Document processing and OCR

Plan the human step from the start. Every processing pipeline needs a review queue for low-confidence fields, rules for who approves exceptions, and a record of what was changed. That record matters for finance teams under audit, because it shows that a person checked an amount before it was paid.

Ask each vendor where documents are processed and stored, how long they keep copies, whether your documents are used to train shared models, and how you can delete data when a contract ends. For documents that carry personal data, such as IDs or bank statements, check the vendor's security reports and the data processing terms before sending real files.

Integration is the other half of the work. Extracted data is only useful once it lands in the right place, so check which accounting, ERP and storage systems each tool connects to out of the box, and how it handles duplicates, such as the same invoice arriving twice by email and by post. Good setups match extracted fields against purchase orders or vendor records before anything is posted, and send mismatches to a named person. Ask how exceptions are reported, because a monthly count of corrected fields is the clearest sign of whether the tool is getting better or worse over time.