Generate and send freelance invoices from Airtable via HTML-to-PDF and Gmail

Quick Overview

This workflow runs daily to find Airtable projects marked ready to invoice, validates required fields, generates a PDF invoice via an HTML-to-PDF API, emails it with Gmail, and updates the Airtable record as invoiced or flagged as needs info.

How it works

1. Runs every day at the configured time.
2. Loads configuration values and searches Airtable for projects where status is ready_to_invoice and invoiced is false.
3. Checks each project has a client email, a project name, and either a fixed fee or both an hourly rate and billable hours.
4. If required details are missing, updates the Airtable record status to needs_info.
5. If details are complete, calculates subtotal, tax amount, total amount, and an invoice date.
6. Builds an HTML invoice using the project and configuration data.
7. Sends the HTML to an external HTML-to-PDF API and receives a PDF file response.
8. Emails the PDF invoice to the client with Gmail and updates Airtable to mark the project invoiced with the invoice date and amount.

Setup

1. Add an Airtable Personal Access Token credential and set your Airtable base ID and table name in the configuration values.
2. Ensure your Airtable table includes fields used by the workflow (at least status, invoiced, client_email, client_name, project_name, hourly_rate, billable_hours, and fixed_fee).
3. Add a Gmail OAuth2 credential and confirm the sender mailbox used to email invoices.
4. Provide your HTML-to-PDF service endpoint URL and API key in the configuration values.
5. Update the business name and tax percentage in the configuration values, and adjust the schedule time if needed.