Scan-and-populate software has become a staple of the tax and accounting industry. The popular technology helps reduce manual data entry and increase workflow efficiency for firms of all sizes.
Jump to:
- What is scan-and-populate tax software?
- What is OCR tax software?
- Why verification is important for OCR tax software
- Exporting OCR data to tax software
- How scan-and-populate tax software works with workpaper management software
What is scan-and-populate tax software?
In a time characterized by staffing shortages and workload compression, automation has become essential for the tax and accounting industry. Implementing scan-and-populate tax software is the easiest and most effective way to reduce manual 1040 work.
Scan-and-populate solutions extract information from tax documents and export it to your integrated tax software. The technology then uses that data to populate the corresponding fields on Form 1040. Put simply, it automates data entry for 1040 tax returns.
Scan-and-populate software can pull data from both natively digital PDFs and PDFs that have been scanned from paper. The volume of automated data entry will vary from solution to solution depending on how many documents and fields they recognize.
What is OCR tax software?
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the “scan” in scan-and-populate. OCR enables computers to detect letters, numbers, and other symbols from an image. It then translates those figures into digital data.
While OCR has been around for decades, it’s not advanced enough to perfectly mimic the human eye (yet). Traditional OCR can only interpret symbols within predictable contexts. This makes it an especially powerful tool for the tax and accounting industry, where forms and documents are usually standardized. If a taxpayer’s SSN is always in the same place on a W-2, it’s very easy to tell the OCR software where to “look.” This means OCR tax software can reliably interpret and transpose large quantities of data.
When OCR software knows how to extract data from a specific type of document, we say that document is “recognized.” Click here for a document coverage comparison between the major OCR tax software vendors→
In the last few years, AI-powered OCR has begun to supplement traditional OCR, and may eventually replace it. AI-powered OCR uses language learning models to accurately interpret context, even when document formats vary. For example, different regional property tax documents may list the client’s address in different places, but AI “recognizes” an address when it sees one. Click here to learn more about this exciting development→
Why verification is important for OCR tax software
While OCR tax software is incredibly accurate, even the best technology isn’t immune to errors. That’s why it’s a standard best practice to have OCR data verified by trained staff.*
If you’re new to scan-and-populate technology, this may be confusing. Why automate data entry if human labor is necessary either way? In short, OCR verification is still far more efficient than traditional data entry.
Think of a production line where humans manually assemble a product versus one where humans oversee robotic assembly. The automated production line generates exponentially higher returns than the one with only human laborers.
Most OCR tax software includes a verification review interface that provides highlights and shortcuts to fields that need validation.
Verification can also be outsourced. Professional verifiers are specially trained and verify full time, which means they can process documents at a far greater rate than in-house staff who only verify part time. Click here to read about SurePrep’s verification outsourcing service→
There is one exception to the human verification rule. 1040SCAN uses AI and text-layer matching to auto-verify OCR data on 65% of standard documents. This technology is patented by SurePrep and not available from any other vendor.
Exporting OCR data to tax software
Exporting makes up the “populate” step of scan-and-populate. Here, verified OCR data is transported to your tax software and automatically populated into the correct fields.
The scan-and-populate product must be compatible with your tax software for this to work. Each tax software is different, and scan-and-populate technology has to be familiar with its fields in order to match the information from its own dataset. This is called one-to-one field mapping.
How scan-and-populate tax software works with workpaper management software
In addition to automating data entry, some scan-and-populate tax software also bookmark and organize digital workpapers so your preparers don’t have to.
Keep in mind that organization functionality can vary between solutions. Some products merely produce one lengthy, bookmarked PDF. Others integrate with a compatible workpaper management system to sort separate workpapers into a standardized, easily navigable index.
The latter is preferable, but it also requires a greater commitment to digital transformation. Evaluating a vendor’s workpaper management software becomes just as important as evaluating their scan-and-populate solution since your team will be using both in tandem.
SurePrep includes a workpaper management system with any scan-and-populate purchase at no additional cost. Learn more→