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Reading Documents

Document reading returns the text of a document and, where it can, its structure — tables and labelled fields rather than just a wall of words.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Data:

  • Documents — the documents being read
  • Datastores — where extracted values are put

Architect Panel → Automation:

  • Tasks — Document Text Extraction

Structure is what makes it useful

Raw text tells you an invoice mentions a number. Structure tells you which number is the total, because it was in a field labelled "Total" or in the last column of a table.

That difference is most of the value. Locating a value by its label survives a supplier changing their layout in a way that hunting for a pattern in raw text does not.

What it handles well

  • Machine-generated PDFs — invoices, statements, orders.
  • Clean scans of printed documents.
  • Consistent forms, where the same fields appear in the same places.

What it handles badly

  • Handwriting.
  • Photographs taken at an angle, in poor light, or partially obscured.
  • Dense layouts with overlapping tables.
  • Poor-quality faxes and repeated photocopies.

Be realistic about which of these your actual traffic looks like before promising anybody a hands-off process.

Build the workflow around review

The pattern that works:

  1. The document is uploaded and queued.
  2. Extraction runs and pre-fills a draft record.
  3. A person confirms or corrects, with the document beside the form.
  4. The record is saved and the document stays attached.

Step three is the one to design carefully — the document and the fields need to be visible together, or the reviewer is worse than somebody typing from scratch.

Keep the document attached

Always. The extracted values are an interpretation; the document is the evidence. When somebody disputes a figure a year later, the answer is the original, not what was read from it.

Track corrections

Which fields reviewers change most is the most useful measurement you can take. A field corrected half the time is not saving anybody anything and might be better left blank; consistent errors on one supplier's layout is a specific, fixable problem.

Without that, you have no evidence about whether the feature is helping.

Expect variation between senders

Layouts differ, so accuracy differs. It is normal to read one supplier's invoices well and another's poorly, and worth measuring per sender rather than as one overall figure that hides both.

Start with your highest-volume sender

Prove the workflow on the documents you receive most, where consistency is highest and the saving is largest, then widen. Starting with the awkward ones proves nothing except that awkward documents are awkward.

Worked example

A team processes invoices from 40 suppliers. Six account for 70% of volume, so the workflow is built and tuned on those. Correction rates per supplier show one whose layout reads poorly; they are asked to send PDFs rather than scans, and the rate drops to match the rest.

Recommendations

  • Design the review screen properly — document and fields together.
  • Always keep the original attached.
  • Measure correction rates per field and per sender.
  • Start with your highest-volume source.