diff --git a/src/paperless_tesseract/parsers.py b/src/paperless_tesseract/parsers.py
index d381ed94f..be8f45e7b 100644
--- a/src/paperless_tesseract/parsers.py
+++ b/src/paperless_tesseract/parsers.py
@@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ class RasterisedDocumentParser(DocumentParser):
                 # This happens when there's already text in the input file.
                 # The sidecar file will only contain text for OCR'ed pages.
                 self.log("debug", "Using text from sidecar file")
-                return text
+                return post_process_text(text)
             else:
                 self.log("debug", "Incomplete sidecar file: discarding.")
 
@@ -113,13 +113,11 @@ class RasterisedDocumentParser(DocumentParser):
         if not os.path.isfile(pdf_file):
             return None
 
-        from pdfminer.high_level import extract_text
+        from pdfminer.high_level import extract_text as pdfminer_extract_text
         from pdfminer.pdftypes import PDFException
 
         try:
-            text = extract_text(pdf_file)
-            stripped = strip_excess_whitespace(text)
-            stripped = stripped.replace("\0", " ")
+            stripped = post_process_text(pdfminer_extract_text(pdf_file))
 
             self.log("debug", f"Extracted text from PDF file {pdf_file}")
             return stripped
@@ -296,7 +294,7 @@ class RasterisedDocumentParser(DocumentParser):
                 self.text = ""
 
 
-def strip_excess_whitespace(text):
+def post_process_text(text):
     if not text:
         return None
 
@@ -307,4 +305,6 @@ def strip_excess_whitespace(text):
         r"([^\S\n\r]+)$", '', no_leading_whitespace)
 
     # TODO: this needs a rework
-    return no_trailing_whitespace.strip()
+    # replace \0 prevents issues with saving to postgres.
+    # text may contain \0 when this character is present in PDF files.
+    return no_trailing_whitespace.strip().replace("\0", " ")
diff --git a/src/paperless_tesseract/tests/test_parser.py b/src/paperless_tesseract/tests/test_parser.py
index fe4e4733b..e39f87017 100644
--- a/src/paperless_tesseract/tests/test_parser.py
+++ b/src/paperless_tesseract/tests/test_parser.py
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ from django.test import TestCase, override_settings
 
 from documents.parsers import ParseError, run_convert
 from documents.tests.utils import DirectoriesMixin
-from paperless_tesseract.parsers import RasterisedDocumentParser, strip_excess_whitespace
+from paperless_tesseract.parsers import RasterisedDocumentParser, post_process_text
 
 image_to_string_calls = []
 
@@ -32,8 +32,6 @@ class FakeImageFile(ContextManager):
         return os.path.basename(self.fname)
 
 
-
-
 class TestParser(DirectoriesMixin, TestCase):
 
     def assertContainsStrings(self, content, strings):
@@ -58,9 +56,9 @@ class TestParser(DirectoriesMixin, TestCase):
         )
     ]
 
-    def test_strip_excess_whitespace(self):
+    def test_post_process_text(self):
         for source, result in self.text_cases:
-            actual_result = strip_excess_whitespace(source)
+            actual_result = post_process_text(source)
             self.assertEqual(
                 result,
                 actual_result,