Effortlessly Organize Supplier Invoices with These Automation Strategies
Introduction
Are you tired of manually downloading and filing supplier invoices? What if I told you there was a way to automate the process entirely, or at least partially? Imagine this: as soon as supplier invoices land in your email inbox, they are automatically filed away, categorized, and readily accessible on your Mac.
This episode will equip you with the knowledge to make that world a reality. Stick around until the end because I'll also be sharing some best practices to ensure the security and privacy of your data throughout the automation process. I'll unpack all of this after the intro.
Welcome to the Macpreneur Podcast
Hello. Hello and welcome to episode 93 of the Macpreneur Podcast. Whether it's your first time or you're a longtime listener, I appreciate that you carve out some time in your busy solo partner schedule. I've created Macpreneur to help as many solopreneurs as possible save time and money running their businesses on Macs.
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The Evolution of Supplier Invoices
Okay, gone are the days when our suppliers sent us invoices by snail mail. On one hand, it's better for the planet, right? There's no paper needed, and it also removes the need to scan anything since it's already in electronic format. Now, on the other hand, it adds to the deluge of emails that we, as solopreneurs, already have to deal with.
At its core, dealing with this involves two steps. Step number one: retrieving a copy of the invoice, ideally in PDF format. Step number two: filing the retrieved invoice in the appropriate folder for easy access and record keeping.
Now, supplier invoices typically come in three flavors.
Either they are attached as a PDF file directly to the email, or they are part of the email itself. It's the email body, like the Mac App Store purchases, for instance. Or they can be a link within the email that would then lead to the invoice.
The main challenge is dealing with all these invoices efficiently, especially when we're already juggling a million other things.
Now, the good news is that for the first two types (PDF attachments or the email itself being the invoice), it's possible to automate the entire process, meaning absolutely no manual intervention as soon as the email lands in our inbox. However, when the email contains a link to the invoice, only the second and last step can be automated at the moment.
When AI agents become part of our digital life, it will then be possible to have them follow links and download stuff on our behalf. However, until then, it's something that we, or our virtual assistants, still have to do manually.
I talked about AI agents in episode 78, entitled "3 must-know AI trends for solopreneurs in 2024." If you missed that episode, either make yourself a mental post-it note or visit macpreneur.com/episode78, where you will find a video version and a full transcript as well.
Best Practices for Email and File Management
Now, before exploring the automation part, I would like to briefly mention two best practices that I see as prerequisites for dealing with this problem.
Best practice number one: gather all emails that need to be automated in a specific mailbox. It will be called something like "Finances" or "Invoices."
To do that in Gmail, you would create a filter. In Microsoft 365 or Outlook, it would be called a rule. Once you create that, you can ensure that all those emails with invoices attached as PDFs are labeled or moved to the proper mailbox beforehand.
Here is an example of a Gmail filter that I'm using. It starts with "from:", followed by a colon, and then I've listed a bunch of supplier email addresses separated by the word "or" (O R) in uppercase. This allows one filter to work across multiple suppliers.
But that's not enough. The second part of the filter is "subject:", also followed by a colon. Sometimes the subject line contains the word "invoice." Sometimes, some of my suppliers are French-speaking, so it's written as "facture." Or sometimes they also say "receipt," even though it's actually an invoice.
With that Gmail filter, all those emails get labeled as "Finances." That's the folder or mailbox that will be used for the automations afterwards.
I already touched upon this topic in episode 87, entitled "Master Your Solopreneur Inbox with These Four Powerful Strategies."
Okay, best practice number two: have a folder ready to receive the PDF invoice in the cloud storage of your choice. It could be Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox. Make sure that this folder gets synchronized locally on your Mac.
You can delve deeper into this topic by checking out episode 90, entitled "Access Your Solopreneur Documents Like a Boss on Your Mac, iPhone, and iPad."
Automating Invoice Retrieval: PDFs and Emails
Okay, so let's start by exploring ways to automate the first step of the process, which is retrieving a PDF file. And when the invoice is attached as a PDF, it's by far the easiest to automate, especially with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 or Outlook.
And the tool I recommend using in that case is called Zapier. It's free for simple two-step automations and up to 100 tasks per month, which is enough when we're dealing with supplier invoices.
First example with Gmail to Google Drive. So whenever an email with an attachment of any kind is found in a specific folder, for instance, Invoices or Finances, then Zapier will upload the attached PDF into a specific folder in Google Drive.
Second example, in the Microsoft 365 world. Whenever an email with a PDF attachment lands in a specific Microsoft 365 mailbox, then Zapier can save the file into a specific folder in OneDrive.
Now, it's not mandatory to use the same service for the email and cloud storage provider, so you could always mix and match, or you could use Dropbox as the file destination if you wanted to.
Now, if you use iCloud Mail or another system that offers IMAP support, then it's possible to use the IMAP by Zapier trigger.
However, if two-factor authentication is activated for your email account, then you will need to generate what is called an app-specific password. So for that, you will need, for the iCloud Mail, for instance, you will need to go to appleid.apple.com, go to security, two-factor authentication, and there you will see the possibility to create an app-specific password. You can give it a name or label, I would call it Zapier, and then it will create a password. Be careful, copy it, put it in your password manager, and then you will be able to use your Apple ID, email, and this specific password to hook IMAP by Zapier to your iCloud email account.
Now, like for Gmail and Microsoft 365 and Outlook, it can look for new emails that land in a specific mailbox so that it can fire only when needed.
And what is great with Zapier is that it has an AI assistant that can help us craft the automation. So for instance, if you type "when an IMAP email lands in a specific mailbox, save the attachment to Dropbox," then the AI assistant will prepare a draft two-step process with the right trigger and the right action.
The only thing that you'll need to do is give Zapier access to your email and Dropbox accounts. Then, test the automation on an existing email containing an invoice attached as a PDF.
Advanced Automation with Zapier and PDF.co
Scenario number two, when the email is the invoice, it's a bit more complicated to automate the conversion into a PDF.
Now, for Gmail, there is a third-party Google Workspace add-on called Save Email and Attachments that is developed by Digital Inspiration. It works as a Google Sheet macro that periodically runs a series of Gmail searches and then saves either the email body or the attachments into the Google Drive folder of your choice.
It can even dynamically create a subfolder structure with the name of the supplier, the year, and the month, for instance. Now, I've been using the paid version for a few years now, and I have a bunch of rules, each of them involving emails that are stored in the Finances mailbox. Actually, I'm using it whether the invoices are attached as a PDF file or the email is the invoice.
And for me, in the second case, it is by far the easiest method for us, Gmail users.
But what if your email provider is Microsoft 365, Outlook, iCloud Mail, or you use a regular IMAP email account? Now, in preparation for this episode, I've done a bit of research and there is an online service called PDF.co that can convert pretty much anything into a PDF and can be used with Zapier.
The free plan offers 10,000 credits, which is equivalent to about 1,000 pages. And after creating a free PDF.co account, you will be able to copy and have your own private API key. So API stands for Application Programming Interface. And it's a way for online systems to talk to each other without human intervention.
Once you have that API key, you will need to paste it into Zapier so that Zapier can talk to PDF.co on your behalf.
And so here is an example of Zapier automation, which actually will require three steps though. So the trigger could be, for instance, when a new email matches a specific search in Microsoft 365.
Then, the first action will be the conversion of the email body into a PDF. Now, PDF.co has an action called Anything to PDF Converter, and that one can be specifically used to convert the body of the email message into a PDF file.
Once that step has been done, the last step is to save the generated PDF in the cloud storage of your choice. It could be OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, at that point it doesn't matter.
Since there are more than two steps, a paid Zapier account is required to implement this strategy.
Now, if you don't want to do that, you could also create a rule that forwards any email invoices to a personal Gmail account. And once in Gmail, then the Google Workspace add-on could kick in.
However, you would need to make sure that the forwarded email does not land in the spam or the junk folder.
Filing PDF Invoices with Hazel
Now, let's have a quick look at the second step of the process, which is filing the PDF invoice. Once the PDF is synchronized locally to your Mac, or if you need to download it manually after clicking on the link, then further automations can kick in.
The two main options here are Apple's built-in Automator app and a third-party tool called Hazel. And I've covered both tools extensively in Season 2 of the podcast.
Now, for this specific task of renaming and filing supplier invoices, Hazel is hands down the best tool.
The main reason is very simple. It's much easier to extract information from inside the PDF, like the invoice number and the date, and then use that to rename the PDF file before moving it somewhere else.
With the SaneBox invoice, for instance, it checks that it's a PDF, then it looks for a name that matches the following text.
So, SaneBox underscore invoice underscore, and then it looks for a number, and it will collect that number into a token called the invoice number.
After that, it will look for the word SaneBox and also retrieve the invoice date from inside the PDF. And when those four conditions are met, then Hazel will rename the file by prepending the dates in the format that I really like.
The four digits for the year, dash two digits for the month, dash two digits for the day, which will be used from the token, so it will be the invoice date, then space, then Facture, which is invoice in French, Sanebox, and then the invoice number at the end, PDF.
Once it has done that, Hazel will add a tag and then it will move the invoice into a special folder that I check once a month or once every two months before sending everything to my accountant.
If you want to delve deeper into Hazel, you can check out episode 67 entitled 'Put File Management on Autopilot with Hazel for Mac'.
You can visit macpreneur.com/episode67 where you will find a video and a full transcript.
Security and Privacy Considerations
Before concluding this episode, there's one more thing I'd like to mention. Whichever strategy you decide to implement, keep in mind the privacy and security aspects, which in the end rely on trust.
With Zapier, for instance, you will need to authorize it to access your email account and cloud storage of choice.
And the good news is that on the security front, Zapier has a dedicated page with all the measures that it has implemented.
On that page, you can read, for instance, and I quote, "More than 2.2 million companies trust Zapier, including 87 percent of the Forbes Cloud 100 companies in 2023," which inspires great confidence.
This page also mentions that they have a bug bounty program to incentivize security researchers to responsibly disclose any vulnerability that they might find. And when it comes to privacy, again, Zapier has certified its compliance with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, the UK extension to that framework, and the Swiss-US Data Privacy framework.
Zapier has regular internal data audits, and it audits all its vendors too.
Now, despite all this, it still does not comply with the requirements of HIPAA, so please don't use Zapier to handle healthcare and medical data.
Now, having said that, Zapier is, in my opinion, the best tool to automate the online part of a solopreneur's business.
Zapier's Pricing and Usage Insights
So if you haven't checked it out yet, I highly recommend you give it a go. Zapier has a free plan, limited to 100 actions per month, and 2-step automation, so only a trigger followed by a single action, which is enough to download a PDF attachment to your cloud storage of choice, for instance.
If you need more than 100 actions, or you want automations with more than 2 steps, then I recommend upgrading to the professional plan. Zapier offers both monthly and annual subscriptions, allowing you to save about 33 percent when you opt for yearly billing. Very recently, Zapier simplified its pricing strategy.
There is no limit on the number of Zaps that one can create, which was not the case when I signed up for Zapier a few years ago. Now, when it comes to the price itself, it depends on the number of tasks or actions that are needed on a monthly basis, knowing that the base rate for the professional plan is 750 tasks or actions per month.
Now, out of curiosity, I checked my usage for the whole year of 2023, and my average was 200 tasks per month across 15 separate automations. The peak usage was in September 23 with 635 tasks in a single month.
Recap
So, to recap, we've explored different ways to automate the retrieval and filing of electronic invoices sent by our suppliers.
For the retrieval, the easiest scenario is when the invoice is sent as a PDF attachment, which can easily be dealt with using Zapier.
When the invoice is in the body of the email, then the solution depends on the email provider. With Gmail, I recommend and use a Google Workspace add-on that automatically converts email messages into PDF and saves them in Google Drive. For other email providers, either you forward the emails to a personal Gmail address, or you can create a 3-step Zapier automation using the pdf.co service.
Now, when the email contains a link that needs to be clicked to download the invoice, the retrieval needs to be performed manually until AI agents become a reality.
And to automate the filing and renaming of the PDF invoices, I recommend using Hazel.
It's the perfect third-party tool to deal with this kind of problem.
I hope this episode has given you some clarity, and so my advice would be to pick the strategy that resonated the most with you and start implementing at least one thing before the next episode.
If you'd like me to organize a webinar covering Hazel and other Mac automation tools, just DM me on Instagram. My handle is @MacpreneurFM.
360° Tech Diagnostic
And if you're ready to streamline your solo business but don't know where to start, sign up for my 360 tech diagnostic service.
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To learn more about that, just visit macpreneur.com/diagnostic or click the link in the show notes.
Next and outro
So that's it for today. In the next episode, I will cover tools and strategies to efficiently track our business expenses.
So, make sure to subscribe or follow this podcast to get it automatically next week.
And until next time, I'm Damien Schreurs, wishing you a great day.
Thank you for listening to the Macpreneur Podcast. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave a review and share it with a friend right now.
