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Supplier invoices

Every supplier lays an invoice out differently, and none of them lay it out like your accounting system. The work is not reading any one invoice — it is reading two hundred of them into the same shape.

What a row is

One invoice. If a supplier sends a statement covering several invoices, that is a different document and a different table — a statement row cannot answer “what is this line for?”. Where an invoice arrives with a delivery note or a timesheet backing it up, put them in a bundle so the row can answer from the evidence as well as the summary.

The starting columns

This is the Finance & Accounting preset, and the first template the app offers when a new table has no columns:

ColumnTypePrompt
SupplierTextWhat is the name of the supplier issuing this invoice?
Invoice NumberTextWhat is the invoice number?
Invoice DateDateWhat date was this invoice issued?
Due DateDateWhat date is payment due? If only payment terms are stated, give the date they imply from the invoice date.
Total AmountNumberWhat is the total amount payable, including tax? Answer as a number in the invoice currency.
Tax AmountNumberHow much VAT or sales tax is charged on this invoice? Answer as a number, or 0 if none is charged.
Line ItemsListList the goods or services billed on this invoice, one entry per line item.
Purchase Order ReferencedTextWhat purchase order number does this invoice reference, if any?

What it looks like filled in

Purchase ledger — March
Four supplier invoices with number, dates, total, tax and PO reference extracted
RowDocumentsSupplierInvoice no.DueTotalTax
Ashford Print — 4471.pdfAshford Print Ltd
p.1
INV-4471
p.1
30 Apr 2026
p.1
1,842.00
p.1
307.00
p.1
Northgate Supplies.pdfNorthgate Supplies
p.1
2026-0338
p.1
15 Apr 2026
p.1
624.50
p.2
104.08
p.2
Kelso Contracting.pdfTimesheet — wk12.pdfKelso Contracting
p.1
KC/1180
p.1
28 Apr 2026
p.1
7,950.00
p.1
1,325.00
p.1
Cloud hosting — EU.pdfMeridian Cloud BV
p.1
MC-99214
p.1
10 Apr 2026
p.1
412.00
p.1
0.00
p.1
Row 2 is a scan; page images are what a citation opens either wayRow 4 is reverse-charged, so the tax column is a real zero rather than a blank

Setting it up

  1. One workspace per period or per entity, and upload the whole folder. Reading is charged once, so there is no saving in uploading only the invoices you think are queried.
  2. Create the table and take the Supplier invoices template. Delete the columns you do not need — an unused column is not free once you run it.
  3. Run five invoices from five different suppliers, deliberately including your worst-formatted one. Open every cell.
  4. Fix the prompts against what you saw, then run the rest. Tax and due date are the two that usually need a second pass.

Columns worth adding

  • Currency as a category with the currencies you actually receive. The total column is a number and a number has no currency; without this, a €412 invoice and a £412 invoice sort identically.
  • Net amount as a number, beside total and tax. It is the figure that goes to the ledger, and asking for it directly beats subtracting two extracted numbers and hoping both were right.
  • Cost centre or project as a category, where your suppliers quote one. This is the column that turns a purchase ledger into something the budget holder will read.
  • Payment terms as text, separate from the due date. When a due date looks wrong, the terms column is how you tell whether the invoice was ambiguous or the prompt was.

What to check before relying on it

  • Totals and subtotals sit next to each other. An invoice with a discount, a delivery charge and a tax line has four plausible “totals” on the page. The prompt asks for the amount payable including tax; check that is what came back, on an invoice with every one of those lines.
  • Due dates are often implied rather than printed. The prompt asks the model to derive one from the payment terms where no date is given, which is a calculation, not a reading. On anything you are going to pay from, verify against the terms.
  • Zero tax and no tax look the same in a number column. A reverse-charged or zero-rated invoice and one where the tax simply was not found both read as 0. Keep a tax-note column if that distinction matters to your return.
  • Work the low-confidence list first. On invoices it correlates strongly with a scan that came out badly, which is worth knowing before you trust anything else on that row.

What this does not do

Ragextract reads what a document says and shows you where it said it. It does not post to your accounting system, does not match an invoice against a purchase order or a delivery note, does not detect duplicates, and does not pay anything. What it produces is a table you can read, filter and export — the checking and the posting stay where they are.

Roughly what it costs

Two hundred invoices averaging 2 pages is 400 pages — 400 credits, $1, once. Seven typed columns across two hundred rows is 5,600 credits, and the line-items list column is a further 2,400, because a list column costs more per cell than a typed one. About $21 for the month at par, and materially less with a bulk top-up — drop the line-items column if you only need the totals and it is $16. See how credits work.

The template’s prompts are illustrative starting points, not accounting or tax definitions, and nothing here is advice about your books or your VAT return.