Network interconnected financial document processing devices

A system for processing financial institution documents comprising:

• a multitude of image processing units communicatively coupled together to form a network, the units processing financial institution documents deposited by users, each of the units comprising:
• an input receptacle for receiving financial institution documents;
• an image scanner;
• 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;
• an output receptacle adapted to receive the documents from the transport mechanism after being transported past the image scanner;
• 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;
• and
• an interface adapted to communicate the information contained in selected areas of the document to an outside accounting system wherein financial accounts associated with the documents are processed automatically substantially immediately.

A financial institution document processing network, comprising:

• a plurality of document imaging devices, each such device adapted to:
• receive a stack of documents, image each document in the stack, determine a monetary value associated with each document, and output the document images and associated monetary values;
• a financial institution accounting system operating to receive the document images and associated monetary values and update a financial account associated with the stack of documents in view of the associated monetary values;
• and
• a data communications network interconnecting the plurality of document imaging devices to the financial institution accounting system.