The AP problem is not OCR. It is that invoice layouts vary by vendor, descriptions wrap, and the numbers have to add up before anything is posted. A tool that produces a plausible table without checking it has moved the work, not removed it.
The fields that actually matter
- Vendor and invoice number — for matching and duplicate detection.
- Invoice date and due date — for aging.
- Description, quantity, unit price, line amount — the line items.
- Subtotal, tax, total — the document’s own arithmetic, kept for verification.
If the extraction only captures a total, you cannot post to the ledger. If it only captures line items, you cannot verify them. You need both, and they need to be compared.
Three checks before the batch enters the books
1. Line sum vs document total
Add the extracted line amounts and compare with the printed subtotal. Differences point to a missed row, a duplicated wrapped description, or a discount line that was not captured. This one check catches most invoice extraction errors.
2. Quantity × unit price
Where an invoice prints both, recompute the line amount. A mismatch usually means a decimal or a thousands separator was misread — the classic 1,050 vs 10,500.
3. Duplicate invoice numbers
In a batch, the same invoice number appearing twice is either a genuine duplicate submission or two different vendors with colliding numbering. Either way it should be visible before payment, not after.
Designing the batch so it stays reviewable
- Keep one row per line item and keep the source file in a column, so a merged batch can still be traced back.
- Keep provenance: which page and region each amount came from. When a vendor disputes a charge, you should not be searching a PDF.
- Prefer flags over corrections. A tool that silently fixes a total has destroyed the only evidence that something was wrong.
What this looks like in SheetParser
Upload a batch of invoices; each file produces its own table of line items with the document’s totals captured alongside, and every amount mapped to its source page. Anything the second read disagrees on is listed rather than averaged. Export to Excel or CSV for the AP system.
The first file each day is free up to 10 pages — try it on the invoice layout that breaks your current tool. Paid plans run files up to 600 pages, which covers a month of invoices per upload.