PDF: Include invoice meta-data in PDF (to allow other systems to read in and process)

[kanebullen]

An idea that would be relatively easy to implement, and save many people lots of time (and grief!), is to include metadata in PDF invoices generated from MYOB.

Many organisations have a need to automatically process incoming invoices (inserting them into a queue that goes through an approval process)   When they receive a PDF invoice via email, systems can read the text in, but cannot reliably extract all the information nicely.      What inevitably happens is you end up with custom processes for each invoice format, and continually have to manually process invoices that weren't able to be processed.  (and/or write new more code to handle a new invoice format)

PDFs allow metadata to be stored that isn't visible when looking at the PDF, but is visible to applications.   The metadata would include all the same information that's on the PDF, but in a structured format (could be XML or JSON)

Ideally you'd have an industry standard for this, so perhaps you could set the standard by being the first!

 "Include invoice meta-data in PDF (to allow other systems to read in and process)   [technical]"

[AlanJSwafford]

I was looking for an XML export but this sounds like it would do the trick. 

Being told that Printed or PDF were the only output formats has me looking for alternative options that have formats used in this century!

[AlanJSwafford]

Actually I see this comment was 2017 - So clearly not a lot of interest from the developers 

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@kanebullen wrote:

An idea that would be relatively easy to implement, and save many people lots of time (and grief!), is to include metadata in PDF invoices generated from MYOB.

Many organisations have a need to automatically process incoming invoices (inserting them into a queue that goes through an approval process)   When they receive a PDF invoice via email, systems can read the text in, but cannot reliably extract all the information nicely.      What inevitably happens is you end up with custom processes for each invoice format, and continually have to manually process invoices that weren't able to be processed.  (and/or write new more code to handle a new invoice format)

PDFs allow metadata to be stored that isn't visible when looking at the PDF, but is visible to applications.   The metadata would include all the same information that's on the PDF, but in a structured format (could be XML or JSON)

Ideally you'd have an industry standard for this, so perhaps you could set the standard by being the first!

 "Include invoice meta-data in PDF (to allow other systems to read in and process)   [technical]"

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