With a history that goes back to 1913 when an Irish Physicist came up with the optophone, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a technology that has evolved with time. A huge invention particularly for a modern digital world, the technology is highly useful in the conversion of photographed and scanned images of PDF files and paper based documents into highly usable machine-encoded type of information.

OCR technology has allowed OCR data applications to be developed for use in finance and business areas, especially in bookkeeping and accounting fields. OCR is superb for bookkeepers and accountants because:

#1 It Saves Cost and Time

OCR tech lessens the cost and time accountants and bookkeepers take to enter data manually. OCR-based capture of financial documents lessens time needed for data capture saving time by 75%. In the process more time can be focused on other critical financial activities.

#2 Enhances accuracy

In accounting and bookkeeping typos and errors in financial document could spell doom for clients and loss of critical business. OCR enhances accuracy and hundreds of times better than human effort and eyes. OCR’s intuitive algorithms make paper data extraction and analysis fast, timely, highly accurate and easily verifiable.

#3 Flexibility of use

With OCR bookkeepers and accountants who’ve to deal with tons of documents keep this priceless data safe, make it easily retrievable and accessible anywhere; OCR data entry makes it simple and excellent to save data in the cloud where retrieval and access is easy and fast on any device from mobile devices like iPads to desktops and Macs. Accounting offices are de-cluttered and photocopying, storing, printing and working with thousands of paper documents isn’t needed anymore.

#4 Rejuvenates employees

OCR allows bookkeepers and accountants to actually reduce their paper document load and lessen the time they spend on paperwork. Using OCR derived documents in electronic form mean they can share them around even with staff in the field miles away and remain engaged as much as they want. Rather than spend hours manually entering data, bookkeepers and accountants can spend that time analyzing financial data.

Enjoying these efficiencies transforms any business, especially bookkeeping and accounting departments. OCR leveraging through cloud based technology, machine learning and automation allow financial data capture and analysis to be done in lightning speed with high accuracy and scintillating precision.

Performing OCR using PDFelement

One of the benefits of using PDFelement OCR as an accountant or bookkeeper is that you can easily convert scanned documents into ones that are editable and searchable. This is how it’s done.

Step 1: Launch PDFelement

Step 2: Open a scanned financial PDF document such as invoice that doesn’t contain editable or searchable text or what is known as “image-based PDF” created when a scanner is used to create a digital copy of a paper document.

Step 3: Import the file into PDFelement where a pop up notification will come up at the top of the window. It shows PDFelement has detected that the document is a scanned PDF and will recommend that an OCR is performed to enable you to copy, edit and search text from the scanned document.

Step 4: Click Perform OCR button. A pop up window will come up. From the pop up window click Customize Pages to choose the exact page or range of pages on which to perform OCR.

Step 5: Still on the pop up window click Change Languages to choose the appropriate language you want the document in by applying the corresponding check marks (Note that OCR is available in more than 20 languages). Click OK.

Step 6: Wait for the progress part to load fully then view your new editable document in the tab next to the existing one (Note that OCR could make changes to the text of the document).

Step 7: Navigate to the Edit tab and click Edit Text icon. Choose the text portion you want from the document and delete or type directly into it. Change the font type, font size and even color using the options provided in the Edit Tab. The options are so many you can actually reposition text by dragging it across the entire page wherever you want.

More with OCR

PDFelement allows any accountant or bookkeeper to make the most of OCR and other extensions to perfectly create editable and searchable PDF documents easily.

Step 1: Launch PDFelement and ensure Home menu button is selected from where you should choose From Scanner icon to start the Scan to PDF PDFelement function.

Step 2: On the popup dialogue box that comes up choose the diverse customization options you need. Firstly, choose the scanner from the drop-down menu. Select how you want your files customized such as color mode, number of pages, and paper size to resolution.

Step 3: Since you also want to have scanned files editable and searchable, choose Recognize Text (OCR) for OCR to be activated and to read the scanned file content. Do select the Make PDF.A-2b Compliant option as well to ensure the file is ISO standardized. This transforms the OCR PDF document into a PDF document accessible in all platforms.

Step 4: Once you’re okay with all customizations choose Scan to begin document scanning. The document will be automatically imported after being scanned into PDFelement as an OCR editable PDF document.

Form fields recognition and batch extraction

OCR technology ensures objects are detectable in the scanned documents and the scanned content can be used to extract form fields. Process is very easy and quick:

Step 1: In PDFelement click the Form tab and choose the Data Extraction icon in the toolbar that opens and choose Extract Data from Scanned PDF.

Step 2: Trace all the areas you want PDFelement to recognize as form fields to create a template. PDFelement will then extract data from the fields into a spreadsheet.

Step 3: Save the template with a unique name by clicking the Save Setting tab for future reuse. Step 4: Once you’re done, click Yes to the question “Did you finish marking up the document for data extraction?” You’d have created the template you needed.

Step 5: Click Add Files from the Batch Process tab that comes up after clicking Yes and add as many identical scanned documents as you need. You can also drag them all into the open window.

Step 6: Click Start to begin extracting all the data into a single file such as CSV.

Step 7: Click Finish to access and verify your extracted data immediately.

Note: OCR image scanning technology ensures bookkeepers and accountants simply place the tickets in the scanner and PDFelement in their computers will go ahead and extract all the needed information automatically from the ticket. The critical part here is that the information on the scanned bill is structured data and hardly mangled text. For instance, tax numbers, payer and payee will be clearly extracted. Once the scanning has been done, extraction of data and editing will then be easy.

Once your invoices and other financial data have been extracted or OCR performed you can now go ahead and analyze it as you want or use it as you desire.