Accounts payable
Supplier invoices, statements and credit notes captured, matched to purchase orders and posted to Sage, SAP Business One, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or Xero through our ERP and accounting integration work.
Document intelligence and OCR software
Document intelligence is OCR software plus AI: it reads scanned and digital documents, extracts the data you need, checks it and sends it to the right system or person. Arke Technologies, in Johannesburg, builds document processing AI for organisations across South Africa, with human review, audit trails and POPIA controls.
Where document processing AI pays back
Supplier onboarding and procurement
Company registration documents, B-BBEE certificates and affidavits, bank confirmation letters and tax compliance status checked for completeness and expiry dates before a supplier is approved.
Municipal revenue
Paper account applications, meter records and valuation documents captured, so that billing, metering and property-valuation records can be reconciled and exceptions reported for follow-up, as part of municipal revenue enhancement.
HR and payroll
Employment contracts, leave forms and supporting documents filed against the right employee, with access to special personal information restricted.
Education
Admission forms, bursary applications and supporting documents checked and filed, with children's personal information protected under POPIA.
Contracts
AI contract automation that extracts parties, values, renewal dates and notice periods into an obligations register, so renewals are not missed. It supports your legal team; it does not replace legal review.
Client onboarding
Identity documents and proofs of address collected for FICA checks in financial and legal services, with every check recorded.
Digital document transformation and the digitalisation of data
Digital document transformation means paper stops driving the process: each document arrives, or is scanned, once; the data goes where it is needed; and the file can be found in seconds. We usually start day-forward, so new documents flow through the new process from go-live, and prioritise older records by how often they are needed, with the extent of any back-catalogue work scoped per project.
Before paper originals go, check two laws. The Electronic Communications and Transactions Act recognises electronic records, provided their integrity can be shown, which is why we keep the audit trail. For public bodies, the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa Act, and the provincial archives laws for provincial and municipal bodies, require written authorisation from the National Archivist or the provincial archivist before public records are destroyed, so a scanning project needs a disposal authority in place first. Where records move from an old system, our data migration service moves them with their history intact.
Accuracy, risk and the controls we build in
- Confidence thresholds. Nothing below the agreed confidence level posts without a person checking it.
- Validation. Totals, dates, VAT numbers and suppliers checked against your records.
- Poor scans and handwriting. Accuracy falls with image quality, so we measure it on your samples rather than quote a figure in advance.
- Fraud signals. Duplicate invoices and changed bank details flagged for a person to verify before payment.
- Personal information. Special personal information and children's information handled under POPIA's stricter conditions, retention periods applied, and processing outside South Africa only where section 72 allows it.
- Security. Encryption in transit and at rest, access controls and audit logging.
- Governance. Each document process is entered in your AI use register under our AI governance approach.
Governance, reporting, procurement and continuity
- Reporting. A named service lead and a monthly service review covering documents processed, the share that passed straight through, exceptions by reason, turnaround times and corrections made. Changes to extraction rules and posting thresholds go through change control.
- Compliance. POPIA, King IV Principle 12 for boards, PFMA and MFMA audit trails for public bodies, and records kept in line with your file plan.
- Procurement. Arke Technologies (Pty) Ltd is a Level 1 B-BBEE contributor (sworn affidavit available on request), which gives buyers 135% procurement recognition. Company documents, our CSD supplier number and SARS tax compliance status are available on request. The pilot and build are bought against a fixed-scope proposal and the running service under an SLA; we complete standard bidding documents for tenders. See our company facts.
- Continuity. You own the documents, the extracted data, the rules and the logs, in open formats, and they stay with you if the service moves.
What document intelligence costs
Last reviewed: September 2026.
We quote the build as a fixed-scope project after testing a sample of your documents, and the running service monthly. What drives the cost:
- the number of document types, and how varied their layouts are;
- monthly volume, which sets per-page service charges or the size of a private deployment;
- the systems the data must post to;
- the review workflow, and who approves;
- handwriting, poor scans and the languages involved; and
- where the data may be processed.
For context, published rates for IT project work in South Africa run from about R550 to R750 an hour ex VAT (matnet.co.za, September 2026). A pilot on one document type is the lowest-risk way to prove the return before you scale.
