Abstract: A method and apparatus are disclosed for separating the information on documents involved in transactions such as accounting or banking transactions, for example, from the documents themselves and also for placing control of the processing of the transactions on this information instead of on the documents themselves. An image lift unit at a point of acceptance in a banking system disclosed herein generates an electronic image of each of the documents presented thereat and also tags the documents and the associated images with identification indicia to provide entry records which are processed at a processing center in the system to develop accounting source data and to perform accounting transactions with the accounting source data without using the documents themselves and, in turn, to produce data records which are recorded on an archival record along with the images for the associated documents.