The Problem: The “Black Hole” of Google Drive folders

We’ve all been there. Clients, vendors, or team members dump PDF invoices, receipts, and purchase orders into a shared Google Drive folder.

At the end of the month, you (or your team) have to open every single file, find the Total Amount, Date, and Invoice Number, and manually type them into a spreadsheet. It’s boring, time-consuming, and prone to human error.

What if your Google Drive could “read” these files automatically?

In this guide, we will build a fully automated workflow using n8n (a powerful workflow automation tool) and ParserData (our AI document processing API).

📺 Watch the Tutorial

See the automation in action. In this video, we set up the Google Drive trigger and connect it to the ParserData API in under 10 minutes.

PDF to Dashboard & n8n Automation

What You Will Need

To follow along, you’ll need:

  • n8n Instance: You can use n8n Cloud or a self-hosted version (free).
  • Google Drive Account: A dedicated folder for incoming documents (e.g., “Incoming Invoices”).
  • ParserData API Key: Get your API key here.

Step-by-Step: Building the Workflow

Unlike rigid OCR tools that break when a layout changes, this workflow uses AI to understand documents regardless of their format.

Step 1: The Watcher (Google Drive Trigger) First, we set up a Google Drive Trigger node. This acts as a security guard for your folder.

  • Event: File Created
  • Filter: You can restrict it to specific folders or file types (like PDFs or Images).
  • Result: As soon as a file lands in the folder, the workflow wakes up.

Step 2: Download the File The trigger tells us that a file exists, but we need the content. We use the Google Drive node with the Download operation. This fetches the binary data of the PDF or image so we can send it for processing.

Step 3: AI Extraction (The Magic Moment) 🧠 This is where the manual work disappears. We send the binary file to ParserData using an HTTP Request node.

Why it works: ParserData doesn’t need templates. It automatically identifies fields like total_amount, invoice_date, line_items, and vendor_name from any document layout.

Step 4: Save the Data Now that you have clean JSON data, you can send it anywhere. Common destinations include:

  • Google Sheets: Add a new row for every invoice.
  • Notion/Airtable: Create a new database record.
  • Webhook: Send the data to your own backend or ERP.

📥 Get the Ready-to-Use Workflow

Don’t want to build it from scratch? We have prepared a pre-configured JSON template for this exact workflow.

You can download the workflow file from our open-source repository and import it directly into your n8n instance.

👉 Download n8n Workflow on GitHub

Real-World Use Cases

This isn’t just for invoices. Here is how our users are utilizing this automation:

  • Logistics & Supply Chain: Automatically extract data from Bills of Lading and Delivery Notes uploaded by drivers.
  • HR & Recruitment: Parse resumes (CVs) dropped into a drive folder and update your candidate database.
  • Expense Management: Employees upload photos of receipts; n8n parses them and adds them to an expense report.

Conclusion

Automation doesn’t have to be complicated. By combining the flexibility of n8n with the intelligence of ParserData, you can eliminate hours of manual data entry every week.

Ready to start?

  1. Sign up for ParserData to get your API credits.
  2. Download the n8n template.
  3. Enjoy your free time!