RailChop gives you two ways to scan work orders: Quick Scan and AI Scan. Both get your job information into the app so you can run it through the cut optimizer, but they work very differently, and your shop's workflow determines which one makes sense for you.
Quick Scan is fast, free, and works offline. AI Scan reads anything — handwriting, mixed formats, multiple profiles on one page — but uses cloud processing. The right choice depends on how your work orders are formatted, how many you scan per day, and which tier you're on.
What Each Scan Mode Actually Does
Quick Scan uses your phone's built-in OCR to read text and dimensions directly on the device. It's a local, on-device process — no internet connection required. That makes it blazingly fast: results in under a second. It works great on clean, printed POS tickets, typed invoices, or neatly formatted handwritten lists with clear digits. It struggles with messy handwriting, abbreviations, fractions, mixed formats, or work orders where multiple moulding profiles appear on the same page.
AI Scan sends your photograph to our secure server for AI vision processing that analyzes the entire image for context. The AI can read handwritten work orders with inconsistent formatting, understand abbreviations, parse mixed fractions, and even match multiple moulding profiles within the same order by analyzing the layout. It requires an internet connection and costs scan quota (depending on your tier), but it handles the real-world chaos of how framers actually write orders.
When Quick Scan Is the Right Choice
Choose Quick Scan if your workflow involves clean, standardized work orders. If your POS system prints tickets with clearly formatted dimensions, if orders are mostly typed on forms, or if your handwriting is neat and consistent, Quick Scan will give you instant results without burning quota. It's also the natural choice for Pro tier users who want to maximize their 200 quick scans per month.
Quick Scan is also your go-to when the internet is spotty — not every shop has reliable WiFi on the work floor. If you're scanning jobs during setup and don't want to depend on connectivity, Quick Scan delivers. And because it runs entirely on your phone, there's zero cloud processing time: you photograph, you get results, you move on.
When AI Scan Is Worth It
If your work orders are handwritten, AI Scan pays for itself. Shops that receive orders in mixed formats — some printed, some handwritten, some abbreviated shorthand — benefit massively from AI Scan's flexibility. A shop where one framer writes a moulding name as a short code and another writes the full descriptive name will see both parsed correctly by AI Scan, while Quick Scan might struggle or fail entirely.
AI Scan shines when a single work order lists multiple moulding profiles. It can read the layout, understand which dimensions go with which profile, and group them correctly — a task that Quick Scan cannot do. For high-volume shops scanning 20+ orders daily, the time saved on manual corrections and re-scans compounds quickly. A single bad Quick Scan parse might take 2–3 minutes to fix manually; eliminate those mistakes across 100 orders per week, and AI Scan pays for itself in pure time savings, before you even count quality improvements.
Scan Quotas and Tiers
Free tier: No AI Scan access. Quick Scan is available but unlimited. You're also limited to 3 batches per month, so scan volume isn't the main constraint.
Pro tier: 3 AI Scan requests per month, plus 200 Quick Scan requests. This is ideal for framers who mostly use Quick Scan but want to try AI Scan on their messiest orders. When you hit your AI quota, you can keep using Quick Scan for the rest of the month.
Business tier: 300 AI Scan requests per month, plus unlimited Quick Scan. This removes the scanning ceiling for shops doing serious volume.
Trial (14 days): The free trial includes 20 AI scans plus unlimited Quick Scans across the full 14 days. That's enough to test AI Scan on real work orders, see how Quick Scan handles your shop's handwriting, and figure out which mode fits your workflow before deciding whether to subscribe.
Getting the Most from Either Mode
Regardless of which mode you use, a few habits make scanning more reliable:
- Lighting matters. Photograph your work order in good, even light. Avoid glare and shadows across the page.
- Hold steady. Camera shake degrades OCR accuracy. Rest your phone on something stable or use both hands.
- Frame the order, not the desk. Get the entire work order in the frame, but don't include extra clutter or desk space around it.
- Crop consciously. If your work order is in the corner of a larger page, either crop to just the order or position your phone so the order fills most of the frame.
For AI Scan specifically: the image is automatically processed and optimized before being sent to the AI for analysis. This ensures that handwritten digits and abbreviations are clear enough for reliable recognition, even if you're photographing from a distance or the order is on a small form.
Getting Started
The best way to know which mode works for your shop is to try both. There's also a third option: if your orders are already in a spreadsheet, you can skip scanning entirely and import cut lists directly from CSV, TSV, or XLSX files. If you're not yet on RailChop, start free: Quick Scan is always available. When you're ready, the 14-day free trial gives you 20 AI scans plus unlimited Quick Scans — enough to test both modes on your real work orders and figure out which tier makes sense for your workflow.