Capture of Paper Documents

Scan documents using multiple scanners and digital copiers.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR), so you can find documents by content, that is, by words or phrases in the documents.

Zone OCR. You can define zones and specify fields in which to place the OCR'ed text for each zone. For example, if you have sales invoices or Proof of Delivery documents with Customer Name, Invoice Number and other fields, you can scan the documents and SearchExpress can place the customer name in a Customer Name field, invoice number in an Invoice Number field, etc.

Scan in black and white and color.

Automatically separate documents by using barcodes as document delimiters.

Use up to ten barcodes as index fields to describe and help retrieve the document.

You can use barcodes in a hierarchical fashion. For example, you could scan a barcode encoding a client number once, and scan a bunch of different documents for that client, putting in perhaps a document-type barcode for each document, without repeating the client (upper level) barcode.

Image clean-up processing, including de-skew, speckle removal, and removal of holes from 3-ring binders.

Thumbnail Display shows the images for the current batch in reduced size and lets you move images and delete images.

Change scanner settings, such as page size, and image filter settings, within a document.

Optionally discard blank-pages if you are scanning both sides of the paper.

You can add new pages (append images) to existing documents.

User-defined index cards let you optionally add index fields to your documents, such as date, source, and customer name.

Type index fields while scanning, or, if you are scanning thousands of documents per day, scan on one (or more) PC's and key in index fields on other PC's.

Self-Learning Pick Lists. When assigning index fields to newly scanned documents, as you key in fielded data, SearchExpress can automatically create pick lists of valid entries. For example, if you have a vendor-name field, as you scan documents and key in vendor names, the vendor names will be automatically entered into a pick list, so that you can choose vendor names from this pick list, instead of keying vendor names.

Or, pick lists can be read from SQL or ODBC databases. For example, pick-list entries for vendor names could be read from your ERP software or any Microsoft SQL, Oracle or other ODBC compliant database.

Hierarchical pick lists let one pick-list entry control another pick list's entries. For example, the pick-list selection of a particular Client could control which pick-list entries are shown for the Document Type field, e.g., Contract.

These pick lists can be used in Scanning, Fielded Data Entry, Advanced Search, Remote Data Entry and Internet Scanning.

When assigning index fields to scanned documents, you can speed data entry by looking up information from SQL or ODBC-compliant databases.

For example, you can enter a Customer Number and use the Lookup button to fill in the customer name and address. This saves you the time that would be needed to type in the customer name and address, and assures the accuracy of same.

The Lookup function can read any SQL or ODBC-compliant database.

Also, you do not need to use the Lookup button or even look at the scanned document. For example, if you scan a sales invoice, SearchExpress can use the OCR'ed or barcoded invoice number to automatically read the customer name, invoice date, and other invoice data from your sales-invoicing application or any SQL or ODBC-compliant database, without the need to click the Lookup button.

Virtual scan program can automatically import images every n minutes from a digital copier.

Virtual Scan program has the same barcode recognition, deskew, blank-page detection, and other image processing features provided by scan program.

Electronic date and Bates stamp options, including:

Specify electronic stamp position.

Specify stamp font, font size and stamp font color.

Write scanned Documents to hierarchical folders.

This gives you the option to name scanned documents and write scanned documents to different folders, based on index fields you assign to the documents. For example, if, during scanning, you assign a client number and year to a document, the scanned document could be stored in a folder based on these values.

A document scanned for Client "12345" and Year "2005", with Title "Parking Deck Contract" could be written to the folder and file name: \12345\2005\Parking Deck Contract.pdf

You could (manually) place your Word, Excel and other files in the same client folders, and the SearchExpress Electronic File Import would automatically index these documents.

SearchExpress can be configured for complete hands-off operation, where the only steps required are putting the paper in the scanner or digital copier, and searching. In this scenario, you can search the OCR'ed text to find the document. And, if you use barcodes as index values, you can search on the bar-coded index values.

SearchExpress can write scanned documents in either self-contained searchable (text plus image) PDF format or TIFF format.

For both PDF and TIFF, SearchExpress can store the scanned documents as separate files, or SearchExpress can store the documents in BLOB (binary large object) fields, inside the SearchExpress or Microsoft SQL database.

Capture features for Office and other digital documents:

Electronic File Import automatically indexes all documents that are in Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML, Excel, PowerPoint, Video, Audio or other digital format, so you do not have to print and then scan these documents. You just provide a list of folders to monitor, to make these documents searchable.

You can specify that SearchExpress should index all folders under a given folder.

You can specify how often SearchExpress should index the folders, e.g., daily or hourly. When SearchExpress Electronic File Import runs, it indexes all new or changed files, and remove deleted files, from it's index.

Word, Excel and other Office documents can optionally be stored as unalterable images, for SEC, Sarbanes-Oxley, NASD, IRS and other regulatory compliance. The images can be in TIFF or PDF format.

For more information on SearchExpress Document Management software, please call us at (205) 985-7686 or click here for more information. Our email address is SxSales@searchexpress.com.