Section 11
Scan Line Definitions

The Scan Line Definitions table permits you do define document scan codes to the program. There are very specific requirements for your scan line in order to properly use this table.

When you select the "Add" option for a transaction, the program will display the line item entry screen. If you have a scannable document, you can click on the "Scan" button and a special entry field will appear near the top of hte screen. This field is where you will scan in your document with your OCR or Bar Code scanner.

In order for the document to be scanned used this feature your scan line must contain at least three separate fields. This are the Tran_Code, Reference_Number, and Tran_Amount. The there can be additional reference_number fields in the scan line. This option is discussed below. The fields can be in any order, but the normal order is as described above, and used in the example presented here. One working assumption is that the scan line consists of a fixed number of digits and that each scan line is the same as far as the field order and field sizes within the scan line. If you have multiple document types with scan lines for each one, the scan line can be of different lengths -- you will just need to create a record in the scan line defs table for each different one.

If your scan line contains delimiters between the fields such as a dash or '/' character, you can define the starting and ending positions for the actual data fields to skip over the delimiters.

To facilitate our discussion of how this table is used, assume your scan line looks like this:



In this scan line sample, the Tran_Code is 1234, the reference # is 0987654321, and the amount is 11.22 (implied decimal). The job of the settings in the Scan Line Definitions table is tell the program how to break the scan line into the required fields so the program can place them where they belong on your entry screen. Once you click on the Scan button, the program waits for you to scan in your document. It then counts the number of digits scanned, and based on this value it assembles a scan line "key value" that consists of the literal text SCANLINE- plus the number of characters in the scan line. So, in our example, the scan line is 4+10+8 (22) digits long, so the key value would be SCANLINE-22. Assuming such a key value actually exists, the program will retrieve the values for each of the columns in the table, then it will use those values to split the scan line into its separate fields.



Each field in the table is listed, along with a short description, below:

1. SCANKEY
   
   This is the literal text SCANLINE- followed by the length of the scan line. For example, SCANLINE-22.
   
   
2. TRAN_CODE
   
   This is the literal text TRANCODE. It is there to help you remember that the first defined field is the Tran_Code. It is actually ignored by the program, so if it is not set to TRANCODE, there will not be any error.
   
   
3. TRAN_CODE_START
   
   This is the starting position of the tran_code within the scan line. In our example, it would be 1, but the Tran_Code can be placed anywhere within the scan line if desired.
   
   
4. TRAN_CODE_SIZE
   
   This is the size of the Tran_Code. In our example, this value would be 4, but in the RASWIN program, the Tran_Code can be any size from 1 to 30 bytes.
   
   
5. The next groups of parameters that are used to define the additional fields in a scan line. These are described here as F1, but there are actually five sets, labeled F1 through F5. They all work the same way. In most cases you will use only F1, F2, and F3 is used to define the amount field. F4 and F5 are currently not used for any purpose.
   
   F1_NAME
   
   This is whatever field name you wish to assign to this portion of the scan line. For example, it might be something like Account Number. This is for reference only.
   
   F1_START
   
   This tells the program where the field starts. In our example it would be 5, since the account number starts in column 5.
   
   F1_SIZE
   
   The size of the field. In our example 10 is the correct value.
   
   F1_PROMPT
   
   If you want the program to include some literal text before the actual data value extracted from the scan line, you can place it here. For example, you might wish the collected data value to read: ACCOUNT#:9876543210 instead of just the data value itself. If this were the case, you would put ACCOUNT#: in the prompt field. If you don't want any literal text prefix, leave this value blank.
   
   F1_OUTSIZE
   
   if you want the output value to be padded to the right with spaces beyond the size of the field value, specify this value here. For example, if the value was to include the prompt as described above, the value for this field would be the total size of the two portions of the output ('ACCOUNT#:', 9 bytes) + '9876543210' (10 bytes), or 19 total. If you wanted a space or two between this output value and the next field (if applicable) you could set the size of this field to 20 or 21.
   
   At this point, you may be wondering how you might use more than one output field. Say for example, you wanted to scan 2 reference number fields from the scan line - such as a CUSTOMER NUMBER, and an INVOICE NUMBER. In your output line you want these fields to be shown as CUST#:1234567890 INVOICE#:9876543210
   
   In the field one portion you would define the location for the customer number, and in the field 2 portion you would define the location for the invoice #. If you wanted these values in your output line as: INVOICE#:9876543210 CUST#:1234567890 you would reverse the field 1 and field 2 references.
   
   As noted earlier, the amount field is defined in field #3. The starting position and size values for our example would be 15 and 8, respectively.