How to add document OCR to proALPHA
Short answer
Add OCR to proALPHA by routing scanned or emailed documents through a capture service that extracts fields, scores confidence and posts validated results through proALPHA's interfaces, with the image stored on the business object. Invoices, packing slips and material certificates are the usual starting point. Anything under threshold goes to a review queue.
Paper still enters proALPHA sites in volume: supplier invoices, packing slips from carriers, mill certificates and certificates of conformance, and drawings with revision notes. Staff key the data, scan the original and file it, and errors surface later at payment or audit time.
OCR on its own only reads characters. What matters for ERP use is turning those characters into a trustworthy record: the right supplier, the right purchase order, the right lot, with a link back to the image so a reviewer can verify in seconds.
Which proALPHA interfaces fit depends on version and licensed modules, so verify with your partner before settling on a posting method.
What teams use it for
Supplier invoice capture
Extract supplier, invoice number, dates, tax, totals and lines; match against purchase order and goods receipt; route mismatches to accounts payable.
Packing slip to goods receipt
Read the delivery note, find the purchase order, and prefill a goods receipt for the warehouse to confirm quantities.
Material certificates and CoCs
Extract heat or batch numbers, specification and test values, and link the certificate to the lot or batch record for traceability.
Inspection reports and test sheets
Capture measured values from supplier or in-house forms into quality records with out-of-tolerance flags.
Drawing revision checks
Read the title block for drawing number and revision, and compare it to the item master revision before work is released.
proALPHA integration surface
- proALPHA document management for attaching the image or PDF to the supplier invoice, purchase order, lot or item.
- Web service interfaces for creating or updating invoices, receipts and quality records, depending on release and licence.
- Import interfaces for structured files that the capture service produces when direct services are not available.
- Read-only OpenEdge SQL for matching suppliers, purchase orders, receipts, items and lots.
- Workflow and task functions for review and approval routing.
How it works
- 1
Collect documents in one intake
Use a scan-to-folder location, an AP mailbox and optionally a mobile capture, all landing in one queue with a document ID.
- 2
Pre-process images
Deskew, denoise and detect pages. Born-digital PDFs skip OCR and use their text layer directly.
- 3
Classify and extract
Identify the document type and extract fields with layout-aware models. Return a confidence score per field, not only per document.
- 4
Match and validate
Resolve supplier, PO, receipt and item. Check totals, tax, currency and tolerances, and compare with the receipt for a three-way match.
- 5
Review exceptions
Show the image next to the extracted values. Corrections feed back to improve the supplier template or prompt.
- 6
Post and archive
Create the record through the supported interface and attach the original so the audit trail holds the source.
Example flows
Invoice posts after a clean three-way match
Trigger: An invoice PDF arrives in the AP mailbox.
- Fields are extracted and the PO number is matched.
- Quantities and prices agree with the receipt within tolerance.
- A draft invoice is created with the PDF attached.
- An AP clerk approves in a single click.
Result: Routine invoices take seconds of review, while mismatches get full attention.
Certificate attached to a lot
Trigger: A mill certificate is scanned at goods receipt.
- System extracts heat number, material grade and test values.
- It finds the received lot and compares the grade to the item specification.
- A mismatch triggers a quality hold task; a match attaches the certificate to the lot.
Result: Traceability documents are linked at receipt, not hunted for during an audit.
Keeping data on-prem
Documents such as drawings and certificates are often sensitive, so OCR and extraction can run fully on your own servers. Open-source OCR engines combined with a locally hosted vision-capable open-weight model handle most layouts on a modest GPU. The capture service reads from a network share, matches data by querying proALPHA internally, and posts through its web services. No document leaves your site. Expect to tune on your top suppliers first, since a few vendors usually account for most volume.
Security checklist
- Encrypt document storage and restrict the capture service account to its intake folders.
- Keep the original image immutable and linked to the created record.
- Never let extracted text trigger actions beyond field population.
- Apply role-based access to the review UI, including masking for bank details.
- Retain extraction logs and corrections for audit and model improvement.
Ways to get it done
Commercial invoice capture product
Effort: Weeks, with per-page licensing.
Strong for AP invoices; check posting method to proALPHA and handling of non-invoice documents.
Build with open OCR and a local model
Effort: Several weeks for a first document type.
Fits data-sensitive sites and mixed document types.
Partner such as Netray
Effort: Pilot on one supplier group.
Appropriate when you need mixed documents, on-premise processing and a review screen integrated with approvals.
Pitfalls
- !Trusting document-level confidence when one field, such as the total, is wrong.
- !Ignoring multi-page invoices and credit notes with negative signs.
- !Matching only on supplier name instead of stable supplier IDs or tax numbers.
- !No feedback loop, so the same correction repeats every month.
- !Posting before the goods receipt exists and creating false mismatches.
Frequently asked questions
Does proALPHA include invoice OCR?
Some editions and partner add-ons offer incoming invoice capture, but this varies by version and licence. If you have it, test it first. A separate capture layer makes sense for other document types or stricter data rules.
What accuracy can we expect?
Clean, text-based PDFs from known suppliers perform well. Skewed scans, handwriting and unusual layouts are weaker. Measure on your own sample set per document type and set thresholds from that measurement.
How do we handle drawings?
Extract only structured metadata such as drawing number, revision and title block, and link the file to the item. Reading geometry or tolerances reliably is a much harder problem and needs review.
Can OCR run offline?
Yes. Open-source OCR and local vision models run on your own servers, which suits sites that cannot send certificates or drawings to a cloud service.
Where is the image stored?
Attach it to the business object in proALPHA document management where possible, and keep an immutable copy in your archive with a document ID so either side can be traced to the other.
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