Manual Document Processing: The Touches Behind Each Entry

Manual document processing is the work people do to turn paper, scans, PDFs and emailed forms into entries a business system can use. The hours go on touches: each time someone opens, reads, keys, checks, fixes or files a page. Mistakes enter at the reading and the keying, and the check that follows can sit with the same person. This article counts the touches, then follows one invented note through them, and finally says when hand work is still a sound choice. The use case on reading documents without retyping them covers the other route.

What Manual Document Processing Involves, Touch by Touch

Three terms come first. Document processing here means getting what a page says into a system where the business can use it. A touch is any moment a person opens, reads, copies, checks or moves a document. An exception is a document that does not fit the expected pattern.

Under Signisys’ working description, a document passes six touches, in this order:

The six touches describe the work as people do it; they are not a published standard. A team may merge two of them, say where one clerk keys and checks. Even so, both touches still happen, and each one takes time.

Counting touches shifts the question. Rather than asking how long a document takes, a leader then asks who handles it, and at which points.

Why Reading Takes Longer Than It Looks

Before reading a field, the reader has to find it. Layouts differ by sender: the invoice number sits top right on one supplier’s page and at the foot of another’s. Then a sender changes its template, and last week’s habit no longer fits.

Count the different layouts that reach your team for one kind of document. What is the total?

In addition, the quality of the page adds to the reading time. A phone photo taken at an angle, a faded carbon copy or handwriting makes the reader slow down. At worst, the reader guesses, and the guess looks the same on screen as a sure reading.

Reading is judgment as well as sight. For example, a page may show an order date, a dispatch date and a due date. The reader decides which one the system wants, and that choice can differ between two people on the same team.

Who decides when the reader is unsure, and where is that decision written down?

Little of this shows up as a separate task on anyone’s list. It sits inside the time a clerk spends “doing the paperwork”, which is why reading can look quicker from a distance than it is at the desk. How software could take over that reading is compared in plain text capture set against fuller processing of whole documents.

Keying Errors in Manual Document Processing

The keying touch is where a slip enters. A clerk swaps two digits, skips a field, puts a value in the wrong row or puts the right value against the wrong record. For example, a quantity of 450 becomes 540 with one pair of keys pressed in the wrong order.

This is the part of the work called manual data entry. A slip can survive it for a reason that lies with people: where the person who keyed a value also reads it back, that person may see what they meant to type rather than what is there. For slips that have already reached the system, a way to mark how trustworthy the figures are is in a ten-item sheet for rating one set of records.

Who would notice, then? The keyer may be the person least placed to. Put this question to your team:

Who is the first person to see this record after it is keyed, and how long after?

The answer may be a customer, a planner or an auditor. Meanwhile, the gap may run to weeks.

When Manual Document Processing Stops: Waiting, Chasing and Exceptions

Some of the time a document spends in the office passes with no one touching it. It waits in an inbox until the one person who handles that kind is free. Then it waits in a tray until an approver signs, or in a queue until a missing detail arrives. Waiting is time a team may not record, and it may have no named owner.

Who can say which documents are waiting right now, and where?

Similarly, chasing breaks into the work. A colleague or a supplier asks where a document is, and the clerk stops keying to look. The same gap can trouble staff who cannot find the document they need long after filing. Each search pulls the clerk out of the batch, and picking it up again takes a moment of its own.

Exceptions slow things down in a different way. A page with a missing field, an unreadable photo or an order number that matches nothing goes to a person who has to find out more. Meanwhile, the rest of that batch may wait behind it.

Where the Hours and Errors Sit

Within Signisys’ working description, each touch has its own place where a slip or a delay can enter.

First, look back over your own last week. Then put a mark against the touch where documents waited longest.

A Goods-Received Note Between the Dock and the Stock Record

For example, picture a packaging maker, invented to show the touches and not a Signisys project. Its stores clerk handles goods-received notes from raw-material suppliers.

First, a note arrives as a printed slip, a phone photo or a PDF in a shared inbox. The clerk opens and sorts the day’s notes; that touch is hers.

Next, she reads the batch code and the quantity on each one. One note carries a batch code in which two letters look alike, and she reads the wrong one.

Then she keys the values into the stock record. The wrong letter goes in with them.

After that, the stores supervisor glances at the screen beside the note. He sees the code he expects to see, and the check passes. That touch is his.

No exception is raised, and the note goes straight to the file, which the clerk holds as well.

The mismatch shows only days later, when the planner looks for the batch, finds nothing and phones the dock. At that point, three people hold part of the story, and none of them saw the slip as it happened.

Counting the Touches in Manual Document Processing

You can see the touches on one kind of document without any special set-up. Pick one document type, such as delivery notes. Then follow the next handful through the office from arrival to filing.

After that, as each one moves, write down the touches in order. Next to each touch, note who held it and where the document waited. The result is a short list of names and stops.

Then ask the people who handle that document type a few questions:

• Which layout gives them the hardest time?
• Who keys, and who checks?
• Who learns of a slip, and when?

There is no target and no score. The point is to see the work as the people doing it see it. To judge whether the same work is ready for software to take over, a marking sheet is in nine checks with dated notes for one document flow.

When Hand Processing Is Still a Sound Choice

Hand work suits some document flows well. A small number of documents of one kind, a layout that stays the same from one batch to the next, or pages too sensitive or unusual to pass to software can all stay with people. That judgment belongs to the firm, and the touch count is the evidence for it. Nothing here says a firm ought to change. Where a firm does decide to change, the work that follows is laid out in the five choices a team keeps when software does the reading.

Once documents are stored, a separate question is finding answers in documents once they are stored.

If the touches are hard to count, for instance where one clerk opens, keys, checks and files, Signisys can look at one document type with you.

Signisys provides document automation and IT automation services; see its document workflow automation solution and its automation service. The box that follows advertises a Signisys service, which is not neutral advice, and promises no outcome. Before the call, draw up the touch list for one document type.

Manual Document Processing FAQ: Other Questions