Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
  • G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
  • G06F40/00—Handling natural language data
  • G06F40/10—Text processing
  • G06F40/166—Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
  • G06F40/174—Form filling; Merging
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
  • G06V—IMAGE OR VIDEO RECOGNITION OR UNDERSTANDING
  • G06V30/00—Character recognition; Recognising digital ink; Document-oriented image-based pattern recognition
  • G06V30/10—Character recognition
  • G06V30/14—Image acquisition
  • G06V30/1444—Selective acquisition, locating or processing of specific regions, e.g. highlighted text, fiducial marks or predetermined fields
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
  • G06V—IMAGE OR VIDEO RECOGNITION OR UNDERSTANDING
  • G06V30/00—Character recognition; Recognising digital ink; Document-oriented image-based pattern recognition
  • G06V30/10—Character recognition

Definitions

• the present invention refers to a data entry process and system, particularly for accounting data in a system for storing and/or processing such data.
• V VAT item means an identification code that represents a value for every one of the characteristics related to VAT (percentage, deducted amount, etc.)- Moreover, these codes allow identifying the amounts to be summed on every cell of VAT Declarations.
• the prior art discloses, in IT-A-TO2003A000900, a process and a system implementing it, through which it is possible to make a public accountant or an accounting and fiscal export enter accounting and fiscal rules in the system, in such a way that a user without any accounting and/or fiscal knowledge manages, guided by the system, to enter the document data.
• Object of the present invention is solving the above prior-art problems by providing a data entry process and system, particularly for accounting data, in a system for storing and/or managing them, that allows making it easier to perform the task of keying-in such data.
• an object of the present invention is providing a data entry process and system, particularly of accounting data, in a system for storing and/or processing them, that allows entering such data in a quicker and more reliable way, consequently minimising the waste of economy and time resources and minimising, if not removing, possible manual keying-in and entry errors by an operator.
• FIG. 1 shows a block diagram representing the steps of the accounting data entry process and system according to the present invention.
• the process according to the present invention is based on identifying the type of document in which data to be entered in the storing and/or processing system are contained, on determining the position of every data on every type of document, and on automatically reading and automatically compiling data when the document is of an already known type.
• the document that can be used with the procedure according to the present invention can physically be on media of a different nature, such as: paper; digital like image; or digital like text.
• the process according to the present invention makes it easier to enter data, particularly accounting data, by digitally acquiring, in fact, the image of documents in which such data are contained, recognising the document texts, identifying the type of every document, storing the areas in which data to enter can be found on every type of document, and automatically loading the data entry program fields depending on found data in corresponding areas.
• the accounting data entry process and system comprises the steps of: obtaining (FlOl) a digital image of the document; it is obvious that, if the document is not in on paper but already a digital document, such step is not necessary, while if the document is on paper, the digital image must be obtained, for example, by acquisition through a scanner.
• Such step can be performed differently, for example by comparing data entered by the user with texts recognised on the document; selecting an area identifying the document image (F107) and storing the identifying image contained in such area (F107) that is used as document type identification.
• Documents of the same type are, for example, invoices of the same supplier. Generally, they always have the same lay-out, and only data change. It is possible to use different criteria for selecting the identifying area, such as for example: a. top left area (area often used for company logo) ; or
• identifying image contained in such area when entering subsequent documents, before requesting the user, in step F104, to enter document data, identifying (F109) the type of document by comparing the identifying area and the identifying image with the identifying areas and the identifying images of already-stored document types; such comparison of identifying images can occur, for example, by using an algorithm that points out the similarity of compared images, such as the "cross-correlation".
• the user manually identifies the document type, for example from a list of available documents.
• searching which image areas have been stored on previous documents of the same type associated with that field. Consequently, searching (Fill) which text is present in the current document in the related area and automatically loading (F112) this text in the field to be keyed-in: such areas can be chosen by using different logics, for example: a) the area more frequently associated with documents of the same type; b) the area associated in the latest document of the same type; c) the area more frequently previously associated with the latest documents of the same type; d) the area more frequently previously associated with documents of the same type but weighing the most recent documents more; or e) the area previously associated with a document of the same type chosen by the user as single model.
• highlighting on the document image, the area from which the loaded data have been taken. If for such field also other areas had been stored, also the other areas are highlighted differently.
• the user can change (F114) the chosen area among the highlighted ones by pressing a key or by using the mouse or other pointing devices, such as for example a touch screen, on the image.
• the procedure will have enough information available for loading the program fields with data detected on the document image.
• Selecting the identifying area that is useful for locating the document type can be automatically performed by the procedure or can be manually performed by the user.
• associating data to a fixed image position they can be associated with a nearby image or text, such as for example the same data description.
• the system can store, for example, that the invoice date of a given document type can be exactly found under the text 'INVOICE DATE' .
• a public accountant customer has several types of accounting documents, but normally a high number of these documents are of the same type of the previously loaded documents. For example, when a customer periodically purchases goods from one of his suppliers, he will periodically have invoices of this supplier. These invoices usually have some picture or logo that allows identifying them, and generally always have the same lay-out, thereby allowing to always find the same data types (such as for example the 'invoice date 1 ) in the same position.
• the process according to the present invention is not used as associated with other existing procedures for assisting the user in choosing VAT items and accounting accounts, the user himself, in addition to data found on the document, will have to choose VAT items and accounting accounts for every amount that has to be loaded. These data cannot be found on the document, and depend on customer activities, on document type and on associated amount type. Therefore, for these fields, the system will not try and associate document areas, but will store the values chosen by the user for such customer/document type/amount type.
• the system will remember these values, and when for such customer one has to key-in a new telephone invoice, the system will propose, for the 'Telephone Subscription' amount account 105 and VAT item 118.
• the step that automatically loads data in fields of the data entry program depending on texts found in the document will have to take care of changing the found text format so that it is compatible with the format required by the data entry program.
• a data entry program can be realised that accepts different formats for keying-in the values.
• an advantageous aspect of the present invention is that, depending on individual needs, some process steps can be executed in a different order from the above-described one. For example, an image area can be selected that will be used to identify this type of documents even before requesting the user to enter data in fields.
• a variation of the present process consists in adding a functionality for an automatic completion of the field value, that can be implemented as an alternative or in addition to the above- described process.
• word-processing, data sheet programs and others have a functionality for automatically completing the text that a user is writing.
• the program When a user starts writing a word on some word processors, the program tries to deduct what the user is writing and proposes the complete word. The user can confirm the text proposed by the program by pressing a key (usually ⁇ Enter' ) or he can go on writing what he wishes.
• These word processors contain a list of terms, and when a user starts writing a word, they compare the letters written by the user with the first letters on every term which can be found in the list. When the words in the list that start with the letters
• This method for automatically completing the fields depending on data found in the document can be useful alone, particularly for entering data from documents whose type is never or almost never repeated. It can also be used together with the previously described process. In this latter case, the program can limit the list of texts to those that can be found on areas found during step FlIO for filling-in the field upon entry (F104) , limiting very much the number of texts in the list and allowing to anticipate and complete the field values almost immediately.
• Another variation to the described processes consists in selecting available data for loading or completing a certain field depending on the type of data expected for such field.
• available texts for loading or completing a field can be limited to the only texts that have the same type of field to be keyed-in.
• the field to be keyed-in is "invoice date"
• the text to be found on the original document is of the "date” type.
• the system could limit the choice only to those data that satisfy this type of data.
• a first way of using this mechanism is proposing to the user
• the system could propose a list with dates that had been found in the document. They could be only one or two and therefore the selection would be easy. In order to make it still easier, the program can highlight the area in the original document where each one of the dates shown for the choice can be found.
• a second way of using this mechanism is limiting the areas used by the step Fill of automatically searching the text and/or the step F113 of highlighting the alternative areas from which the text can be taken only to those whose text has data of the desired type. If in this example of search for the "invoice date", the program found 3 areas used in the previous documents of the same type in order to take these data, step Fill would verify on which of the 3 areas the found text corresponds to a date removing choices that do not correspond. Step F113 would not highlight the areas whose text does not correspond to a date.
• a third way of using this mechanism is during the automatic completion.
• the program searches which texts on the original document start with characters keyed-in by the user, it will limit this choice to the only texts that correspond to the searched data type.
• the program will discard texts "12.000” and "125” because they do not correspond to a date and will automatically complete the field with a single text that starts with "12" and is a date: "12/12/2003".
• the invention also refers to a computer program product comprising computer program code means adapted to run all the steps of the above-described process when such program is run on a computer.
• the invention also refers to a computer program as defined and contained on a computer-readable medium.
• the present invention also refers to a data entry system for electronically practising the process according to the present invention, comprising: means for acquiring documents in a digital form; means for manually entering data; means for displaying digital data, documents and images; means for storing documents and/or data contained in such documents; and means for processing documents and/or data contained in such documents.

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
• Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• Audiology, Speech & Language Pathology (AREA)
• Computational Linguistics (AREA)
• General Health & Medical Sciences (AREA)
• Health & Medical Sciences (AREA)
• General Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Artificial Intelligence (AREA)
• Computer Vision & Pattern Recognition (AREA)
• Multimedia (AREA)
• Document Processing Apparatus (AREA)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Publications (1)

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Citations (6)

• 2004
  • 2004-07-08 IT IT000467A patent/ITTO20040467A1/it unknown
• 2005
  • 2005-07-05 WO PCT/IT2005/000380 patent/WO2006006190A1/en active Application Filing

Patent Citations (6)

Non-Patent Citations (1)

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