Classifying documents by type

Sensible supports two levels of document classification:

Classify a document by its similarity to each document type you define in your Sensible account.
Classify a document by its subtype during the extraction workflow. By default, Sensible performs this step automatically. For more information, see Devops platform.

This topic covers classifying a document by its type.

Sensible classifies a document by comparing it to the types you define in your account. For example, you can classify 1040 forms and bank statements if you define the following types in your account:

a bank statements type
a 1040s type

Sensible uses a document type's name and its description for LLM-based classification:

If Sensible doesn't find an existing document type to which to match your document in your account, it returns an error.
Since Sensible doesn't use configs or reference documents for classification, Sensible can classify documents into your document types even if the document type lacks a config or example. For example, if you lack a citibank config or reference document in your bank_statements type, Sensible can still classify a 2023-1-1_citbank_statement_jon_doe.pdf document as a bank statement.

To improve classification results, describe each document type in your account in its Settings tab. For examples of descriptions, see Document type descriptions.

Use document type classification:

Prior to an extraction workflow. For example, determine which documents to extract prior to calling a Sensible extraction endpoint.
Independent from an extraction workflow. For example, determine where to route each document or to label each document in a system of record.

To classify documents, use the Sensible API or SDKs.