OCR for Invoices, Receipts, and Contracts: Field Capture With Honest Limits

Quick answer: The goal of receipt OCR is capturing key fields (date, amount, number) without retyping. Honest boundary: DocsAll OCR outputs plain text and does not do field-level structured extraction — locate fields by searching the text, then verify by hand. Open Image OCR — everything runs locally in your browser, and files never leave your device.

Steps

1. Shoot flat, even light, all four corners visible; thermal receipts fade — check sharpness immediately.
2. Process one image at a time with Image OCR, language Simplified Chinese+English.
3. Locate key fields in the text by anchors: currency symbols, date patterns, invoice numbers.
4. Verify field by field: amounts and dates carry the highest error rate and the highest consequence.

Important notes

• VAT invoices: check invoice number, tax ID (long digit strings — 0/O confusion), and amounts in words.
• Thermal paper degradation kills recognition; photograph and archive important receipts while they are legible.
• Field-level automatic extraction (structured invoice recognition) is a separate product category — DocsAll does not offer it today.

Common questions

Can I batch a stack of invoices? Process images one by one; batch applies to PDFs (see the batch OCR guide). Archive results keyed by filename.

What about table-style expense forms? Table structure is not preserved (see the table guide) — recognize line by line, then enter manually.