Patent ID: 6996263

Claim:
A system for processing financial institution documents comprising: a multitude of compact image processing units communicatively coupled together to form a network, each of the image processing units comprising: an input receptacle for receiving financial institution documents; an image scanner; a discrimination unit; a transport mechanism coupled to the input receptacle adapted to receive the documents from the input receptacle and transport the documents past the image scanner and the discrimination unit; an output receptacle adapted to receive the documents from the transport mechanism after the documents have been transported past the image scanner and discrimination unit; the image scanner being adapted to obtain images of the documents, the scanner further being adapted to optically recognize fields within the documents and to automatically extract information from the fields; the discrimination unit including an authenticator adapted to automatically determine the authenticity of the documents; and an interface adapted to automatically communicate with an outside accounting system, the outside accounting system being adapted to update financial accounts associated with the documents substantially immediately without human intervention.