W9 forms OCR

 

This article describes how to build an OCR API that extracts data from W9 forms using our deep learning engine. If you want to automate your bank workflow, this article is for you. 

 

 

Prerequisites

  1. You’ll need a free beta account. Sign up and confirm your email to login.
  2. You’ll need at least 20 W9 images or pdfs to train your OCR.

 

 

Define your W9 use case

 

First, we’re going to define what fields we want to extract from your W9. 

 

 

W9 OCR API

 

  • Name: The taxpayer's name. 

 

  • Address: The taxpayer's mailing address (number, street, and apt)

 

  • City: The taxpayer's city.

 

  • State: The taxpayer's state. 

 

  • Zip Code: The taxpayer's zip code.

 

  • Date: The date the W9 was filled.

 

  • Employer ID: The employer identification number.

 

 

That’s it for our use case. Feel free to add any other relevant data to fit your requirements. 

 

 

Deploy your API

 

Once you have defined the list of fields you want to extract from your W9, head over to the platform and press the ‘build a new endpoint’ button.

 

You land now on the setup page. Here is the image you can use for setting up the API, and my set up looks like this:

 

 

Set up your W9 OCR API

 

Once you’re ready, click on the “next step” button. We are going to specify the data types for each of the fields we want our API to extract.


 

To go further, you can download this json config to set up your data model or do it manually.


 

Name: type String that never contains numeric characters. 

 

Name for W9 OCR

 

Address: type String without specifications.

 

Address field for W9 OCR

 

City: type String that never contains numeric characters. 

 

City for W9 OCR

 

State: type String that never contains numeric characters. 

 

State for W9 OCR

 

Zip Code: type Number without specifications.

 

Zip Code field for W9 OCR

 

Date: type Date with US format. 

 

Date field for W9 OCR

 

Employer ID: type Number without specifications. 

 

Employer ID for W9 OCR

 

 

Once you’re done setting up your data model, press the Data model ready? start training button at the top of the screen.

 

 

Train your W9 OCR

 

 

Deep learning W9 OCR API

 

 

You’re all set! 

 

Now is the time to train your W9 deep learning model in the Training section of our API. 

 

In a few hours (minutes if you're fast), you’ll get your first model trained and will be able to use your custom OCR API for parsing W9 forms in your application.

 

To get more information about the training phase, please refer to the getting started tutorial. If you have any questions regarding your use case, feel free to reach out!