How to read a German vehicle registration certificate, box by box

Fahrzeugschein24 is built for the German vehicle registration certificate Part I — the Zulassungsbescheinigung Teil I, commonly called the Fahrzeugschein — and the older Fahrzeugschein is read the same way. Upload a photo or a scan, wait one to two seconds, take the finished record: every value with a confidence figure and the place it was found on the document.

Part I, Part II and the older Fahrzeugschein

Zulassungsbescheinigung Teil I replaced the earlier Fahrzeugschein in 2005. It stays with the vehicle and holds the keeper details and the technical data — plate, vehicle identification number, masses, engine power, emission class. Part II, the former Fahrzeugbrief, evidences the right of disposal and is out of scope here. Fahrzeugschein24 is built for Part I and the older Fahrzeugschein: the two documents that cross the counter day to day.

Both come back in the same shape, so nothing downstream has to tell them apart. Because the layout of this form is known, every entry lands under the box it belongs to instead of in a block of text. What that looks like in daily work is on reading a Fahrzeugschein; how the picture becomes text is on text recognition.

Letter codes from A to V.9

The German numbered boxes, where HSN and TSN sit

From photo to finished record

1. Upload the documentA phone shot on the forecourt or a scan from the office: JPEG, PNG, HEIC, PDF, TIFF, BMP and WebP up to 20 MB, first page for a PDF. Skewed, sideways and dark shots are straightened and cut out automatically.
2. Get every entry under its boxEach entry lands under the letter code or the number it sits under on the paper — up to 65 on a fully completed certificate.
3. Let the checks runThe plate comes back in its official spaced form, and the printed check digit is held against the vehicle identification number. Contradictions on the document are reported, not quietly resolved.
4. Take the result into your processYou see the record in your account and pass it to your own systems through the API — every value with its confidence figure and where it was found, plus the image crop if you switch it on.

One document in, the entries out

In:   one photo of a German registration certificate Part I

Out (excerpt):
  A     Registration number             M SN 1234 E
  B     Date of first registration      14.03.2019
  D.1   Make                            VOLKSWAGEN
  E     Vehicle identification number   WVWZZZ1JZXW000001
  P.3   Fuel                            ELEKTRO
  2.1   Manufacturer key number         0603
  2.2   Type key number                 BJV
  3     Check digit                     6

What that is worth day to day

Questions about the German registration certificate

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