Extracting data from business licenses
Cities, counties and states each issue business licenses in their own format, and most renew them every year or two. Banks, lenders and supplier diversity programs collect one from every business they onboard, as a scan or PDF uploaded with the application.
Onboarding needs the license number, the issuing jurisdiction, the business name and the validity dates. Business verification records them in the vendor or customer file, and flags the license for renewal before it expires each year.
What makes business licenses hard
Every jurisdiction issues its own
Local governments each design their own license, and a Florida business shows a local business tax receipt when asked for one.
Typed values beside printed labels
Labels print in one typeface and the typed values in another, sometimes on a different baseline from the label they belong to.
Valid for a fixed period
Each license covers a set period, often one fiscal year, so its validity dates decide whether the copy on file is still current.
Parse, extract, verify
Parse
Parse turns the document into reading-order Markdown and a hierarchy of blocks (text, tables, figures), and grounds each block to its exact location on the page.
Extract
You define the fields in a JSON schema, and Extract returns their values in a consistent, structured format, each linked back to where it appears in the Markdown.
Verify
Each value links back to where it appears, down to the character range in the Markdown, and the page and bounding box in the source document, so every result can be verified.
One business license, end to end
About this document: A specimen Broward County, Florida, local business tax receipt, published as a sample document by a supplier diversity council. One landscape page, a single image with the publisher's sample banner across it, covering the business, its owner, its counts and the fees paid. Page 1 is featured. The business and owner are placeholders.
Processing objective: The objective is to read the receipt as a record. It shows who issued it, which receipt it is and how long the business has operated, with the count it is assessed on and what was paid. Each value grounds to its own typed entry on the image.
Demonstration fields: Receipt number, Issuing county, Business opened, Employees, Total paid
The document
1 page
Page 1shown below
Where each value came from
receipt_number
{
"value": "327-123456",
"page": 1,
"range": {
"end": 260,
"start": 237
},
"box": {
"xmin": 0.58788,
"ymin": 0.15777,
"xmax": 0.96908,
"ymax": 0.21109
}
}issuing_authority.name
{
"value": "BROWARD COUNTY",
"page": 1,
"range": {
"end": 41,
"start": 0
},
"box": {
"xmin": 0.1832,
"ymin": 0.04782,
"xmax": 0.78813,
"ymax": 0.08014
}
}business.date_opened
Printed on the page as Business Opened: 03/27/2020, normalized on extraction.
{
"value": "2020-03-27",
"page": 1,
"range": {
"end": 438,
"start": 410
},
"box": {
"xmin": 0.56429,
"ymin": 0.22956,
"xmax": 0.80907,
"ymax": 0.25088
}
}capacity.employees
{
"value": 2,
"page": 1,
"range": {
"end": 539,
"start": 525
},
"box": {
"xmin": 0.36783,
"ymin": 0.34409,
"xmax": 0.53489,
"ymax": 0.39474
}
}fees.total_paid
{
"value": 16.5,
"page": 1,
"range": {
"end": 957,
"start": 952
},
"box": {
"xmin": 0.80567,
"ymin": 0.48268,
"xmax": 0.90777,
"ymax": 0.51286
}
}How to try it yourself
Everything on this page is reproducible. The sample, its schema, and the Parse and Extract API outputs are published. You can repeat the same two calls from whichever surface you already build on.
- Claude Skilldescribe the job; the agent writes it
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- MCPexpose ADE docs as an agent tool
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Documents into data
Accurate
The best accuracy on the difficult documents other tools get wrong, such as messy scans, complicated tables, checkboxes and handwriting.
Auditable
Every answer cites its sources. Values come back with an audit trail (page, bounding box, character range) so a human can review them.
Agentic
Applies multi-step reasoning, and plans before it acts. Handles documents it has never seen before and adapts to variations.
API-first
Composable APIs that drop into any tech stack and can be called from anywhere. Easy to build on and embed in your pipelines and products.
Affordable
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Enterprise-grade
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Built for high-volume, high-throughput production
- Zero data retention
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