This workflow contains community nodes that are only compatible with the self-hosted version of n8n.
📖 Extract Data from Invoices with OCR, Gemini AI, and Airtable
This template automates the process of extracting key details from invoices (PDF, JPG, PNG) and storing them in Airtable using OCR + AI. It eliminates manual data entry by leveraging Tesseract OCR, Google Gemini AI, and Airtable, with optional Telegram notifications. The workflow is ideal for freelancers, small businesses, and finance teams who need a lightweight and automated solution for handling invoice data.
🔑 Features
- ✅ Supports JPG, PNG, and PDF invoices
- 🧠 Automatically extracts: Invoice Number, Invoice Date (standardized to YYYY-MM-DD), Subtotal, Tax, Total, Currency, Vendor Name, Email, Phone, and Ship-to Address
- 📤 Sends structured data into Airtable automatically
- 📬 Sends a Telegram notification once data is processed (optional)
- 🔁 Triggers automatically when new files are dropped into a folder
⚠️ Disclaimer
This workflow uses community nodes (n8n-nodes-tesseractjs, n8n-nodes-pdf-page-extract).
It works best on self-hosted n8n or n8n cloud instances where these nodes are available.
You must install and configure these nodes before importing the workflow.
⚙️ Setup & Configuration
- Install Docker with n8n.
- Mount your folder (e.g.,
~/self-hosted-ai/ocr-bot:/shared) so invoices can be dropped into/shared/ocr/. - Import the provided JSON workflow into n8n.
- Replace credentials:
- Google Gemini API key
- Airtable base + token
- Telegram bot token (optional)
- Drop a sample invoice (PDF/JPG/PNG) into the configured folder.
- Check Airtable for structured data and Telegram (if enabled) for confirmation.
🧠 Customization
- Modify the AI prompt to extract additional fields.
- Replace Airtable with Google Sheets or another database if preferred.
- Update the Telegram node with your own Chat ID for notifications.
💡 Tip: Add a screenshot of the workflow in n8n to help users quickly understand the node structure.