Is there some kind of scanning software/scanning hardware combo that can do this?

[vi edit]

Here's what I would like to be able to do:

Take invoices like this and somehow use OCR to grab the invoice number highlighted by the pink rectangle. I would then like the OCR software to take that invoice number that it grabs, and save the invoice as an image using the grabbed invoice number as the name.

Basically - scan a document, use software to grab some info from the document, and then save the document to disk using the grabbed info as the name.

Can it be done?

 

[Czar]

think the invoice number would have to be manualy written down

though not sure

 

[vi edit]

The invoice number would be in the same exact spot for every invoice. I wasn't sure if there was an OCR program out there that allowed you to set up "hot spots" or something of the sort to grab and convert to text certain parts of the page. It's the process of taking the OCR'ed info and saving it as the file name that would be the difficult part.

 

[manly]

OmniPage is the preeminent mass-market OCR package these days. You can set up "zones" in it. I'm not sure you can script actions with it, but I suspect it's possible.

They already have a version that ties into Oracle, so the lack of a scripting mechanism would be unthinkable.

 

[vi edit]

Hmmmm, omnipage. The ability to do zones is very cool, I'll have to look into that. The only OCR I've been exposed to is Textbridge and the version that I've used didn't do that.

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[vi edit]

Ooooh, I'm looking through the omnipage info page and it's looking pretty sweet.

 

[notfred]

If you're already doing OCR, you might as well script it to convert the whole thing to an excel file. You'd be better off that way than having a bunch of images.

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: notfred
If you're already doing OCR, you might as well script it to convert the whole thing to an excel file. You'd be better off that way than having a bunch of images.

Can't do that. Each invoice has a signature from the person who received the shipment. We need to archive these invoices, complete with signature so we can pull them up when a customer refuses payment until they see a copy of the invoice complete with the signature.

Anything other than a flat image file would loose the signature.