Managing vendor invoices manually is a nightmare for any growing business — especially when you’re receiving over a dozen every day. That was the case for a small home construction company I recently worked with. Their team was drowning in repetitive tasks: downloading PDFs from Azure, manually extracting invoice details, updating spreadsheets, and chasing payment deadlines — every single day.
Not only was this process time-consuming, but it also left room for human error and delayed payments.
The Manual Headache
The business received 10–12 vendor invoices daily, all stored in Azure Blob Storage. Their typical workflow looked like this:
Download each invoice PDF manually from Azure
Open the PDF and copy details like vendor name, invoice number, amount, and due date
Paste this data into Google Sheets
Manually check for upcoming due dates
Draft and send reminder emails to the accounts team
Over time, this manual routine became unsustainable — consuming hours daily and resulting in occasional missed payments or incorrect entries.
The Automation Breakthrough
To solve this, I designed a fully automated workflow using n8n, Mistral AI, OpenAI, and Azure SQL Database. Here’s how the system now works:
Daily Invoice Processing
Every morning, a scheduled n8n workflow:
Scans Azure Blob Storage for new invoice PDFs
Downloads each new file
Uses Mistral AI’s OCR engine to accurately extract key data
Cleans and structures the information
Saves all records into an Azure SQL database
Smart Payment Reminders
Another workflow:
Queries the database for invoices due in the next 15 days
Sends the results to OpenAI to draft professional, personalized reminder emails
Automatically delivers these emails to the accounts team via Outlook
How AI Makes a Difference
This isn’t just automation — it’s intelligent automation.
Mistral AI reliably extracts data from different invoice formats, even ones with tricky layouts or noisy scans.
n8n acts as the backbone, coordinating all systems and ensuring tasks run smoothly without a single line of custom code.
OpenAI generates polished reminder emails that are clear, informative, and require no human rewriting.
Azure SQL provides a centralized place to store, query, and analyze invoice data on demand.
Real-World Impact
Thanks to this automation, the construction company now processes invoices hands-free. Each morning, the team receives neatly organized data and timely reminders — no more manual checking, no more missed payments.
What used to take hours now runs in the background, flawlessly. The accounts team has reclaimed their time and can now focus on more strategic finance work instead of paperwork.
Final Thoughts
This project is a powerful example of what’s possible when AI meets automation. If your team is stuck in the cycle of manual document processing, it might be time to rethink your workflows.
Smart automation isn’t just for big tech — it’s for any business that values time, accuracy, and peace of mind.
Interested in building something similar? I’d love to chat and help you explore what’s possible.
