PDF to XML Conversion of Business Documents

[citizen994]

Hi,

I am a distributor and receive a lot of Invoices & Purchase Orders in PDF format. Can someone tell me how I could convert these to proper XML so I can load them into my software. I use Quickbooks for Invoices and Navision for Purchase Orders. I know there are generic tools for exporting a PDF to XML but the XML they generate is useless for this. I need real structured XML not just the words exported in a jumble which all I've found so far.

Thanks in advance for your help.
Kim.

[DaleDe]

This kind of question would be better served in the PDF forum but generally you need a PDF editing tool to save the document in another format.

[JasonP]

I am a distributor and receive a lot of Invoices & Purchase Orders in PDF format. Can someone tell me how I could convert these to proper XML so I can load them into my software. I use Quickbooks for Invoices and Navision for Purchase Orders. I know there are generic tools for exporting a PDF to XML but the XML they generate is useless for this. I need real structured XML not just the words exported in a jumble which all I've found so far.

Its a common misconception that Adobe and other off the shelf tools can save a document in XML for more than just text searching. Unfortunately nothing exists to simply "save" a PDF into an XML that is useable for this type of situation. All PDFs are different (even if they don't look that different) so there is no generic way to do this. You'd need to use one of the services out there that do this specifically for these situations. What you need is a EDI grade XML conversion service.

One popular one that I've heard of (and witnessed) is EDI Link by EC Dynamics - http://ecdynamics.com/pdf-conversion.php They do a variety of document types.

Best.
Jason.

[PDF2XML]

Hi.

Another option out there is ChimpKey (http://chimpkey.com). It will convert a PDF or Excel file into business EDI grade XML (like UBL 2.0, OIOUBL etc) or X12. This would work for a company wishing to get into EDI without all the cost & changes. You just email the document in and it returns the XML (after they set it up).

Good luck!