One of my clients stores all their paperwork in dropbox, and I have a link to access the online version. Last year I did it all manually by first of all copying the data to my computer and then alternating between that and inputting into VT+ I'd like to extract the data digitally this time, is there a way to do it without the use of cloud software?
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John
Any advice given is for general guidance and professional advice should be sought applicable to your circumstances.
In theory, yes. In practice... it's a question of finding software to do it, if it has been written.
The answer's yes in theory because it's technically possible.
For scanned receipts, it needs something to OCR the result and make sense of the data it extracts. And for PDFs, the data should already be in them in machine readable format, so it needs something that understands the file format and can extract that data - and again, make sense of it. Both of these are technically possible, given that the likes of ReceiptBank do them.
For services like that, as you know, it's a case of sending your (clients') stuff away for them to do the business and provide you with the result - but behind the scenes they are running software that does what you need. Although they may have developed their own solution, it's likely to be a combination of existing software and some tools of their own.
Now the good news: I'm pretty sure both angles have been covered here before.
On the OCR front, there's a scanner with OCR software that's been mentioned a few times. A quick search brings up this thread, in which the Fujitsu Scansnap ix500 is mentioned.
On the PDF front, I'm fairly sure Shaun has mentioned a piece of software that can extract data from them... so another quick search and voila! Wondershare PDF Element. (It looks like I downloaded it to try it, but fell afoul of a dependency that I won't have present on my Windows computer.)
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
Now the good news: I'm pretty sure both angles have been covered here before.
On the OCR front, there's a scanner with OCR software that's been mentioned a few times. A quick search brings up this thread, in which the Fujitsu Scansnap ix500 is mentioned.
On the PDF front, I'm fairly sure Shaun has mentioned a piece of software that can extract data from them... so another quick search and voila! Wondershare PDF Element. (It looks like I downloaded it to try it, but fell afoul of a dependency that I won't have present on my Windows computer.)
Cheers Vince. It may be the scanner that I need then as I'll explain. I have a very similar type of software to Wondershare that lets me convert to excel, and that did cross my mind when I posted the thread, but it's knowing how to manipulate the data once I have it in excel in order to send to the import function on VT+
Will have a look again at the scanner, because I've had my mind set on it for a while now.. I remember there being some software on there that handles the data from scanned receipts, so if it can do the same for PDF's, that's the perfect solution.
-- Edited by Leger on Thursday 19th of October 2017 10:54:09 AM
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John
Any advice given is for general guidance and professional advice should be sought applicable to your circumstances.
