Run OCR on any image-based PDF, scan, photograph, or faxed document and get a clean Excel file with structured rows and columns. The OCR is tuned specifically for the documents accountants and bookkeepers handle every day — bank statements, invoices, tax forms, receipts.
Generic OCR tools (Adobe Acrobat OCR, Tesseract, even ABBYY FineReader) extract text from an image but stop there. You get a wall of words on a page, then have to figure out yourself how to map those words back to rows and columns. Tables fragment because OCR doesn't understand table structure — just text positions.
For accountants and bookkeepers running monthly close on scanned client documents, two-step OCR + manual structure mapping is too slow. Worse, OCR errors on critical fields (transposed digits in account numbers, misread amounts) compound when the structure has to be reconstructed by hand.
PDFExcel's OCR pipeline is tuned for finance documents — bank statements, invoices, tax forms, receipts, pay stubs. The OCR runs automatically when the PDF doesn't have an embedded text layer, then the same AI that reads native PDFs reads the OCR text and extracts structured rows and columns. No two-step workflow, no separate quality slider, no 'export OCR text' intermediate file.
Accuracy on a clean 300 DPI scan is within 1-2% of a native PDF. Lower-quality scans (phone photos, faxed copies, faded thermal receipts) work too with an occasional row that benefits from a quick visual review. Critical fields like dates, amounts, EINs, and account numbers are tested heavily — accuracy is reliably 99%+ on clean inputs.
OCR is a means to an end, not a separate workflow. Drop in a scanned PDF, get back a structured spreadsheet — the OCR happens invisibly when needed.
Most OCR tools force you to run text extraction first, then manually map text to structure. PDFExcel does both in one upload — and the OCR is tuned for the documents accountants actually handle, not generic photos of street signs.
OCR runs invisibly. Drop in a scanned bank statement, get back the same structured table you'd get from a native PDF — dates in date columns, amounts in numeric columns, signed correctly.
| # | Date | Description | Debit | Credit | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 03/02/2025 | Opening Balance | $8,412.55 | ||
| 2 | 03/04/2025 | DEPOSIT — INVOICE 2102 | $3,200.00 | $11,612.55 | |
| 3 | 03/07/2025 | CHECK #1018 — Pacific Insurance | $1,142.00 | $10,470.55 | |
| 4 | 03/11/2025 | ACH WITHDRAWAL — VENDOR PAY | $485.00 | $9,985.55 | |
| 5 | 03/15/2025 | DEBIT CARD — OFFICE DEPOT | $78.42 | $9,907.13 |
CPAs receiving year-end client envelopes scanned from paper, bookkeepers handling small-business clients without digital banking, attorneys with discovery PDFs, lenders verifying paperwork from manual statement requests.
Client hands over twelve months of paper statements, scanned to PDF. Upload the year as one ZIP, get back a single workbook with each month as a tab — ready for trial-balance prep.
Restaurant client doesn't use digital banking — every month a stack of paper statements gets scanned and emailed. Convert each statement to QuickBooks-ready CSV, import for reconciliation.
Discovery production includes 400 pages of scanned bank records. Bulk-convert to Excel, search/filter to identify specific transactions for the case exhibit.
No. OCR runs automatically when the PDF doesn't have an embedded text layer. There's no 'OCR mode' to toggle and no quality slider — the pipeline picks the right settings based on the input.
On a clean 300 DPI scan, accuracy is within 1-2% of a native PDF — usually 99%+ on critical fields like dates, amounts, EINs, account numbers. Lower-quality scans (phone photos, faxed) work too with an occasional row that benefits from visual spot-check.
Yes — same flat pricing as native PDFs. 10 documents per month free, forever. OCR doesn't cost extra. Plans from $69/month for 50 documents.
Printed/typed handwriting (block-style) usually works. Cursive handwriting is hit-or-miss — the OCR will attempt it but you should review handwritten fields. Most receipts have printed amounts even when there's a handwritten signature.
Yes. Faxed PDFs (typically 200 DPI or less) extract correctly — you may see a few more spot-check candidates on critical fields, but the document still extracts into structured rows.