🧾 Generate invoice PDFs from Google Sheets with DocuPotion and Drive

⚡ 47 views · 🧾 Invoice Processing

Description

Automatically generate an Invoice PDF from Google Sheets data with DocuPotion

How it works

This workflow automatically generates a branded PDF invoice from data in Google Sheets and saves it to Google Drive. No manual document editing required.

It’s triggered when you update the status column of any row in your invoices sheet to Active. From there it:

1. Fetches all line items for that invoice from a separate “line items” tab (matched by invoice_number)
2. Aggregates the line items and calculates the total
3. Generates a PDF using your DocuPotion invoice template, with customer details and line items merged in
4. Uploads the PDF to your Google Drive, named Invoice-{invoice_number}.pdf
5. Writes the PDF link back to the invoice row and updates its status to Sent

The workflow loops over invoices, so you can flip multiple rows to Active at once and each will be processed independently. Polling runs every minute (but you can change this to whatever frequency you want).

What you’ll need

• A Google account (Sheets + Drive)
• A DocuPotion account with an invoice template configured
• The DocuPotion community node installed in your n8n instance

Set up steps

1. Copy the demo Google Sheet

👉 Demo invoice Sheet

Open the link and go to File → Make a copy. This gives you a Sheet with the correct structure:

• invoices tab: invoice_number, invoice_date, due_date, status, customer_name, customer_email, customer_company, customer_address, pdf_url
• line items tab: invoice_number, description, quantity, unit_price

2. Install the DocuPotion community node

In n8n, go to Settings → Community Nodes → Install and enter ‘DocuPotion’.

3. Create your DocuPotion invoice template

Log into DocuPotion and create a template for your invoice layout. The workflow passes these merge fields to the template:

invoice_number, invoice_date, due_date, customer_name, customer_company, customer_address, customer_email, total, and line_items[] (an array where each item has description, quantity, unit_price).

Note the template ID from DocuPotion — you’ll need it in step 5.

4. Connect credentials

Import this workflow into n8n, then connect credentials for:

• Google Sheets (used by the trigger and two action nodes)
• Google Drive
• DocuPotion

5. Point the workflow at your resources

• In all three Google Sheets nodes (Invoice Status Updated to Active, Get Invoice Items, Add Link to Google Sheet), replace the document ID with your copied Sheet’s ID.
• In the Generate PDF node, replace the template ID with your DocuPotion template ID.
• Optionally, in Upload to Google Drive, change the destination folder from root to a subfolder like /Invoices.

6. Activate and test

Turn on the workflow. Then in your invoices Sheet, change the status of a sample row to Active. Within a minute, you should see:

• A new PDF in your Drive
• The pdf_url column populated
• The status column updated to Sent

Customisation ideas

• Email the PDF: add a Gmail node after Upload to Google Drive to send the invoice to customer_email automatically.
• Different statuses: change the filter to trigger on a custom status like Approved or Ready to send.
• Branded filename: edit the filename expression in Upload to Google Drive to include company name or date.
• Faster polling: change the trigger from “every minute” to a shorter interval if you’re on self-hosted n8n.

🔗 Nodes Used

Google Sheets, Google Drive, Google Sheets Trigger, Filter

📥 Import

Download workflow.json and import into n8n: Workflow menu → Import from File

📖 Importing guide · 🔑 Credential setup