Extract data from PDFs in Google Drive

Ever wanted to extract data from PDFs as soon as they are uploaded to a Google Drive folder? Read on!

In a previous integration article, we described how to save your emails automatically to Google Drive. But how about the other way around? What if you need to trigger a document extraction every time a new file is uploaded in the Google Drive folder?

Why integrate Google Drive with Parseur?

Google Drive is a life-saver for many of us; it allows us to store our documents and images, which we can share with other people safely.

Let's take the example where all your invoices are saved in a cloud folder, and you need to send those PDFs to Parseur so that you can extract the invoice data.

Of course, you can download the invoices and manually upload them to the Parseur app. This is perfectly doable if you have only a few invoices per month. But what happens when you have hundreds of invoices to process? You can hire someone to do it, but it will be an additional cost, and in all honesty, a boring task!

Luckily, you can create an automated workflow to save you time and resources.

Parseur integration with Google Drive

For this integration article, we are using Google Drive, but the same steps can be applied to OneDrive, Dropbox, and any other cloud storage tool.

Requirements to integrate Parseur with Google Drive:

• A Parseur mailbox
• A Zapier account
• A Google Drive account

Please note that you should already have created a Parseur mailbox. If you haven't created a Parseur account yet, sign up below.

Since for this article, we are using an invoice as an example, the correct mailbox to create would be "Invoices".

Step 1: Connect Google Drive with Zapier

We'll take the invoice example (as per the screenshot below) that is saved in a Google Drive folder.

Sign in to your Zapier dashboard and look for Parseur + Google Drive integrations.

Make sure to select Google Drive as the trigger "New file in Folder" and Parseur will do the action "Create document from file." Zapier will prompt you to log in to your Google Drive account, where you can choose the Google Drive folder where your PDF documents are stored.

Zapier will retrieve the PDF document from this specific folder.

Step 2: Connect Parseur with Zapier

Sign in to your Parseur account and choose the mailbox where you want to send the PDF file.

Step 3: Send a test trigger from Zapier to Parseur

Send a test Zap from Zapier to Parseur to ensure that the invoice has been automatically sent to your Parseur mailbox.

Step 4: Verify if the document has been sent to Parseur

Turn the Zap on! From now on, each time this specific folder receives a new file, it will be sent to this Parseur mailbox.

As you can see, Parseur extracted the data automatically from this document. The PDF parser has a ready-made template to automate invoice processing. Parseur can extract the following fields from invoices:

• Invoice number
• Invoice date
• Supplier details (name, address, phone number)
• Items' descriptions and quantities
• Discount
• Tax
• Grand total

Step 5: Connect Parseur to an accounting tool (optional)

Once your data has been parsed, you can either download it to export to an accounting software such as QuickBooks or Invoice Berry.

Parseur has native integration with Zapier, Make, and Power automate, which you can use to send parsed data.