AI OCR (Optical Character Recognition) uses machine learning to read a document — an invoice, a form, a receipt, a contract — and turn its text into structured data you can search, edit, and merge into new documents automatically.
ActiveMerge’s AI OCR tool extracts that data directly inside your document generation workflow, so there’s no separate scanning tool or manual re-typing step.
What Is AI OCR and How Is It Different from Regular OCR?
Traditional OCR reads pixels and returns raw text — a wall of words with no structure. AI OCR goes further: it recognizes the fields in a document (invoice number, date, line items, total) and maps them to structured data, the way a person reads a document rather than just scanning it. That structure is what makes it usable for document automation instead of just text search.
What AI OCR Is Useful For
- Invoices and receipts — extract vendor, line items, totals, and dates to generate reports or merge into accounting documents.
- Forms and applications — pull applicant data from scanned forms into a clean digital record.
- Contracts and agreements — extract key terms, names, and dates for tracking or summarizing.
- Certificates and official documents — capture names, numbers, and dates for re-use in other documents.
ActiveMerge’s AI OCR is currently optimized for tabular data like invoices, and we’re actively expanding it to more document types.
AI OCR vs. Manual Data Entry
Typing invoice fields into a spreadsheet by hand is slow and error-prone — a single mistyped total or date can throw off downstream reports. AI OCR reads the document once, surfaces the fields it finds, and lets you review and correct them before anything is generated, cutting a multi-minute manual task down to a few clicks.
How to Use the AI OCR Feature in ActiveMerge
Using ActiveMerge’s AI OCR tool takes three steps, whether your source document is an invoice, a form, or a contract.
View our video demo here to learn how to extract data from one document and create a new document.
Step 1: Start a Document Generation Job and Select Your Source Document
Start a new document generation job and select your source document — for example, a sample invoice from your template library. Click “select mappings” to begin the data extraction process. The system processes the document and identifies available data fields in moments, which become available as mappings for your generated documents.
Step 2: Review, Correct, and Add Data
If a field wasn’t detected or needs a correction, you can enter or edit it directly in the interface — for example, adding a “position” field that wasn’t present in the original document. For any detected data, click the edit button to modify it before generating your final document.
Step 3: Preview and Generate
Preview your document to confirm all the mapped and custom data appears correctly, then click “generate documents” to create your final output.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the AI OCR tool in ActiveMerge?
It’s a feature that uses Optical Character Recognition and AI to automatically extract data from documents like invoices, so you can use that information in generating new documents.
Is there an additional cost to use the OCR feature?
No, this feature is automatically available to all ActiveMerge users at no additional cost.
What types of documents work best with the current OCR tool?
Currently, the tool works best with tabular data such as invoices, but we’re expanding its capabilities to work effectively with other document types.
How accurate is AI OCR compared to manual entry?
AI OCR reliably extracts clearly formatted, tabular data like invoice fields, and every extracted field is shown to you for review before it’s used — so you catch and correct anything the tool gets wrong before it reaches your generated document, rather than trusting it blindly.
Can I add information that isn’t in the original document?
Yes, you can enter custom text for any fields that weren’t detected or need to be added to your generated document.
Can I edit the data that was extracted before generating my document?
Absolutely. For any detected data, click the edit button to modify the information before generating your final document.
Will the OCR tool support more document types in the future?
Yes, we’re actively developing the tool to support a wider range of document types and structures beyond tabular data.
Conclusion
AI OCR turns document data extraction from a manual, error-prone task into a review-and-confirm step: ActiveMerge reads your source document, surfaces the fields it finds, and lets you correct or add data before generating your final documents. It’s built into the same workflow you already use for document generation, at no additional cost, with more document types on the way.
