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Datacap Taskmaster APT

Automate Your A/P Process and Lower Your Cost

A recent study by the Aberdeen Group, which surveyed hundreds of U.S. Accounts Payable departments in 2008, points out that most organizations are paying about $15 to process a single invoice, while a select group of best-in-class organizations have lowered that cost to below $4. The difference? The best-in-class organizations have implemented one, two or several automated processes in the Accounts Payable department, including capture systems to automate invoice data entry.

Datacap Taskmaster APT (Accounts Payable Technology) is a data entry solution built specifically for Accounts Payable. Integrated with any document scanner, Taskmaster APT can capture key data automatically from invoice images. Taskmaster APT uses best-of-breed OCR (Optical Character Recognition) combined with other techniques to identify the vendor, locate and extract such important fields such as purchase order number, invoice number, invoice date, and total amounts. Taskmaster APT can also accurately capture all line items, even on multi-page invoices without expensive set-up programming.

Ensuring That Data is Accurate

Once captured, Taskmaster APT has a battery of validations, including line item reconciliation against the purchase order (POLR), math calculations and Business Rule enforcement to assure accuracy and separate problem invoices for exception handling. Finally, validated and verified data is delivered directly into your accounts payable or ERP system, while the indexed image is routed to your image repository for storage and retrieval.

What Taskmaster APT can do for your organization:

Streamline your AP process
Increase accuracy, reduce processing time
Increase the productivity of your AP staff
Improve compliance through a strictly audited process
Reduce invoice processing cost
Seamless integration with your ERP and AP systems, including SAP and Oracle Financials

Innovation Delivers Efficiency

What sets Taskmaster APT apart from the competition is a unique approach to capturing variable documents, known as Dynamic Natural Analysis (DNA). DNA virtually eliminates invoice set-up and enables single-pass verification for both your known and unknown invoice layouts. This speeds implementation and reduces ongoing maintenance. All line items for a new invoice layout can be captured and their location stored after the user has identified the first line item, further accelerating the set-up process.

Typical Accounts Payable Workflow

Taskmaster manages invoice batches through a series of processing steps – known as a workflow - some steps require user input, some are unattended, but all of them help Taskmaster APT deliver accurate payables information.

Scan
Taskmaster APT supports all leading production scanners, including Bowe Bell + Howell, Canon, Fujitsu, Kodak, Panasonic, and Visioneer/Xerox. Images can also be input from Fax or an existing digital archive.

Image Enhancement
After scanning, invoices undergo automated image clean-up: line removal, de-speckling, "noise" reduction, de-skewing, and automated page flipping when necessary, all contribute to higher quality images for recognition.

Vendor Identification
Taskmaster fingerprint technology analyzes the invoice image based on the page geometry and then automatically identifies the vendor.

Recognition
Once the vendor's fingerprint has been found, Taskmaster applies zone and location rules to first find the data on the invoice, then capture and extract all your required data fields, such as invoice date, invoice number, purchase order number, and invoice total. Taskmaster APT is not limited to "header" fields and can also pick up line item details as well.

Validation - Verification
A customizable interface displays invoice image and recognition results side by side, highlighting fields and characters that need review. Math calculations on line items verify subtotal amounts by comparing quantities and unit prices. User-configurable rules automate validations according to an organization's business rules, assuring, for example, that totals match the amount authorized for every purchase order, or that the invoice date doesn't exceed specified parameters.Verifiers have easy tp use features to correct recognition, including Click N Key and Dynamic Details to enhance productivity. Intellocate automatically updates the fingerpoint library with updates to new and exisiting fingerprints.

Data and Image Delivery
Taskmaster supports a wide variety of imaging and accounting systems to enable multiple concurrent exports of invoice data and images. Export invoice data and images at any step in the capture process into any combination of ERP, database, storage, or enterprise-specific systems.