScanSnaps is to send scans to Evernote. That way you get OCR in the PDF and can search the contents.

I haven't done a big technical study of this, it's just how I use it. If you need to search in the file contents, the OCR step can be time consuming. Evernote can do this in the cloud rather than in the scan software.
posted by diode at 12:14 PM on August 21, 2021

You may not have to rely on OCR if you can enter a bunch of keywords ({Vendor Name} {Date} {Driver} {Truck} {Invoice Number} {TrackingNumber} ...) when you scan it. The danger is, of course, you managed to skip this step or left out some keywords. So you need to have some sort of procedure to handle edge cases or stuff that fell through the cracks. OCR of the scan is probably going to be simpler and you can leave the manual keywords for handwritten corrections and stuff.
posted by kschang at 3:12 PM on August 21, 2021