Check automatically read details

Office can read an expense file or a scanned income document and suggest its details. The screen may call this OCR. It means reading text from a document or photo.

Income documents are read when you upload them on the Incomes page and are checked on the Review income documents screen; see Review income documents. Expenses, incomes, and annual report documents (Forms 106 and 867, the ID appendix) share the office’s monthly reading allowance.

While the document is read

The top of the expense shows Reading the document… with the time so far, and a scan line passes over the file. The fields the reading may fill show a moving line.

You can start typing right away. What you type is kept, and the reading never overwrites it. When it finishes, the reading fills only empty fields or fields that still hold their default.

Check the result

1. Read the message at the top of the expense: how many fields were filled from the document and how many need a look.
2. Each field shows a mark:
   • a green spark: filled from the document
   • a double check: matches the document
   • an orange mark: the document says something else, or the reading could not fill the field
3. Click the mark to see what the document says, how sure the reading was, and why the value was or was not used. If the document says something other than what was entered, you can click Use the value from the document.
4. When the document gives a location, hover over a field to see where it is written in the file.
5. Compare the vendor, dates, document number, and amounts with the file, and correct any mistakes.

A successful read is not an approval of the expense.

Vendor, currency, and amounts

• Vendor: the reading looks for an existing vendor by tax ID, then by name. When none matches and the reading found both the vendor’s name and a valid Israeli tax ID it is reasonably sure of, a new vendor is created with the address, email, and phone from the document. Otherwise, when the vendor’s name was read (as on a foreign invoice, or when the reading was unsure of the tax ID), Create a vendor from the document’s details appears under the vendor field and opens a vendor card filled in advance. On an existing vendor’s card, the reading fills only an address, email, or phone that is still empty.
• Currency: a document in a foreign currency is taken in its currency, at the Bank of Israel representative rate for the document date.
• Amounts: amounts are filled only when they add up. On an invoice that shows a subtotal and a total with no VAT line, VAT is worked out as the difference between them, so it is 0 only when the two are equal. A vendor’s invoice is recorded as a Tax invoice, Tax invoice / receipt or Credit note, also from a foreign vendor or when it does not say “tax invoice”; its VAT depends on the vendor, as the next item explains.
• A document with one amount: when the document shows only the total (or only the net), the other amounts follow from the document type and the vendor. An invoice from a vendor without an Israeli tax ID (a foreign vendor), an invoice that is not a tax invoice, and a receipt give no input VAT, so VAT is 0 and the net is the total. A tax invoice from an Israeli vendor gets VAT at the standard rate of its date. When the document type is not known, the amounts are not completed. How the fields were filled marks these amounts as worked out, with the reason.
• Classification: the reading recognizes the expense type (advertising and marketing, for example) and looks for the client’s classifications whose expense card reports on the matching Form 6111 line. When exactly one fits and the expense has no classification yet, it is chosen. When several fit, they appear under the classification field, one click each. When none fits, you see the 6111 line it looked for. For a client with more than 500 classifications, the reading does not choose one. A classification you chose, or one the vendor’s defaults set, is never replaced.
• A document addressed to another business: when the document is addressed to another tax ID than the client’s, a warning appears. Make sure the document belongs to the right client.

What a reading changes and what it keeps

• What you entered stays: a value you typed, also when you created the expense by hand, is never replaced. The reading shows what the document says next to it, so you can take it with one click.
• Defaults can be replaced: a field still holding its default (a tax invoice, the client’s currency) is filled from the document.
• The vendor’s defaults come first: a field the vendor’s defaults set keeps the default. When the reading finds another vendor than before, the earlier vendor’s classification, payment method, and other defaults are taken back, and the new vendor’s defaults apply.
• Currency and amounts go together: when someone set the amounts or the rate, or the reading did not find amounts to replace them, the currency stays as it is.
• The newest reading counts: when a document is read again, an older reading that finishes later changes nothing.
• Nothing changes after approval: a reading that finishes after the expense was approved, or while the office cannot make changes, changes nothing. What it found still appears in How the fields were filled.

See how the fields were filled

Click How the fields were filled at the top of the expense:

• By field: each field’s value now and who set it (you, the reading, the vendor’s default, a sync, or an import), what the document says, what was done with it, and every change.
• Timeline: the same story in order, newest first.

Everything read on the document shows every field the reading returned.

Send several expenses together

1. On the expenses list, select the rows you want.
2. Click Run OCR.
3. In the confirmation dialog, review what will be sent and what will be skipped — for example an expense with no file, one that is not a draft, or a file that was already read.
4. Click Send N to OCR only if any expenses are eligible.
5. Review the results for each expense. Queued expenses are still being read; skipped expenses show the reason they were not sent.

This uses the office’s monthly reading allowance. Expenses without a file stay selected but are not sent.

Nothing was read

The office may not have document reading enabled, its monthly allowance may be used up, or the file may still be processing. Read the on-screen reason. You can fill the expense details manually where permitted.

Retry a failed read

If Run OCR again is available, check the file first and then retry. A retry may use the office’s allowance. A clearer original file is usually more useful than repeatedly submitting an unreadable image.

Managers can inspect usage and failed reads in Settings → Document reading (OCR). The reading log lists every document the office sent, with its type; click a row to see what was read, or open the document it belongs to.