Convert multiple invoice PDFs to Excel at once.

The short answer#

Name the columns once, upload the whole folder, and every invoice is read against that same table. The supplier who prints the total top-right and the one who prints it bottom-left both produce a row with the total in the total column. Batches of PDFs, scans and phone photos go in together; one workbook comes out, sorted however you like.

The values Saff was not sure about, a VAT figure in a shaded box, a date in an unusual format, an invoice number under a stamp, are flagged and shown next to the page they came from. You check those, mark the rows reviewed, and export. On a clean batch of native PDFs that is a few minutes; on a folder of photographed carbon copies it is longer, and the flags tell you exactly where the time goes.

Why a batch defeats a converter#

A converter works one file at a time, and it works by drawing a grid over the page. Ninety files means ninety uploads, ninety downloads and ninety grids, each shaped by that supplier's layout. The copy-and-paste into a master sheet is where the afternoon goes: columns are in a different order per supplier, wrapped descriptions have become extra rows, and the totals sit in a column of their own on half the sheets.

Some converters offer a batch upload. It removes the ninety uploads and keeps the ninety layouts, which is the expensive half of the problem. The grid still does not know what an invoice number is, so nothing lines up until a person makes it.

UAE invoices add two more reasons. A tax invoice is often bilingual, with Arabic and English in the same line, and a converter that reads left to right reverses or drops the Arabic. And the TRN, the tax registration number, is a fifteen-digit value that Excel happily turns into scientific notation the moment it lands in a numeric column.

How Saff handles the batch#

Create a table with the columns above, or your own. Set TRN and invoice number as text so long numbers stay whole. Upload the folder: PDFs from email, scans from the office machine, photos from the site, mixed. Saff reads each invoice for those fields, whatever the layout, and every file becomes one row in the same shape. If a long upload is interrupted, it carries on from the last good file rather than starting again.

Then the review. Flagged cells first, each with the invoice page beside it and the relevant part highlighted. Confirm or correct, mark reviewed. The export is a workbook with the reviewed rows on one sheet and the review notes on another, so the accountant who receives it can see what was checked and by whom. Next month, upload the next folder into the same table; the columns are already there.

What Saff will not do with invoices#

It will not post anything to your accounting system or decide whether an invoice should be paid. It gives you the sheet, clean and checked, and your process takes it from there. Connecting it to a ledger is something an enterprise install can discuss; the hosted product stops at the workbook.

It will not guess a total it could not read. A photographed invoice with glare across the amounts produces a flagged, empty cell, not a plausible number. On an invoice that is the correct behaviour: a guessed total is a payment.