Accounts payable OCR is usually discussed as a reading problem and is mostly a plumbing problem. Reading the header off an invoice is largely solved. What decides whether capture saves a team anything is where the data goes next. If the captured fields arrive at matching with the document attached, the invoice moves without anyone re-entering it and the saving is real. If they arrive as a spreadsheet export beside a folder of PDFs, the transcription has been replaced by a reconciliation and the team is no better off. This page is about the destination: what capture should feed, what it should carry with it, and the integration questions worth asking before buying.
Capture should feed matching, not a folder
The test is whether the invoice arrives at the matching step with its fields populated and its document attached. Anything that produces an export somebody imports has moved the work rather than removed it.
The document has to travel with the data
An approver looking at a captured record needs the original in front of them, and so does anyone investigating later. Capture that separates the image from the record creates two systems where there was one.
Ask the integration questions before the accuracy ones
What does it write into, in what form, and what happens when the write fails. Those three answers determine whether this is one system or two. On the worked example on this site, 400 invoices at three touches of six minutes with a 12% exception rate is 134.4 hours a month, $4,300.80 at a $32 loaded rate and $10.75 an invoice. and a saving that depends on an import step rarely materialises.
Questions people ask about accounts payable ocr
Can OCR write directly into our accounting package?
Many can, and the quality of that integration varies far more than the reading does. Ask to see a failed write, not a successful one.
What happens to the original invoice?
It should be kept with the record, and how long for is a retention decision for your jurisdiction rather than a software setting.
Do we still need to file the PDFs?
Not separately, if the record holds them. Keeping a parallel folder is a sign the capture tool is not trusted, which is worth investigating rather than tolerating.