Somewhat tangential, but the EU has a directive mandating electronic invoicing for public procurement.
One of the standards that has come out of that is EN 16931, also known as ZUGFeRD and Factur-X, which basically involves embedding an XML file with the invoice details inside a PDF/A. It allows the PDF to be used like a regular PDF but it also allows the government procurement platforms to reliably parse the contents without any kind of intelligence.
It seems like a nice solution that would solve a lot of issues with ingesting PDFs for accounting if everyone somehow managed to agree a standard. Maybe if EN 16931 becomes more broadly available it might start getting used in the private sector too.
One of the standards that has come out of that is EN 16931, also known as ZUGFeRD and Factur-X, which basically involves embedding an XML file with the invoice details inside a PDF/A. It allows the PDF to be used like a regular PDF but it also allows the government procurement platforms to reliably parse the contents without any kind of intelligence.
It seems like a nice solution that would solve a lot of issues with ingesting PDFs for accounting if everyone somehow managed to agree a standard. Maybe if EN 16931 becomes more broadly available it might start getting used in the private sector too.