An apparatus for entering sorting information has a plurality of sorting devices, a plurality of terminal devices, and a sorting-data distributing device. Each of the sorting devices photo-electrically recognizes sorting information in an image on a document and sorts the document using the recognized sorting information as sorting data. It supplies unrecognizable sorting data to the distributing device. Each of the terminal devices displays received unrecognized sorting data. An operator recognizes the sorting information corresponding to the displayed unrecognized sorting data and enters the recognized sorting information into the terminal device. The recognized sorting data is supplied to the distributing device. The distributing device is connected between the plurality of sorting devices and the plurality of terminal devices to receive and transfer the unrecognized sorting data to the one of the plurality of terminal devices that currently has the lowest load, and also to receive the recognized sorting data supplied from the terminal device and transfer the recognized sorting data to the sorting device which has supplied the unrecognized sorting data corresponding to the recognized sorting data. The distributing device includes a control unit, a plurality of input sections individually connected to the plurality of sorting devices, and a plurality of output sections individually connected to the plurality of terminal devices.