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Personal admin recipeSnap a receipt, get an expense row
Photograph a receipt on your phone and an expense row appears in your sheet, with the category guessed but editable.
| Input | Photo emailed or dropped into a folder |
| Tools | Phone → email or Google Drive folder, Make, a vision-capable AI step, Google Sheets |
| Time | Setup about 30 minutes. |
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 image in the 'receipts' folder.
- Vision step extracts the fields.
- Append a row with a link to the image.
The prompt
From this receipt image, return JSON {merchant, date YYYY-MM-DD, currency, total, category: one of [food, travel, software, office, other]}. Null if unreadable; never guess the total.Sample run
Example input (written for illustration)
Photo of a café receipt, 2026-10-14, €8.40
Example output (shows the format, not a real log)
{"merchant":"Café Lauras","date":"2026-10-14","currency":"EUR","total":8.40,"category":"food"}SPONSOR SLOT · AVAILABLEFeature your product here
Where it breaks
- Faded thermal paper. Totals come back null. That's correct behaviour, so type them in.
- 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.