Artificial Intelligence in Automated data entry software
Accounting Industry has seen major changes in the past three decades where ERP’s and SAP was only accessible to large organizations due to huge costs involved and SMB’s were stuck to desktop software like QuickBooks. With the emergence of cloud accounting software, the industry saw a major turn on the framework on how SMB's could now access better technology at the fraction of the cost. Software like Xero and QBintuit has taken over the market enabling small business to thrive through beautiful software, advice and connections.Yet business expense reporting was done manually where employees allocated receipts and codes and submitted the list for approval.
Using algorithms to help make Better decisions has been around for More than 25 years, but the influx of available data has helped AI Shift into the mainstream.Extracting Data from Documents
Timo Elliott, VP, Global Innovation Evangelist for SAP4
"Humans need not apply" a viral theme on the internet where technological automation doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be better than the humans it is replacing.Today, with the advancement of artificial Intelligence and Machine learning merged with the OCR (Optical character reading) technology (extracting text from an image and converting it into editable and searchable data) the Accounting and Bookkeeping industry has witnessed the automated data entry transformations. In addition to that ICR (intelligent character recognition) is helping identify hand written (cursive words) documents to easily convert it in the digital format.Artificial intelligence is used to look at both layout and content to determine a document’s type. So when you take the picture of your check , it knows where and what to look for.
You can find various softwares like Xtracta or Abacus which can easily be integrated with your accounting software. AutoEntry is also one of the leading competitions in the add-on market. They say the right software can capture tax summaries by default, remember how you categorize your expenses such as the relevant supplier account, nominal account and tax code without ever creating duplicate supplier accounts or posting duplicate invoices into your accounting solution. They even match invoices to purchase orders.
Chief reason for shifting to recognition software is the cost it saves in comparison to the high-priced manual labour.
"Technology automates mundane, Repeatable tasks and activities that are best done by machines— refocusing human skill and judgment On problems that machines can’t solve."Evaluate its ROI.
Cliff Justice, Principal, Innovation & Enterprise Solutions, KPMG
Is it really useful? The simple answer is “yes”.Calculate the man-hours that can be saved.How many documents can be processed with the automation software and thenCompare those with the output from manual processes.