Prerequisite
This article assumes you know how to use field formats to normalize and format your data in Parseur. Check out this article for more information.
Number format
Parseur lets you easily parse numbers (including spaces, commas, etc) into real numbers using the Number format.
String to number conversion: The "Number" format will transform any number represented in a text into a "real" number.
Normalization: It will strip out any space, commas and additional formatting characters from the number.
Negative number recognition: it will also resolve numbers like (123) as negative numbers as is common in accounting documents.
Setting the decimal separator
By default, Parseur will automatically detect the correct decimal separator for each document. If it can’t confidently determine the separator, it will default to your user settings. Parseur needs to determine whether a number uses a dot (.) or a comma (,) as the decimal separator.
We will only change the output when the number is ambiguous, i.e. does 123.456 represent 123 thousand (123,456) or 123 point four five six (123.456)?
You can customize these settings at three levels:
Account Level – Applies to all mailboxes.
Mailbox Level – Overrides account-level settings for a specific mailbox.
Template Level – Overrides both account and mailbox settings for individual templates.
Settings at the template level have the highest priority, followed by mailbox-level, and then account-level settings.
Changing the decimal separator globally at account-level
Go to your account settings and update the Decimal separator configuration.
Changing the decimal separator at mailbox-level
Open your mailbox
Click on Settings
Scroll to the bottom of the General tab
Click Save
Changing the decimal separator at template-level
Open your template
Click on Settings
Change the separator
Click Update
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why do the list and object views show different separator output?
When you choose the Number format for fields, Parseur converts them into “real” numbers that computers can process. In most technology, numbers always use a dot (.) as the decimal separator.
In the Object view, we display the raw data as extracted, so you’ll see it formatted as defined in your settings above.
In the List view, however, we aim to present a friendlier format by applying localized thousands and decimal separators based on your web browser’s language settings. If your browser settings are in a European language, the decimal numbers are displayed with a comma (e.g., “123,45”).
If you download the data (e.g., into Excel), the underlying number remains “123.45”, but Excel will format it using your local settings.