The inefficient operations in a business eat away its resources at a pace that they often don’t even realize. Many of these processes can be digitized and made efficient with the power of automation. One such process is receipt management. Managing long paper trails of receipts is tedious and inefficient. Receipt scanning apps considerably cut down the time and inconvenience involved in managing the receipts physically. Among other features, OCR offers wide-ranging benefits in receipt scanning and management.
5 Uses Of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) In Receipt Scanning
Here are five ways in which OCR in receipt scanning makes your receipt management significantly seamless and efficient:
Extracting Data from Receipts
The process of digitizing receipts doesn’t just end with scanning the receipts and storing them digitally. Even if you have the scanned receipts stored digitally but cannot access the data automatically, it would still be a hassle to organize them, You also need to ensure that essential data on those receipts are readily available to you without going through every one of the receipts. This is where Optical Character Recognition comes in.
OCR in receipt scanning allows you to extract data from the receipts automatically. From date, time, and vendor to the amount of expense, OCR allows you to store every piece of data without inconvenience. This further simplifies the management and organization of receipts.
Seamless Organization
OCR in receipt scanning also cuts down the tedious process of organizing receipts manually. With OCR, you no longer would have to sort the receipts in the order of time, expenses, etc. With the data readily available, you’ll be able to organize your receipts any way you want with just a few clicks. With the best receipt scanning software, you’ll also be able to classify your receipts on the basis of vendors or expense classes since the data will be automatically recognized and stored with OCR.
Expense Tracking
Optical Character Recognition in receipt scanning apps significantly cuts down the inconvenience and time it takes to track your expenses. The OCR will be able to get the amount from the receipt directly which can further be added to your expenses.
This helps you avoid the tedious process of looking at every receipt and making spreadsheets of expenses on your own. On top of that, by simplifying classification, OCR will also help you organize your expenses into different expense classes automatically. This further helps in reporting by bifurcating different expenses.
Simplified Receipt Formatting
At times, businesses need all their receipts in a certain format. Not to mention, it is easier for you to organize and review different receipts if they are all in the same format. But with different vendors come different formats of receipts. This challenge can easily be addressed with the help of OCR. By extracting the data directly from the scanned receipts, OCR makes it convenient for you to recreate all the receipts in your preferred format. This feature also comes in handy in reporting and audits.
Seamless Tax Filing
Receipt scanning apps with OCR considerably make tax filing efficient and seamless. The biggest upside of OCR in receipt scanning is its ability to make the data from receipts readily available. Since expenses are also a big part of filing taxes, increased accessibility of data drastically reduces the time it takes to file taxes. It allows you to import expense data directly after scanning the receipts.
From organization to expense tracking, OCR makes every aspect of receipt scanning and management effective. These were 5 aspects of how Optical Character Recognition can cut downtime and inconvenience with the best receipt scanning software.
