Overview

Manually extracting information from a large number of invoices for system entry is tedious and error-prone. Claude can help you batch process invoice files, extract key information such as invoice numbers, amounts, dates, and suppliers, and generate well-organized Excel spreadsheets.

Use Cases

Expense reimbursement document organization
Bulk financial bookkeeping entry
Purchase invoice consolidation
Tax filing data preparation

Steps

Step 1: Organize Invoice Files

First, organize the invoice files to be processed.

Please check the ~/Documents/Invoices folder:
- List all PDF and image files (jpg, png)
- Count the number of files
- Check if file naming is standardized
- Identify file formats and quality

Step 2: Extract Text Content

Extract text from PDFs or images.

Please extract text from all invoice files:
- Extract text directly from PDF files
- Use OCR to recognize image files
- Save the text content of each file to ~/Documents/Invoices/text/ directory
- Report which files failed to extract or have poor quality

Step 3: Parse Invoice Information

Extract structured information from the text.

For each invoice text, please extract the following fields:
- Invoice number
- Invoice date
- Supplier name
- Buyer name
- Tax ID
- Amount (numeric)
- Tax amount
- Total amount including tax
- Product or service description
Use regular expressions and keyword matching to identify these fields

Step 4: Validate and Clean

Check the accuracy of extracted results.

Please validate the extracted data:
- Check if date formats are correct
- Verify if amounts are reasonable
- Check if required fields are complete
- Flag suspicious or low-confidence records
- For failed recognitions, list original file paths for manual processing

Step 5: Generate Excel Spreadsheet

Export the extracted information to a spreadsheet.

Please generate Excel file: ~/Documents/invoice_data.xlsx
Include the following columns:
- Filename
- Invoice number
- Invoice date
- Supplier
- Amount
- Tax amount
- Total amount including tax
- Status (Verified/Pending/Failed)
- Notes
Sort by date, use conditional formatting to highlight pending rows

Tips

OCR recognition accuracy is affected by invoice scan quality. It is recommended to manually spot-check some results, especially amount fields. For important financial data, always verify accuracy.

If invoices have a uniform format (e.g., all from the same platform), you can ask Claude to create a dedicated parsing template to improve recognition accuracy and speed.

Common Questions

Q: Can handwritten invoices be recognized? A: Handwritten content has low recognition accuracy. It is recommended to only process printed invoices. If handwritten invoices must be processed, consider using more advanced OCR services or manual entry.

Q: Is there a difference between electronic invoices and scanned invoices? A: Electronic invoices (PDF format) can have text extracted directly with high accuracy. Scanned invoices require OCR recognition, and accuracy depends on scan quality.

Q: How to handle multi-page invoices? A: Claude will merge and process multi-page content. If each page is a separate invoice, tell Claude to split by page into individual records.