Formalini

I don’t think I explained the biggest idea behind Formalini clearly enough when we launched.

At first glance, Formalini is easy to describe:

Upload a PDF, scan, photo, invoice, receipt, form or handwritten document → get structured data back.

Useful.

But honestly, if that were the whole idea, I probably wouldn’t have spent more than a year building it.

The bigger problem I want Formalini to solve is what happens AFTER the document is read.

A business rarely wants JSON just for the sake of having JSON.

They want the invoice entered into their ERP.

They want the patient form inside the correct workflow.

They want the insurance document validated and routed.

They want information from a legal document connected to the correct matter.

They want the data inside SAP, ServiceNow, their CRM, their database or their own application.

And they want uncertain information reviewed instead of silently pushing bad data downstream.

That is the direction of Formalini.

Documents come in.

Formalini understands them.

The data is extracted into the structure you need.

Validation and confidence determine what can continue automatically and what needs human review.

Then APIs, webhooks and workflows deliver that information where it actually needs to go.

But there is another problem.

Most businesses don't want a box of powerful tools and a 100-page manual telling them how to assemble everything.

So the next major step is something I'm calling:

Formalini Blueprints.

Imagine opening Formalini and instead of starting from zero, choosing:

Accounts Payable

Upload invoice → extract supplier, totals, taxes and line items → validate → human review when necessary → approval → ERP/SAP.

Legal

Upload a case folder → identify documents, parties, dates and events → organize the matter → build its timeline → keep processing new incoming documents.

Tourism

Reservations, vouchers, invoices, rooming lists and forms → structured information → validation → existing systems and workflows.

Healthcare

Patient forms and clinical documents → structured fields → validation → review → downstream systems.

And the same principle can extend to insurance, real estate, logistics, finance and many other document-heavy industries.

Instead of asking “What can I build with Formalini?”

I want businesses eventually to ask:

“Which Blueprint solves my problem?”

And developers are part of this vision too.

Formalini already has APIs and webhooks, and the longer-term goal is an ecosystem where developers and companies can build their own solutions and integrations on top of the platform.

That's why I don't really think of Formalini as an OCR product.

OCR/extraction is one layer.

The bigger vision is to build the infrastructure between the world's documents and the software that needs the information trapped inside them.

PDF → trusted data → validation → human review when needed → workflow → business system.

One document can be simple.

Multiply it by thousands of documents, hundreds of employees and dozens of systems, and suddenly that bridge becomes extremely valuable.

We reached 70 votes and #26 out of 1,176 products on Product Hunt, which meant a lot to me — especially because I've built the vast majority of Formalini myself.

But I'm much more interested in what happens next.

So here's the question I'd genuinely love Product Hunt's opinion on:

If Formalini had a ready-to-use Blueprint for your industry or job, what would you want it to automate?

Tell me the industry + the document problem.

There's a good chance your answer influences what I build next.