Can receipts, stamped delivery notes, and invoices be archived in one searchable system?
Yes. Preserve native electronic invoices and bank receipts with their metadata; store clear scans of stamped paper records while retaining the policy for physical originals. Link every document to its order, customer, and accounting period. OCR supports extraction and search—it does not establish authenticity or replace financial review.
Date-based folders create more than a search problem: documents are disconnected from transactions, duplicates can be posted, alterations go unnoticed, access is broad, and retention has no owner. Wavesteam separates order attachments, delivery acknowledgements, native bank receipts, electronic invoices, and paper scans because their provenance, evidentiary value, storage requirements, and verification differ. They should not all become JPEGs.
When decomposing features, data, and acceptance scenarios, also compare Can distributors and ordinary restaurants reduce manual order re-entry?; the linked guidance adds context that should be considered in the same decision.
| Level | Stored material | Search and traceability | Risk | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly shared drive | Scans and manual filenames | Folder and filename only | Duplicate, deletion, weak permissions and links | Temporary transition |
| Business attachment centre | Original file, order relation, tags, audit | Customer, order, amount, and state | Formal accounting-archive rules still absent | Operational retrieval and delivery records |
| Electronic accounting archive | Originals, metadata, approval, verification, retention | Accounting, audit, duplicate prevention, long-term control | Higher policy, finance, and system effort | Formal electronic archiving |
China's Ministry of Finance and National Archives Administration notice on electronic accounting vouchers states that lawful, authentic electronic vouchers have the same legal effect as paper and sets conditions for electronic-only retention, including reliable storage, detectable alteration, complete readability with metadata, approval, and duplicate prevention. A printout or screenshot cannot replace the native electronic file received.
Store three layers: immutable original, editable structured fields, and business relationships. On ingestion calculate a checksum and record channel, uploader, time, type, pages, and filename. Extract invoice reference, amount, taxpayer number, order, and tracking for indexing, then verify through a person or authoritative interface. Editing a field never changes the original; old and new values, actor, and reason remain in history. Matching checksum, invoice reference, or bank reference creates a warning for finance to resolve.
Capture near the responsible step. Warehouse or sales uploads a signed delivery record from the dispatch page; batch scanning can use task covers or QR codes; controlled email or interfaces receive native invoices; bank receipts should come from bank or finance-system exports. Compressed social-media images enter an unverified queue. Blur, missing pages, and failed upload should be detected immediately.
OCR acceptance is field-specific. Printed invoices, standard tables, stamps, handwriting, folds, and glare differ materially. Tools such as PaddleOCR can establish a baseline on the client's devices and historical documents. Measure exact invoice number, amount, date, and order fields. Low confidence, failed reconciliation, or ambiguous order matches require review and never become finance facts automatically.
Permissions follow purpose. Sales sees delivery records for its orders; warehouse uploads fulfilment evidence; finance sees invoices and bank data; authorized audit has time-limited read-only access. Bulk download, print, and share links are separately authorized and logged. Links expire, files are protected in transit and storage, and identity, bank, and signature data remains minimal.
The account page should show whether contract, payment, invoice, dispatch, and receipt are complete for an order, with customer and period search and missing, duplicate, unverified, overdue, and review queues. Corrections after archive create a version or supplement rather than replacing an original.
A pilot uses one business line and covers native files, scans, multi-page records, stamp obstruction, duplicates, and wrong links. Acceptance measures critical fields, automatic linking, review time, missing-document detection, search time, duplicate prevention, denied access, and recovery of files plus metadata and relationships. The Wavesteam AI order OCR solution can supply the capture module; client finance, records, and audit owners still approve the formal archive policy.