Document scanning

Scanning lets you drop a document into Valise and transfer its data into your vault, instead of typing it in by hand.

It’s a fast way to bring paperwork you already have (like sales records, consignment agreements, exhibition checklists, press clippings, etc.) into your vault. It works with PDFs, photos, Word documents, or text files. A quick photo from your phone or a report from your gallery are both fine.

If your data is already in a structured format like a spreadsheet, importing is usually a better option. It’s faster, more accurate, and works with larger quantities of data.

Scanning only ever adds new records. It never edits or removes anything already in your vault.

How it works

When you scan a file, Valise sends it to our AI provider, which identifies possible sale, presentation, or press records. We then take those suggested records and match them to existing data in your vault, like artworks or contacts. This ensures our AI provider only ever sees the uploaded file, not any other data in your vault.

Currently, Anthropic is our AI provider; our terms with the company ensure your data is never used for training models and is deleted within 30 days of processing. In the future, we intend to move to self-hosted alternatives to further strengthen these privacy guarantees. For more on how we handle your data, see our security docs.

As with any AI-based tool, it’s worth reviewing created records for accuracy.

As a team, we’re skeptical of the AI industry: the labor and environmental issues and the devaluing of human craft it promotes. We use AI for this feature today because it’s the most reliable option available, and because it’s a small, bounded use that saves artists time without much broader harm. If you have any questions about this, we’re always happy to talk.

What you can scan

Presentations

You can quickly add lists of exhibitions from a PDF using the Scan button on the presentations page. Valise reads the title, venue, city, and dates of each one and adds them to your presentations list.

Your CV is a great place to start. Scan it to pre-fill all the important presentations of your work at once.

Press

When adding press, you can drop in PDFs or scans of articles, or paste in a list of article links, and Valise will fill in the details like the publication, title, date, author(s), and any of your works the piece mentions, turning each one into its own press entry.

Links you have already saved are skipped, so you can paste a long list without creating duplicates. If a site blocks us or a scan can’t be read, the entry is still saved—you’ll see a warning on it, and you can fill in the details yourself or retry.

Details are filled in only where you have left a field empty, so scanning never overwrites something you typed.

Sales

When recording a new sale, you can scan a sale document such as a PDF to pre-fill the line items, prices, buyer, and seller.

If any artworks in the document cannot be found in your vault, or are already sold, Valise shows a warning for those artworks but still pre-fills the rest of the sale record.

Not yet supported

Artworks

Scanning artwork information is not yet supported. To bulk import artworks from a spreadsheet or data in another tool, read our importing guide.

Consignments

Scanning consignment information is not yet supported. To bulk import consignments from a spreadsheet or data in another tool, read our importing guide.

Tips

• Photos are fine. You do not need a clean PDF. A picture of a printed invoice or a page from your CV works just as well.
• Add several at once. You can drop in a batch of files in one go rather than scanning them one at a time.
• Paste a list of press links. When adding press, put one link per line. Valise skips any you have already saved, so you won’t accidentally get duplicates.