Automatic scanning of invoice references

The customer’s existing purchase invoice automation system was able to identify some of the identification data required by the customer. However, invoice senders do not always know how to enter the reference information in the correct place, which meant that the finance department had to spend a lot of time entering the reference and cost information manually. Moretime built a solution that greatly improved the process of automatic data entry into the correct fields.

Microsoft Power Automate was chosen as the technology for the solution, as an API interface was available for retrieving unidentified purchase invoices. The automation by Moretime retrieved data from unidentified invoices daily for processing. First, the XML files of the invoices were checked, from which about 60% of the required data could be extracted. The invoices where the XML data did not contain the required information were run through a PDF parser, which reads through the PDF file and scans the identifiers. Once this process is complete, the purchase invoices with their references and cost information are updated back into the financial system.