The Client: CarlaBella

CarlaBella provides businesses, groups, and government agencies with CarlaMaestro, a fully digital platform for managing employee business travel. End-to-end and integrated, CarlaMaestro optimizes trips both environmentally and economically, ensuring compliance, cost control, and sustainability.

The Challenge

Previously, CarlaBella relied on ABBYY‑based OCR tools for expense line creation. When those became end-of-life, CarlaBella evaluated the market and selected Mindee for its superior accuracy‑to‑speed ratio and clear, well‑documented APIs.

Key pain points included:

• Manual Rework: If OCR results were poor, staff had to correct data by hand, negating the automation benefits.
• Complex Expense Rules: Reimbursement rules vary by expense type, time of day, and number of participants—requiring high‑quality data to automate correctly.

The Solution: Mindee Receipt & Invoice OCR

Mindee’s Receipt API powers CarlaPic, CarlaBella’s mobile expense management app:

1. Capture: Users snap a photo of their receipt in CarlaPic (or import a digital receipt via “Share”).
2. Process: The image is sent to Mindee via API, where OCR extracts key fields.
3. Populate: CarlaPic automatically creates an expense line—ready for manager approval.

Within one month, CarlaBella implemented a bespoke connector to Mindee’s Receipt API. Soon after, they extended the flow to call the Invoice API when needed (for hotel stays) to fetch address and night count, critical for location‑based reimbursement rates.

Key Features

Integration and Impact

Implementing Mindee required building a custom connector, but documentation clarity and responsive support made it possible in under one month. Since then, CarlaBella has processed 40,000+ receipts per month with over 90% reading accuracy, translating into:

• Significant Time Savings: Drastic reduction in manual data entry and corrections.
• Fraud Detection: Introduction of an “OCR compliance” indicator that flags manual edits—helping identify potential fraud when users alter OCR‑generated data.
• Improved Compliance: Reliable extraction of date/time and participant counts automates complex reimbursement rules.

Looking Ahead

CarlaBella and Mindee continue to collaborate on:

• API Fusion: Merging Receipt and Invoice APIs into a unified endpoint.
• Expanded Field Extraction: Adding sector‑specific fields for even richer data.
• New Document Types: Preparing for next‑gen use cases like vehicle registration cards.

CarlaBella’s partnership with Mindee OCR exemplifies how a flexible, high‑performance OCR platform can transform expense management, deliver operational excellence, and support a truly digital business travel experience.