BillSight Help

What It Can Read

• a PDF's text layer (born-digital invoices), however many pages it has;
• the e-invoice XML carried inside a PDF (Factur-X / ZUGFeRD);
• a standalone e-invoice XML (UBL, CII, CFDI, NF-e, FatturaPA, Facturae).

Drop files or a folder on the window (folders are read recursively), or use Add Files... / Add Folder.... It recognises 15+ e-invoicing standards and regions, and reads the label wording in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch. A page with no text layer is kept and flagged Scanned - this version does not run OCR.

What It Pulls Out

• the eleven standard fields: supplier, customer, invoice number, issue date, due date, currency, subtotal, tax, total due, type code and PO number;
• the document type - invoice, credit note, receipt, statement or purchase order - so a credit note is not filed as an invoice;
• amounts normalised - 1.234,56 and 1'234.56 both become 1234.56 - and the currency as an ISO 4217 code;
• dates normalised to YYYY-MM-DD (including dd.mm.yyyy and month names);
• line items: from the XML, or from a PDF table when the lines add up to the subtotal (otherwise they are left out rather than guessed);
• any other label/value pairs the document carries, kept as extra fields.

Looking at the Document

Every document has its own Preview (the page as it was printed, with page navigation) and Text (the text BillSight read from it), so you can compare a value against the page it came from.

Checking a Reading

• a value that was a guess is tinted and marked please check; you can keep it as right, or set it by hand;
• checks: arithmetic, dates, currency, type code, duplicate invoices, and the required fields of the target standard;
• an issues bar names each problem, and clicking one jumps to that row;
• before an export, if any document has issues you choose: only the clean ones, or everything.

The Details page says, for every field, the value, how it was found (Read from) and the line it was taken from (Seen in the document):

Anything that could not be read, or is worth a second look, is listed - and the row it came from is a click away:

Teaching It Your Suppliers

Open a document's Details, click the value you want and pick the right one: BillSight works out the rule and re-reads that document at once. Save it, and every document read with that rule is read again - so the next invoice from that supplier reads right the first time.

A rule is a small JSON file kept with your settings, so you can back it up, edit it by hand or hand it to a colleague. One document can also be read with a different rule from the Read with: list on its Details page, without changing the others.

Getting the Data Out

• Excel (.xlsx) or CSV, with the columns you choose;
• export templates - save the columns once ("Import to my system") and reuse them;
• a UBL 2.1 e-invoice, and a line-items CSV;
• Repeat Last Export with one key;
• Export History: what was exported, where it went, and whether that file is still the one it wrote.

Or pick the accounting system instead of the columns - save the set once and reuse it:

Every export is recorded, so you can answer "was this invoice already sent on?":

Keeping the Originals

Every document you take in is copied into a local archive and identified by its content, so the same file is one entry however it arrives, and you can find an invoice again by number, supplier or file name (Tools → Original documents...). From there you can open the copy as it arrived, save a copy elsewhere, or Forget one - that removes the archived copy, and leaves the file you received alone.

Keeping is on by default, stops at a 2 GB soft cap (nothing is ever deleted to make room), and can be turned off with Tools → Keep a copy of every invoice.

Trial and Licence

BillSight is a 30-day full trial. When it ends the window still opens and you can look at everything already there, but it stops reading new documents and exporting; import your licence file from the Help menu to lift that.

Command Line

The same reading and exporting can be scripted: