Every document a business receives carries a few facts someone needs. The supplier, number and total on a bill. The date and tax on a receipt. The parties, dates and deadlines in a contract. Getting them out usually means opening the file, finding the line and typing it somewhere else, and doing that a few hundred times a month is where a $1,248.00 becomes $12,480.
Software can read most of these documents now. The danger isn't that it can't read the invoice. It's that it reads a smudged total, fills in the gap with something plausible, and nobody notices. So every workflow in this guide follows one rule: a blank beats a guess. Here's how reading a document works in Lodol, six ready-made workflows built on that rule, and where to put a person.
Two kinds of reader
A workflow can hand a document to one of two kinds of reader, and the templates below use both.
- An AI model, such as OpenAI or Anthropic, reads the document and answers the questions you ask of it. It suits documents that look different every time, like receipts from a hundred shops.
- A document reading service is built for files: Extend, Reducto, Airparser and PDF.co pull out text, tables and values, and iLovePDF can turn a scan into text a computer can read. Extend also reports how confident it is in each value and which page it came from. The full list is in Document Extraction.
Either way, the reading runs on your own account with that service, which bills you at its own rates. Everything around it, from the checks to the filing, runs the same way every time.
1. Receipts into expense rows
The workflow: paste links to a batch of receipts and invoices into Turn receipts and invoices into expense rows and run it. Each file is read for its supplier, date, invoice number, total, tax and currency, and becomes a row on your Expenses tab, written exactly as read, so nothing turns into a formula or a reinterpreted date.
What it won't do: invent a figure. If the supplier, date or total can't be read, or the reader wasn't confident, the row goes to a Needs review tab with a note saying what's wrong. A figure it can't find is left blank, never written as zero. Links already on either tab are skipped, so you can add receipts and run it again.
2. Bank statements into transaction rows
The workflow: upload a bank statement PDF to Turn a bank statement into transaction rows and every posted transaction becomes a row under the account label you choose. The date, description and amount are copied exactly as printed, currency symbols, minus signs and brackets included.
What it won't do: calculate, or pretend a partial run is whole. Balances and subtotals are left out. A line that can't be split into date, description and amount isn't written at all, and if any line is skipped or fails, a clearly marked INCOMPLETE row is added with the counts. Running the same statement again never writes a line twice.
3. Contracts and long documents, value by value
The workflow: give Pull every value out of a PDF and flag what to check any PDF, such as a contract, a statement of work, a form or a spec sheet, and it writes every value it finds into a Google Doc, each on its own line with the page it was found on and how confident the reading was. Tell it what the document is and what you want out of it, or let the document's own layout decide.
What it won't do: tidy up. Nothing is completed or filled in from elsewhere. Any value read less confidently than the level you set is listed again at the end, by name and page, so you know exactly what to check against the original before you rely on a date or a notice period.
4. Every emailed document, summarized
The workflow: when documents arrive by email, Summarise the documents people email you reads each PDF attached and asks it the same questions: what kind of document it is, who issued it, who it's for, its date and reference, what it asks of you, any deadline and any total. A short summary goes into a running Google Doc, and you get one email listing what came in.
What it won't do: advise or assume. A question the document doesn't answer is recorded as not stated, and the summary is written from the answers alone. Each email is labeled once its documents are logged, so nothing is summarized twice.
5. Scans into text you can search
The workflow: Turn a multi-page scan into readable text recognizes the text on a scanned PDF in the language you name and writes it into a Google Doc page by page, with paragraphs kept and tables written row by row.
What it won't do: summarize or fill in. It's a transcript: a page where nothing could be read is counted, not invented, and an INCOMPLETE note says which page to start from if any were left. Name the right language, because the wrong one is the usual reason a scan comes back as gibberish.
6. File each document by what it says
The workflow: File emailed PDFs into the right Box folder reads each emailed PDF for what kind of document it is, what it concerns, its reference, date and any total, and AI picks one of the Box folders you've described from those answers alone. The sender and subject are never shown to it, so an invoice is filed as an invoice whoever sent it.
What it won't do: file a document it isn't sure about. When the answer isn't exactly one of your folders, nothing is copied and the email is labeled Needs sorting, a short queue you work through by hand. For bills that should also be logged in a register, File emailed documents and log what they say files each PDF in Box and adds a row with what it says, and our guide to saving Gmail to Google Sheets covers more ways to log what arrives by email.
Where to put a person
Reading is the part to automate. Deciding what the figures mean is often still a person's job, and Lodol lets the workflow stop and ask.
- Before it touches the books. QuickBooks Online now has 79 actions in Lodol, bills and expenses included. Put a Request approval step before the one that records a bill, and the run pauses to ask, for example, "Record the $3,240.00 invoice from Northfield Print, due October 15?" The person you name approves or rejects it from Lodol or from the email it sends them.
- When a fact is missing. Set the same step to ask for a written reply instead, such as "Which PO number does this invoice go against?", and later steps use the answer.
- When a policy needs reading. An If set to Use judgment can hold each receipt against your expense policy written in plain words, and send the ones it isn't sure about to finance with the receipt attached, rather than waving them through.
From October 1, Lodol charges per run, and a run counts once however many steps it takes, so a batch of 25 receipts read in one run counts as one. Our pricing post explains how to work out what you need.
Start with this month's receipts.
Add Turn receipts and invoices into expense rows, paste in the links and see what lands on Needs review. Or browse all of the finance workflows, and see how Lodol fits a finance team on the finance page. Start free if you don't have a workspace yet.