System and methods of an expense management system based upon business document analysis

Abstract

The disclosure herein relates to business content analysis. In particular, the disclosure relates to systems and methods of an expense management system operable to perform automatic business documents' content analysis for generating business reports associated with automated value added tax (VAT) reclaim, Travel and Expenses (T&E) management, Import/Export management and the like. The system is further operable to provide various organizational expense management aspects for the corporate finance department and the business traveler based upon stored data. Additionally, the system is configured to use a content recognition engine, configured as an enhanced OCR mechanism used for extracting tagged text from invoice images and also provides continuous learning mechanism in a structured mode allowing classification of invoice images by type, providing continual process of improvement and betterment throughout.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . An expense management system operable to perform invoice content analysis, said expense management system comprising:
 an invoice content analyzer operable to perform automated analysis of at least one digital invoice;   an invoice content generator operable to read at least one digital source comprising said at least one digital invoice and further configured to classify at least one tagged text from said at least one digital image into a specific set of fields; and   a machine learning engine comprising a knowledge repository, said machine learning engine operable to continuously update the knowledge repository with data pertaining to said at least one image source,   wherein said expense management system is operable to produce one or more analysis results, and   communicate at least one business report comprising at least one of the results via a communication interface.   
     
     
         2 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , wherein the invoice content generator comprises an optical character recognition (OCR) engine. 
     
     
         3 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , wherein said machine learning module is operable to perform online machine learning and batch machine learning. 
     
     
         4 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , wherein said at least one digital source is selected from a group consisting of: an image capturing device, an office scanner, a mobile device camera, a messaging application and combinations thereof. 
     
     
         5 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , wherein said at least one digital source is selected from a group consisting of: a computerized expense report, a facsimile page, an e-mail message and combinations thereof. 
     
     
         6 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , further comprising a user interface engine operable to provide visualization and manual control over said system by a user. 
     
     
         7 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , wherein said invoice content generator operable to convert structured handwritten text of said at least one digital invoice into at least one machine readable string. 
     
     
         8 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , wherein said invoice content generator is further operable to identify a company logo. 
     
     
         9 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , wherein said invoice content generator is further operable to execute instructions directed to analyzing said at least one digital invoice with content of at least one language. 
     
     
         10 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , wherein said invoice content generator is further operable to execute instructions directed to analyzing said at least one digital invoice comprising one or more invoice images. 
     
     
         11 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , wherein said invoice content generator is further operable to execute instructions directed to analyzing said at least one digital invoice comprising an invoice image at an orientation. 
     
     
         12 . The expense management system of  claim 10 , wherein said invoice content generator is further operable to execute instructions directed to removing distortions from said one or more invoice images. 
     
     
         13 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , wherein said invoice content analyzer engine further comprises a configurable rules engine operable to determine analysis logic. 
     
     
         14 . The expense management system of  claim 1 , further operable to perform organizational content analytics, said analytics is statistically based and comprises one or more of the following:
 behavior spending patterns;   expense anomaly identification;   suppliers' behavior patterns;   employees' behavior patterns;   local tax refunds;   suppliers' behavior patterns; and   travel and expense (T&E) analysis.   
     
     
         15 . A method for performing digital invoice content analysis in an improved manner, said method comprising the steps of:
 providing an expense management system operable to execute on at least one computing device, said system comprising an invoice content analyzer, an invoice content generator comprising a classifier, a machine learning engine, a communication interface and a tagging mechanism;   receiving, via said communication interface, at least one digital source comprising at least one digital invoice;   pre-processing, by said invoice content analyzer, said at least one digital invoice;   providing, by said tagging mechanism, at least one textual tag associated with a an invoice entity at a location in said at least one digital invoice;   analyzing, by said invoice content analyzer, said at least one digital invoice;   producing, by said invoice content analyzer, at least one analysis result;   generating, by said invoice content analyzer, at least one business report comprising said at least one analysis result; and   communicating, by said communication interface, said at least one business report.   
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 15 , wherein the step of receiving further comprising:
 pre-processing, by said invoice content analyzer, said at least one digital invoice.   
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 15 , wherein the step of receiving further comprising:
 analyzing, by said invoice content analyzer, quality of said at least one digital invoice;   generating, by said invoice content analyzer, at least one quality assessment of said at least one digital invoice; and   communicating, by said communication interface, at least one technical response comprising said at least one quality assessment.   
     
     
         18 . The method of  claim 17 , wherein said at least one quality assessment is a numeric representation assigned, indicating the technical ability of said expense management system to extract associated information from said at least one digital invoice. 
     
     
         19 . The method of  claim 15 , wherein the invoice content generator further comprises an optical character recognition (OCR) engine, and wherein the step of pre-processing further comprising:
 generating, by said OCR engine, a textual representation of said at least one digital invoice.   
     
     
         20 . The method of  claim 15 , further comprising the invoice content analyzer directing operation of the invoice content generator and the machine learning engine.