AI can help you extract data from receipts, solving a decades-long challenge in expense management. By using AI, employees and accounting departments can save time in reconciling charges so employees receive reimbursement faster.
Expense management requires employees to scan receipts to convert them to digital data, which is then stored, organized, and analyzed. Employees may have several receipts from a single business trip or event, and they’ll have to repeat this process for each one. Plus, data from receipts can be difficult to extract. The data is unstructured, the image quality isn’t always great, and handwritten notes on the receipt might be missed.
Instabase’s AI Hub enables companies to overcome these challenges, providing accurate data extraction efficiently. Instabase leverages large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, making it easy to work with unstructured data. Within the AI Hub, our Converse app lets you interact with your documents, such as an uploaded receipt, using natural language prompts so that you can easily specify the data you want to extract. Or, if you have multiple receipts, you can use the Build app to create an automated workflow to extract data from multiple receipts.
How to Extract Data From a Receipt With Converse
Converse is a user-friendly AI app that lets you interact with the contents of any document. It’s as simple as uploading your receipts and telling the app what data you’d like to extract. You can also tell Converse to format the data in a table and export it as a spreadsheet. Follow these instructions for using Converse for receipt data extraction.
1. Go to the Instabase AI Hub and open the Converse app.
2. Click “Add files” in the bottom-left corner to upload an image and select your receipt file.
3. Use the text box in the bottom-right corner to tell Converse the data you’d like to extract. In this case, we’ve asked Converse to extract the following data points for restaurant receipts and organize them in a table: restaurant name, address, phone number, date, time, number, card type, subtotal, tip, and total.
4. Hover over the top-right corner of the output, and then click the arrow to download the data as a CSV.
5. Open the file in Excel or Google Sheets to do any additional processing.
How to Automate Extracting Data From Multiple Receipts With Build
If you have multiple receipts or want a repeatable workflow that can be applied to future receipt processing, use the Build app instead of Converse. Build offers an easy, user-friendly way to create a custom app for specific tasks. Here’s how you can use Build to extract data from scanned receipts.
1. Go to the Instabase AI Hub and open the Build app.
2. Click “Create Project.”
3. Click on any of the following options: Upload files, upload folders, or browse external drives. You can also drag and drop your files onto this screen to upload them.
4. Click the “Create classes” icon at the top of the panel on the right side of your screen. Add a class name that reflects the document type. In this case, we’ll use “Receipts.”
5. Click the “Add field” button to tell Build specific data to extract. You’ll need to create a field for each data type (e.g., restaurant name, time, date) you want to extract.
6. Once you’ve added in all the fields you’d like, click “Save & reclassify documents” to see the data that Build extracts for each field.
7. Review the results in the panel on the right side of the page. If you’ve uploaded multiple documents, you can switch between them by clicking on each document in the left-side column. The fields will update with the corresponding data for the document you’re currently viewing.
If you’re satisfied with the results, click the “Create app” button in the top-right corner. If any of the results are incorrect, hover your mouse over the field and you’ll see options to edit and delete the field.
8. Give your new app a name and a description, then click “Next.”
11. Click “Create app” to confirm the version of your app and proceed.
12. Instabase will create your app, which you can now use every time you need receipt data extraction. Click “Open app” to start using it.
13. Click “Run app.”
14. When you launch the app, you’ll see a similar screen as before, where you can upload your receipts in bulk. Upload your receipts as you did before.
15. Once completed, click the name of the run that you just created under the “Run” column.
16. View your results. If you’ve uploaded multiple receipts, click on each receipt in the left-side panel to view the relevant data. To export the data, click on the “Export results” button in the top-right corner.
Now you have a ready-to-use AI-powered app to extract data from receipts fast and easy. While we’ve built an app specific to restaurant receipts here, you can also build similar apps with more general fields that work for any receipt or more specific fields for certain types of receipts.
Extract Data From Receipts in Seconds
Use Instabase AI Hub to validate receipts, catch errors, and reimburse employees faster.
