How the invoice scanner works
The scanner runs on the same invoice OCR that reads supplier bills in Fastbooks. It first reads the text on every page, including scanned and photographed documents, then picks out the details a bookkeeper needs and lays them out next to the original so you can check them.
What it extracts
- Supplier details: name, address and tax number (VAT, GST, ABN, EIN and similar).
- Invoice details: invoice number, invoice date, due date and currency.
- Line items: each description with its quantity, unit price, tax rate and line total.
- Totals: subtotal, tax and the amount due.
From PDF invoice to CSV
Once an invoice is scanned, download the results as a CSV file with one row per line item. It opens straight into Excel or Google Sheets, so you can check, total or import the data without retyping it. Amounts keep the currency and the decimals printed on the invoice.
Scanning invoices every month?
In Fastbooks, scanned invoices become draft bills that are matched to the right supplier and expense account, ready to approve and pay. Read more about expense management in Fastbooks, learn the parts of a bill in our anatomy of an invoice guide, or create your own invoices with the free invoice generator.
How we handle your document
Invoices hold private business information, so the scanner keeps as little as it can, for as short a time as it can:
- Your file travels over an encrypted connection and is never available at a public link.
- It is deleted from our servers as soon as it has been read. The extracted details are deleted after 1 hour.
- Only the browser that uploaded the invoice can see its results.
- The text is read by Google Cloud Vision and the details are extracted by OpenAI, on our behalf. Neither uses your document to train their models. OpenAI may keep the request for up to 30 days to detect abuse, then deletes it.
- We don't use uploaded invoices to train AI models.