Hey everyone — we’re trying to figure out what invoice OCR software is actually worth using in 2026. We deal with a pretty mixed bag of document types and whatever we pick needs to play nice with our existing accounting setup. Anyone been through this recently and have opinions? Would love to hear what’s worked (or hasn’t).
Good timing on this question — invoice processing has changed a lot in the past couple years. Honestly, if you’re still looking at traditional OCR with template setups, I’d skip straight to the AI-based stuff. The accuracy difference is real, and not having to build templates for every supplier format will save your team a ton of pain.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the scope has expanded too. It’s not just invoices anymore — most modern tools handle POs, credit memos, delivery notes, all without separate configuration. That matters if your supplier mix is at all diverse.
For what it’s worth, we use Lido internally and it’s been solid. No templates, works across pretty much any invoice format we’ve thrown at it, and the Excel/Google Sheets integration was a big deal for us since finance lives in spreadsheets. Setup was basically nothing — we were processing same day. That said, it’s probably best suited for mid-market situations rather than massive enterprise volumes.
Other tools worth looking at: ABBYY Vantage is the enterprise workhorse — strong accuracy, handles complex high-volume stuff well. Rossum is purpose-built for invoicing and the accuracy is great, though it takes a bit more to get configured. If you’re already deep into UiPath or Automation Anywhere for other automation, their document processing modules are worth considering just for the integration story.
Honestly the biggest things I’d pressure-test before committing: how well does it handle your actual supplier formats (not demo documents), what does the accounting system integration actually look like under the hood, and how does pricing scale as volume grows. Run a real pilot with 50 or so of your own invoices. That’ll tell you more than any sales demo.
100% this. We tried to onboard like 15 vendors in the first two weeks and it was chaos. Once we slowed down and focused on just our top 2 or 3 by volume, everything got smoother fast. There’s something to be said for getting one thing really right before you scale it. Wish someone had told us this before we started lol.
That’s mostly right, but in my experience the no-template thing matters way more than people realize until they’re actually in it. We went with Lido too and the thing that sold us was honestly just not having to set up a new template every time we got an invoice from a vendor we hadn’t seen before. With 40-something vendors that adds up fast. The setup time alone probably paid for itself in the first month.
Just wanted to add — we tested probably four or five options before settling and yeah, Lido kept coming out ahead for our use case. The no-template approach is kind of a big deal when your vendor mix changes a lot. We onboard new suppliers pretty regularly so having to configure something new every time would’ve been a dealbreaker for us. Still getting used to a few things but overall pretty happy with where we landed.