What is OCR?
Optical character recognition (OCR) is a digital technology based on computer recognition of printed or written letters, numbers or characters. OCR makes it possible to extract text from an image. That may be a scanned document, a photograph or something else with text data that is not digital readable.
In relation to business related expenses and when you need to take a picture of your receipt or have a invoice for further accounting, the reading of the data is important for correct and fast processing.
How does OCR work?
OCR technology scans the text and recognizes characters by comparing its shapes with the technology’s own and known character shapes. Once the OCR scanner has scanned the document it is, unlike the original file, editable and searchable.
OCR and machine learning
OCR technology is based on machine learning and is a subcategory of AI or artificial intelligence. Machine learning is based on algorithms that analyze data, learn from the data and then use the learned data to make more informed decisions. Over time, OCR technology will become smarter and more capable of digitizing data as it will be better at finding connections, shapes and characters.
OCR in Acubiz
The predominant advantage of OCR technology is without doubt the possibility for automatic data capture of many different types of documents. In Acubiz, we use OCR scanning to capture data on receipts and invoices. When a picture of a receipt is taken, or on image of the receipt is uploaded, the OCR scanner will scan it and capture the date, currency and amount. This makes the processing time much faster for the user, since they have much lesser information to fill in themselves. Likewise, our invoice management solution is also scanning and capturing data from the invoice.
