How OCR tech can drive value for bookkeepers

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is used to convert scanned or photographed images of paper documents and PDF files, into machine-encoded data. It may not garner headlines in the same way as some of the more fashionable tech trends, yet it’s helped to drive considerable social change and innovation in business over the years. So how has it developed and what significance does it hold for organisations today?

OCR through the ages  

OCR isn’t ‘new’ technology, having being leveraged since the last century to support use cases including telegraphy and reading aids. In fact, one of the first developments of OCR was via the invention of the optophone in 1913, by Irish physicist Dr. Edmund Fournier d'Albe. As one of the earliest known applications of sonification, the optophone scanned text from books or newspapers, generating musical tones which correlated to letters. The optophone was a significant breakthrough for the visually impaired by helping them to read much more widely than what had been available in braille.

Later in 1966, IBM launched its 1287 optical reader, which was the first scanner capable of identifying handwritten numbers and characters, as well as machine printed credit card numbers and cash register rolls. By using this solution, information written by sales clerks or delivery drivers could be directly scanned into a computer, reducing manual data entry and driving significant efficiencies for users at the time.

Moving forward and by the turn of the millennium, free OCR software was launched via the likes of Adobe Acrobat and Google Drive. Solutions like these allow users to upload paper documents and convert them into editable PDFs or text files. It also allows users to instantly find words or expressions, without needing to trawl through the document by hand.

In recent years, further technological advancement has led to a rise in OCR-driven applications for data entry being adopted across the business and finance ecosystem, particularly within accounting and bookkeeping.

So why has it become such a hot topic in the industry, and what are the benefits from adopting these solutions?

Save time

OCR significantly reduces the time and cost spent on manual data entry, with research finding that specialised solutions in this field can reduce data capture times for paper documents by as much as 75 per cent.

Improve accuracy

As a numbers based industry, just one typo can mean a drastic misinterpretation of an account and the potential loss of a client. As well as speed of delivery, OCR ensures much higher accuracy rates than the human eye, with intuitive in-built algorithms analysing and extracting data from paper documents with verified accuracy.

Go green

OCR-based data entry tools allow businesses to file documents in the cloud, retrievable on any device, at any time. As well as decluttering the office, this means users no longer need to print, store, photocopy, or process reams of paper documents by hand any more.

Engage your employees

Let’s face it, spending long hours on paperwork isn’t fun. Reducing this burden will make your employees happier and more engaged in the long term. Instead, staff can focus more on the analysis of your client’s data, rather than its entry and in supporting other revenue-driving lines of business.

OCR in practice

In order to generate these efficiencies and more, many accountants and bookkeepers are now choosing automated, cloud based tools which leverage OCR and machine learning in order to operate with lightening speed and precision. These tools work by capturing and analysing scanned and photographed purchase and sales invoices, receipts, bank and card statements, automating data entry into your accounting solution, such as Xero, QuickBooks or Sage.

The right software can capture tax summaries by default and if requested, full line item details including description, quantity and unit price. Certain solutions can also remembers how you categorise your expenses such as the relevant supplier account, nominal account and tax code without ever creating duplicate supplier accounts or posting duplicate invoices into your accounting solution. They even matches invoices to purchase orders.

Sounds too good to be true? It isn’t, but don’t take our word for it, here’s what one of our customers had to say:

“Before AutoEntry, we had over a 100 people spending hours each week to manually upload data for our bookkeeping clients, which was an impractical use of resource in the long term. Since implementing the solution, we’ve driven productivity by almost 90% when processing bookkeeping data entry - an incredible time saving which we can reinvest into the business.”  - Toby Woodhead, solution architect at Armstrong Watson

With so many plates to keep spinning, it may often seem like there isn’t enough hours in the day. However, advances in technology means we can, and should, lean on smart tools and OCR-based automation to drive operating efficiencies and eliminate unnecessary practices such as manual data entry.