Get invoice and PDF data into a spreadsheet without typing

Who it is for

Administration, accounting and small business owners who receive dozens of invoices, receipts or delivery notes as PDFs and transcribe them by hand.

The problem

Every month-end someone opens PDF after PDF and copies supplier, invoice number, date and amounts into a spreadsheet. It is slow, boring, and the mistake lands exactly on the number that matters.

Ingredients

• The invoice PDFs (it also works with legible photos of receipts)
• A claude.ai or ChatGPT account that accepts file attachments
• Knowing which columns your spreadsheet needs, in the exact order

Step by step

1. 1

   Define the exact columns of your spreadsheet

   Write the header row exactly as you have it in Excel: for example Supplier, RUT, Invoice number, Date, Net, VAT, Total, Description. The model will respect the order you give it.

2. 2

   Upload the PDFs in batches of 5 to 10

   Attach the files to the conversation. Small batches are easy to review; huge batches let an error hide among a hundred rows.

3. 3

   Paste the prompt and ask for the table

   Use the prompt below. Explicitly ask it to mark any field it cannot read with confidence as "REVIEW", instead of guessing it.

4. 4

   Copy the table into the spreadsheet and review only what is marked

   The result comes as a table; it pastes straight into Excel or Google Sheets. Review only the cells marked REVIEW and a random sample of the rest.

Replace what is in brackets with your company details, or use the guided mode above: it asks you and fills it in for you.

You are going to read the invoices I attach and extract their data into a table.

Exact columns, in this order:
Supplier | Supplier RUT | Invoice number | Date (DD-MM-YYYY) | Net amount | VAT | Total amount | Description (short description of what was bought)

Rules:
- One row per invoice. If a PDF has more than one invoice, one row for each.
- Copy the amounts exactly as they appear, with no thousands separators and no currency symbol. Example: 1250000
- If a value cannot be read with confidence, write REVIEW in that cell. Never guess a number.
- If the document is not an invoice (it is a delivery note, a quote or something else), say so in the Description column and leave the amounts empty.
- At the end of the table, add a line with the sum of the Total amount column.

Deliver the table in Markdown format so I can copy it into a spreadsheet.

What usually goes wrong

• ✕Asking "extract the data" without defining columns. Each batch will come out with a different structure and will not paste.
• ✕Uploading blurry or tilted photos of receipts. The model reads very well, but it cannot read what is not visible; it will flag it with REVIEW.
• ✕Not adding the total at the end. That sum is the fastest check against your accounting.