When you upload a vendor bill PDF or a photograph of a receipt to Zoho Books, the OCR engine analyses the document and identifies key fields: vendor name, invoice number, invoice date, due date, line items (if structured), subtotal, tax amount, and total. It pre-populates the bill creation form with this data. For vendors already in your Zoho Books contact list, it matches the extracted vendor name and links the bill to the correct vendor record automatically.
Auto-Scan works best on clearly printed, high-contrast PDFs and images. Handwritten bills, low-resolution photographs, and invoices in unusual formats may have lower extraction accuracy. Always review the pre-filled form before saving: verify the vendor name, invoice amount, GST breakdown, and line items. Correct any errors before saving. Over time, as the OCR engine processes more documents from the same vendors, accuracy tends to improve.
Auto-Scan also works for expense receipts. If an employee submits a photo of a petrol receipt or a restaurant bill, the Auto-Scan feature extracts the date, amount, and vendor, pre-filling the expense form. This makes expense reporting faster for employees and reduces the accounts team’s effort in manually entering hundreds of small receipts. For businesses processing a large volume of vendor bills, Auto-Scan combined with Zoho Books’s approval workflow can significantly reduce accounts payable processing time.
Auto-Scan in Zoho Books uses OCR to automatically read uploaded bill or receipt images, extract key data like vendor name, date, and amount, and pre-fill the bill or expense form to speed up data entry.
Go to Purchases, then Bills, click New Bill with Auto-Scan, upload the PDF or photo. Zoho Books processes the image and pre-fills the form. Review, correct any errors, and save as normal.
Aaxonix is a certified Zoho implementation partner based in Pune. Architecture-first, no surprises.