OCR
Supplier statement OCR: spotting what is missing and what was paid twice
The supplier statement is the one document that tells you what your supplier believes you owe: period, balances, open invoices, credit notes, payments on account. Optical character recognition (OCR) reads it in full, and Zylio returns each line separately, with its exact position in the page, so the comparison with your ledger becomes possible.
The problem
The supplier statement is the only document that tells you what your supplier believes you owe
The statement arrives once a month, as an attachment, and almost always ends up in a folder. It is neither an invoice nor a credit note: it is the supplier’s view of your account on a given date. That is what makes it valuable, and also why nobody reads it: every line would have to be compared with your accounts payable ledger. The approach is exactly the one summed up by extract, compare, prove, applied here to a document nobody opens.
Four situations can be read in it, and none of them is visible anywhere else. An invoice appears on the statement and never reached you: it will be missing at close. An invoice you have paid stays open on the statement: the payment was not allocated, and a chase letter is on its way. A credit note announced by the supplier was never applied: the money is owed to you and nobody is claiming it. A payment on account was not deducted: the same service will be paid for twice. Each of those four lines sits in this month’s statement, provided it was read in full.
What we extract from a supplier statement
A statement is a table, often long, sometimes spread over ten pages, exported by a billing system that never expected anyone to read it back. The fields below are extracted line by line, each tied to its position in the page.
- Statement frame
- The framing of the document. A closing balance that does not match the sum of the lines read is flagged rather than accepted as it stands.
- Open invoices, line by line
- The heart of the statement: what the supplier considers unpaid, document by document, with the due date it applies at its end.
- Other movements
- The lines that are not invoices and still move the balance. This is where forgotten credit notes are found.
Ten fields only, but repeated over as many lines as the account holds: several hundred for a supplier of consumables. The value of a statement does not rest on any one field: it rests on the completeness of the list.
The check that follows
Invoices missing at your end
A document open on the statement and absent from your ledger is an invoice never received, or lost on the way. It will be missing at close.
Paid invoices absent from the statement
The payment was not allocated at the supplier’s end: reconciliation shows it before a chase letter goes out, and before a second payment is prepared.
Announced credit notes never applied
A credit note shown on the statement and never deducted from a payment is money owed to you that nobody is claiming.
Allocation gap costed
The gap between the supplier’s balance and yours is broken down line by line, with the reason for each difference.
That account reconciliation belongs to an agent connected to your ledger. Extracting the statement, meanwhile, follows the per-page pricing. Reconciliation is sized with you, on a quotation.
Capture
Gather and consolidate all your procurement data.
Collection by dedicated mailbox, upload, SFTP, scan, API or ERP export. Reads every format (native PDF, scan, photo, spreadsheet, structured feed), then extracts line by line: supplier, references, quantities, unit prices, discounts, taxes, terms.
The end of re-entry. A procurement history you can finally query.
What Capture detects
- Long documents and multi-page tables
- Unknown layouts
- Several languages and currencies
- Poor scans and handwriting
The plan covers extraction. Reconciliation with your accounts payable ledger is the next step and is sized with you, because it has to be connected to your entries, your allocation rules and your approval routes.
See pricingNothing is lost. Everything can be checked, everything can be proven.
- The contract clause and the invoice line, highlighted side by side.
- Every extracted value stays linked to the exact place in the document where it was read.
- The same case produces the same decision, today as in six months: the rules are applied deterministically.
- No discrepancy is set aside in silence. Anything that matches no rule is raised, with its reason.
- The agent records what it did, in the order it did it: who, what, how much, when.
Frequently asked questions
Is a ten-page statement extracted in full?
Yes. The lines do not stop at the first page: a statement truncated after twenty lines has no control value at all, since the discrepancy can sit anywhere in the list.
Does the statement replace the invoices?
No, and the distinction matters: a statement is not an accounting document. It justifies neither an entry nor a payment. It serves to spot what is missing, and then to claim the corresponding document.
How do I check a Zylio conclusion?
Every discrepancy opens onto its evidence: the contract clause and the invoice line, highlighted side by side, with the calculation shown.
Does Zylio replace my ERP?
No. Your ERP runs the process and remains the source of truth. Zylio handles the exception, on top of it, and feeds the results back. No additional development inside your system.
Measurable impact in every environment
More than 5 million procurement documents analysed
Between 1 and 7% of margin recovered
on the scope analysed
From 15 to 45% of time given back to teams, per FTE
depending on the scope and on data maturity
Zylio fits into your existing ecosystem.
The ERP runs the process. Zylio handles the exception and recovers the value that escapes it: invoices without a purchase order, line-by-line price discrepancies, duplicates and overbilling, off-contract spend.
Your data under high security.
Zylio meets the most demanding standards, and nothing is committed without your approval.
- Certifications
- Hosting
- Encryption
- Access
Carry on through the OCR hub
- Supplier invoice extractionThe document the statement points to, and which has to be found or claimed.
- Line-by-line document extractionWhy checking happens at line level, on a statement as anywhere else.
- Statements of ten pages and moreLong tables, with no line lost along the way.
- OCR for accounts payableEvery invoice line is read, the coding proposed, variances named before the approval to pay.
See what this looks like on your own data
Twenty minutes, on a spend category of your choosing. We show you what the agents detect, with the evidence behind it.
- No commitment, on your own data
- Result in 3 weeks
- 20 minutes, no sales pitch
- Your data stays hosted in France
- No change of tool or process