Sage 100

Is there a way to auto-read / convert .pdf's (e.g., OCR optical character recognition) for bringing data into MAS 90/200? Have a client who receives lots of .pdf Sales Orders from a big Customer of theirs. Customer is not willing to provide an Excel format of the orders due to data security concerns. They are open to a true EDI solution but that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. So we're wondering what other options might be available to help streamline and automate the entry of these Sales Orders. Initially I was thinking along the lines of a Document Management solution that has OCR functionality and can read in scanned invoices.

Check out http://www.datawatch.com/Monarch/monarch.php - I see on their web site they indicate that PDF is one of the file formats they support reading from.

Couldn't they (your client) set up a secure website where they could upload a text or Excel file?

I have had issues with the Monarch software converting certain PDF's that seem to createded as an image. Perhaps the newer software handles it differently now.

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Acom has that capabilty over on the A/P side. Perhaps they have something for sales order. See www.acom.com.

Couldn't they (your client) set up a secure website where they could upload a text or Excel file?

If the PDF really is created from text and not an image, Foxit PDF Reader can change it back to text.

I agree with Myron and ACOM as the others (Endorsed solutions like Doclink) are much more expensive.

Dawn's idea has a lot merit because it is commonplace already in customer / vendor relationships for send flat files via secure FTP and website uploads. Maybe your client can offer a pricing break to this customer to incentivize them (they would still come out ahead because of reduced labor costs in keying in orders). If customer says this is insecure too, then client can point out to customer the argument to say PDFs are secure to begin with doesn't hold water since client is compelled to convert PDFs into importable documents anyway.