RecipeAgents / Recipes / Ops
Ops recipeInvoice PDFs from email into a sheet
Invoices arrive as PDF attachments. This pulls out vendor, date, amount and VAT and adds a row to your bookkeeping sheet.
| Input | Email with PDF attachment |
| Tools | Gmail, Zapier (PDF to text) or Make, an AI step, Google Sheets |
| Time | Setup about 45 minutes. For 30 invoices a month it can save an hour or so of typing, though you still check each row. That's our estimate. |
Download it
- n8n workflow (.json)Import in n8n: Workflows → Import from file. Then connect your credentials.
- Zapier blueprint (.md)Step-by-step rebuild guide. Zapier has no public import format, so this isn't one-click.
- Open the Zap editorCreate a new Zap and follow the blueprint.
The n8n file has three nodes (trigger, AI step, output) plus a read-me note. We check that its JSON structure is valid, but we haven't run every file in a live n8n instance, so test it with sample data before you switch it on.
Steps
- Trigger: new email matching has:attachment filename:pdf invoice.
- Extract text from the PDF.
- AI step returns JSON with the fields.
- Append a row. Look up the invoice number first to skip duplicates.
The prompt
Extract from this invoice text: vendor, invoice_number, date (YYYY-MM-DD), currency, net, vat, total. Return JSON; use null for missing fields; never compute values that aren't printed. Text: {{pdf_text}}Sample run
Example input (written for illustration)
Invoice from 'UAB Spausdinimas', No. 2026-114, 2026-10-02, EUR, net 200.00, VAT 21% 42.00, total 242.00
Example output (shows the format, not a real log)
{"vendor":"UAB Spausdinimas","invoice_number":"2026-114","date":"2026-10-02","currency":"EUR","net":200.00,"vat":42.00,"total":242.00}SPONSOR SLOT · AVAILABLEFeature your product here
Where it breaks
- Scanned PDFs. Image-only PDFs come back with no text, so add an OCR step or flag them.
- Totals that don't add up. Add a sheet formula that checks net + vat = total and highlights mismatches.
- Anything customer-facing or money-related. Keep a human approval step until you've watched a few dozen runs and trust it.
Tool names and pricing change often, so check each tool's current docs before you build. Times on this page are estimates, not measurements.