When making demand planning decisions, would you rather base your choice off intuition or data?
While human intuition seems to offer a reliable alternative to the painstaking task of extracting and analysing demand data, intuition is subjective, and business decisions should be made based on objective data— factual, true, historical, and accurate data-based information that is not informed by bias.
But trying to access correct data is easier said than done. Without accurate data extraction, it’s difficult to form actionable insights on:
- What are you selling?
- How much are you selling?
- When do you sell more? When do you sell less?
- Are you aligned with your sales goals?
- Where can you make improvement in markdown or discount optimisation?
- How much inventory your firm needs to carry? and the list goes on…
The good news is that the answers to these questions can be found on the invoices you issue to your buyers/clients.
Invoice data and demand planning
Conducting demand planning analysis – which is the supply chain management process of forecasting, or predicting, the demand for products to ensure they can be delivered and satisfy customers—can unlock a world of opportunities.
This is especially true since demand drives the entire supply chain from suppliers to manufacturing, marketing, inventory, distribution, and service to customers.
One starting point of demand analysis is looking at billing documents, specifically invoices.
This is because, other than the fact that invoices count as internal documents—which are a cheaper and readily available data source, the data extracted from invoices alone can identify demand peaks and troughs, as well customer base characteristics.
Together with other data points on capacity, production, competitors and external market conditions, you can analyse and benchmark the business performance of a firm against others in the industry and subsequently improve your decision-making.
Why is accurate invoice data extraction important?
Extracting accurate invoice data will create a domino effect in your business projections. With accurate data, your predictive analysis and business documents (including demand forecasts and income statements) will be of higher quality, empowering you to make informed and data driven business decisions.
On the other hand, without accurate data extraction, calculating these points with bad information could lead to false assumptions, hindering the success of your business projects and destroying your earnings.
According to Gartner research, poor data quality is responsible for an average of $15 million per year in losses. And according to Ovum Research, it was estimated that businesses lose approximately 30% of revenue on average due to low data quality.
One major factor that leads to poor quality data is the task of manually extracting information from PDF invoices. Entering data by hand—either through copying or typing—into your analytical software is not only time consuming, but prone to human error.
It can have a serious impact on statement reconciliations and any projections. It goes without saying that invoice data entry is, in fact, one the most tedious tasks - as voted by finance departments.
The solution? Eliminate human error and save time through invoice data extraction automation tool like Parsel.
Why choose Parsel to automate your invoice data extraction?
Parsel's data inference algorithms capture the relevant data from different invoice formats and supports English, continental and international number formatting.
Our AI and machine-learning technology understands the information being extracted, becoming smarter with each parse. It then converts the unstructured data from PDF to Excel and JSON files irrespective of the invoice layout and format at 96.6% financial accuracy - with no model training or guidance required.
What kind of invoice data can Parsel extract?
While there are various types of invoices formats such as sales invoices, commercial invoice, timesheet invoice, proforma etc, Parsel can generally extract most of the common details reflected in invoice such as:
- Unique Invoice number
- The date of the invoice
- Customer name and billing address
- Good/services description
- Quantity and unit cost
- Supply date of good/services
- Amount charged
- Amount owed
- Rate of discount
- VAT/Taxes
- Payment terms
- Delivery method and terms
Ready to automate your invoice data extraction with parsel?
1. Sign up for a free account on Parsel
To extract data from PDF invoices quickly and easy, sign up for a free account with your email address at Parsel.ai.
2. Specify number format and upload invoices
Once you've activated your account, log in and select your default document number format. (You can change this later from your Profile settings). Next, upload your PDF invoice via our simple drag and drop file uploader.
3. Download your Excel or JSON file
Once Parsel has analysed, identified and extracted the data in your PDF, it'll convert your data to Excel, CSV, TXT and JSON in minutes.
Sign up for Parsel today
To start using Parsel to capture and extract information from purchase orders, delivery notes, invoices and company reports, sign up for a free account today.