Abstract: A system is provided for automatically processing gaming documents. The system obtains the dollar value of the document directly by optically identifying each dollar value characters from a scanned image of the document, instead of forwarding the bar-coded validation number to a remote database to ascertain the dollar value. This is achieved by storing a plurality of templates, each representative of a possible character of the dollar value. Optical character recognition is used to identify each dollar value character image by comparing each of the stored templates in turn with the image. The template with the highest degree of coincidence is selected. The value of the selected template is stored in ASCII format for display, validation and/or manipulation. Each document image is compressed. Periodically, the compressed document images of the documents processed during that period are transferred to a remote location for long term storage.