invoice_processing · workflow
Basware SmartPDF: AI-powered PDF invoice data extraction processing over 90% of invoices without manual work
Traditional OCR tools are error-prone and costly, causing character-recognition errors and requiring significant manual corrections; supplier on-boarding for invoice receipt is also slow and expensive.
How it works
Common implementation structure
How this type of workflow is generally built, generalized across documented cases — not tied to any one vendor's stack. Click any stage to read what happens there. Specific products that implement these stages appear in “Tools commonly seen” below.
Stage 1 · Supplier sends PDF invoice
Suppliers send PDF invoices to a single email address with no supplier registration required.
Tools used
SmartPDF
Outcome
SmartPDF processes over 90% of PDF invoices without manual work from the first day of use, saving money and time while improving accuracy and reducing carbon footprint.
What failed first
OCR was designed to digitize paper rather than extract structured data from PDF invoices, leaving character-confusion errors and ongoing manual correction as persistent problems.
Results
Volumeover 90%
Cost replacedsave money, time
Grounding & classification
Source type: generic use case
20 fields verified against source quotes.
data extractiondocument aiidpinvoicefailure mode describedmetric backedtools describedworkflow describedautomation rateerror reductiontime savedgeneric use caseaccounts payableinvoice processingdocument to recordinbox to system