Automated Invoice & Receipt OCR in Odoo

Odoo includes a built-in OCR & invoice digitization feature, available as an IAP (In-App Purchase) service. This feature is designed to simplify your accounting processes by automatically reading scanned documents such as paper invoices, receipts, or vendor/customer bills, and extracting key data like invoice number, vendor/customer details, amount, taxes, and dates.

With this automation in place, you can reduce manual data entry, eliminate human errors, and speed up your invoice processing. Once uploaded, Odoo processes the document through its integrated OCR engine and creates a draft accounting entry, giving your accounting team a ready-to-review invoice that’s already pre-filled with the correct data.

It’s especially useful for businesses that deal with a high volume of paper-based transactions or receive supplier/customer documents in PDF/image formats. By streamlining this task, your team can focus more on validation and less on repetitive manual typing.

This feature is tightly integrated into Odoo’s Accounting module and works seamlessly out of the box

To try this in your system:

Upload Your File
Go to:
Accounting → Customer → Invoice

Upload a scanned PDF or image file

Let Odoo Do the Work : Odoo will automatically use OCR (if IAP credits are available) to extract:

• Customer Name
• Invoice Number
• Amounts & Taxes
• Invoice Date

What Happens After Upload?

When you upload a document (image or PDF), Odoo will try to process it using its In-App Purchase (IAP) OCR credits.

But if you don’t have enough credits, you’ll see an error message like:
“Not enough credit to process this document.”

How to Fix: Not Enough OCR Credits

We have two options:

Option 1: Buy IAP Credits

• Go to Odoo → Settings → In-App Purchases
• Buy OCR credits via your Odoo.com account

Option 2: Customized Odoo

To solve this, we’ve customized Odoo 18 to work with IApp’s OCR API, allowing you to use your own API key, no need to depend on Odoo’s IAP service.

Here’s how it works:

1. Create an account on [IApp OCR provider].
2. Generate your OCR API key.

Go to your Odoo database

Navigate to:
Settings → General Settings, and paste the key under: 🔑 IApp OCR API Key

This part is fully customized, not available in standard Odoo.

Once done, whenever you upload a scanned PDF or image of a customer invoice in

Accounting → Customer Invoices,

Odoo will automatically use the IApp API to extract:

• Customer Name
• Invoice Number
• Amounts & Taxes
• Invoice Date

It then creates a draft customer invoice, ready for your review and confirmation, all without using Odoo IAP credits.

Here’s how it works:

1. Your mobile app captures an image or PDF from user (receipt, invoice)
   
2. App uses the IApp upload API to send the file to Odoo with your API key
   
3. Odoo automatically runs OCR digitization and creates draft bill or invoice
   
4. You can immediately receive and view the result in Odoo, or notify users
   
5. This integration helps you eliminate even the drag-and-drop step, fully automated flow
   

This setup is ideal for field teams, mobile workforce, logistics, or any scenario where documents are captured remotely and need instant processing.

Use Case Scenario

A logistics company in Thailand uses field agents to photograph delivery invoices. Instead of uploading manually, the agent’s mobile app sends the file to Odoo via IApp API. OCR runs in real time, extracts details and creates the bill. The admin simply reviews and confirms. This setup saves hours of manual data entry daily.

Why Choose This Setup?

• Default OCR features require no custom coding, just IAP credits and settings
  
• Custom IAP API integration offers seamless user experience and automation
  
• Perfect for remote document capture via mobile apps
  
• Keeps data centralized in Odoo, no need for external workflows
  

Final Note

Odoo’s OCR features, combined with custom IAP-based API integrations, make document automation powerful and flexible. Whether you’re digitizing invoices or enabling mobile document capture, this setup reduces manual effort and speeds up your accounting workflow.

📩 Want a live demo or help setting this up?
Email: contact@spellboundss.com