What Information Does an Invoice Need to Be Digitized?

When an invoice arrives — by email, desktop upload, mobile capture, or EDI — Ottimate reads the document and extracts its data.  Digitization needs four things to identify the invoice:

• Vendor name and address 

• Invoice number

• Invoice date

• Invoice total

If your account processes line-item detail, the line items themselves (description, quantity, price) also need to be readable on the document.

What happens when something is missing

An invoice that is missing required information, or whose image cannot be read with confidence, is not rejected — it is routed for review.  It will sit in a "Needs Attention"-type state until the missing fields are confirmed or filled in, which is why an unreadable or incomplete document takes longer to process than a clean one.

Account-specific requirements

Some accounts and vendors have extra validation rules on top of the basics.  The most common example: vendors flagged as PO-required, where a PO number must be present on the invoice.  Rules like these are configured per account or vendor — if you are unsure what applies to yours, ask your CSM.

Tips for clean digitization

• Send one invoice per document.  Supporting pages (packing slips, delivery tickets) can be included behind the invoice.

• Make sure the scan or photo is legible — flat, well-lit, and uncropped.  If a human cannot read it, neither can the extraction.

• Email forwarding with the original PDF attachment beats a photo of a printout.