AI Purchase Invoice Scanning

Stop typing supplier invoices in. Send them in instead.

Every garage has someone typing supplier invoices into the system. Part numbers, quantities, prices, VAT – line after line, several times a week. It’s slow, it’s error-prone, and it’s unnecessary.

Torqueflow’s AI extracts the supplier, the document number, every line item, the totals, and the VAT – from a PDF, a phone photo, or a forwarded email. You review on a side-by-side screen and click Confirm. The purchase invoice is created. The job is done.

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Three ways in

Email · drag · photo

Per-line catalog match

Matched / Likely / Unmatched

Reconciliation

Totals checked, currency caught

Scan addresses

Per-team, per-supplier

Three ways in

Whichever way the invoice arrives, the workflow ends in the same place.

Pick whichever fits your day. PDF, JPG, PNG, WebP and HEIC, up to 50 MB. Multi-page PDFs are fine.

Forward an email

Each garage gets a dedicated scan address. Forward any supplier email straight to it – or give the address to your supplier and they email invoices direct. No account, no learning, no friction.

To: reception@scan.torqueflow.app
From: accounts@eurocarparts.co.uk
Subj: Invoice INV-44128 · 1 attachment

Drag & drop a PDF

On the desktop, click Upload Scan at Finance → Purchases → Scan Inbox. Drag the PDF in or click to pick. Multi-page PDFs are fine.

⤓ Drop PDF here

Snap a phone photo

On your phone, tap Take a photo in the same dialog. Camera opens; shoot the paper invoice; tap upload. Good for the single-page receipt the supplier handed you over the counter.

📱 IMG_2841.jpeg
3.2 MB · iPhone ↑ uploading

What the AI does

In the 5-15 seconds between upload and “Ready to review”, the AI:

No percentage scores. No “84% confidence” guessing games. The AI uses clear traffic-light buckets you can scan in a glance – Matched, Likely, Unmatched — and tells you upfront when something needs your attention.

  • Identifies the supplier – By tax ID and name. Existing suppliers in your records are flagged Matched (green), Likely (amber), or Unmatched (grey). No percentage scores – clear traffic-light buckets you can scan in a glance.
  • Extracts every line – Part number, description, quantity, unit price, line net, VAT.
  • Matches lines to your parts catalog – Same Matched / Likely / Unmatched grouping. Likely matches are auto-accepted on Confirm so a 30-line invoice doesn’t need 30 manual clicks.
  • Reconciles the totals – If the line totals don’t add up to the supplier’s gross, you get a warning chip – usually catches a mis-read decimal point.
  • Checks the currency – Non-GBP invoices are blocked with a clear message rather than confirmed with the wrong totals.
  • Detects duplicates – Against scans you’ve previously processed. Two copies of the same invoice get flagged before you double-book the bill.
  • Surfaces edge cases – Trade-counter receipts, credit notes, supplier-not-VAT-registered status – each gets its own review-screen banner so you know what you’re confirming.

The review screen

Source on the left. Extracted form on the right. One click to confirm.

Edit any field directly. Pick a different supplier. Add a part to your catalog from an unmatched line. Skip lines that aren’t parts. The Confirm button label tells you exactly what’s about to happen.

The review screen is split: source preview on the left (the original PDF or photo), extracted form on the right. On phones, the form comes first with a “View original” link.

You can:

  • Pick a different supplier if the AI got it wrong (or click Add new supplier to create one inline).
  • Edit any line field – part number, description, qty, unit price, line net.
  • Pick a different catalog match for any line.
  • Add a part to your catalog in one click from an unmatched line.
  • Skip lines that aren’t parts (admin charges, pallet fees) – they’re excluded from the invoice.
  • Skip catalog matching for the whole invoice – one click for utility bills, rent, tools.

The Confirm button label tells you exactly what’s about to happen: “Confirm 8 matched, 3 likely (accepted as-is)”. If any line is flagged for review, the button changes to “Resolve 2 flagged lines before confirming” – so you can’t accidentally confirm with unfinished work.

When you click Confirm, the purchase invoice is created in your Finance → Purchases list, with the right supplier, the right work-order link (if any), the right nominal codes, and every line in place. New suppliers and parts you added inline appear in their respective lists too.

Edge cases handled

The first 30 seconds of a feature look easy. The next six months are about edge cases.

TorqueFlow’s review screen handles the awkward stuff inline rather than failing silently — you always know exactly why a scan is flagged and what to do about it.

Non-GBP invoice

“This is a EUR invoice. Non-GBP invoices aren’t supported yet. Discard this scan and re-upload as GBP.” Confirm is disabled.

Trade-counter receipt

“This is a trade-counter receipt (parts collection). Confirming creates the Purchase Invoice only – your stock levels won’t update yet.”

Duplicate detected

“This scan matches an earlier scan. Review the original to avoid double-booking the invoice.” Two buttons: View original / Discard.

Supplier not VAT-registered

Banner appears when you pick the supplier. Confirm is disabled until every line has 0% tax – there’s a one-click “Zero out all tax” to fix it.

Extraction failed

Owners and managers see a Retry button. Service advisors see a banner asking them to find a manager. No silent failures.

Credit note

When document type is Credit Note, an “Original invoice” picker appears, required to confirm. Doesn’t sync to Xero yet – we’re working on it.

Scan addresses

Scan addresses, controlled by your team

Every scan address is created by an Owner or Manager from Settings → Scan Addresses. Each address has:

  • A label so you remember what it’s for.
  • An optional document type lock (Auto-detect / Purchase invoice / Delivery note).
  • A rate limit per hour to protect against abuse.
  • A usage counter so you can see whether suppliers have actually started using it.

When a scan address is no longer needed (staff leave, a supplier changes), revoke it with a reason. Anyone still emailing it gets a friendly auto-reply telling them to ask for a new address. Need a fresh address with the same settings? Replace it in one click.

The real Typing vs scanning

The same job, two ways. One of them isn’t worth doing anymore.

Typing it in

Scanning it in

Time per invoice

3–5 minutes, every time

30–60 seconds, every time

Multi-line invoices

Linear with the line count

Same time as a single-line invoice

Error rate

Whatever your typist’s having today

AI flags totals that don’t reconcile

Supplier sends 5 in one email

5 paste cycles

All 5 land in the inbox in seconds

Supplier emails the invoice direct

Still has to be typed by you

Lands ready-to-review automatically

Boring

Yes

Less so

FAQ

The questions that come up.

Anything else, drop us a line — we’ll answer plainly. No “contact sales for pricing”.

PDFs, JPG, PNG, WebP, and HEIC (iPhone). Up to 50 MB per file. PDFs are usually the best result – phone photos are fine but messy invoices on shiny paper photograph badly.

You see the original PDF on the left and the extracted form on the right. Edit any field directly – part number, description, qty, unit price, line net. The line total recalculates as you change qty or unit price. The AI is right most of the time; on the occasions it isn’t, you fix it in seconds.

Yes. That’s the whole point of the scan address. Give your supplier token@scan.torqueflow.app and they can email PDFs the same way they’d email a person. Their invoices land in your scan inbox automatically.

If the AI returns garbled output, the scan ends up in the Failed tab with a clear reason. Owners and managers can retry; usually a clearer photo or a fresh PDF fixes it. If the AI repeatedly can’t read the file, discard the scan and enter the invoice through the standard purchase-invoice form.

Yes. Take a photo from the Scan Inbox dialog and the iPhone camera opens directly. Multi-page PDFs work via desktop upload; multi-page phone capture is one-photo-per-scan in this version (we’ll combine them in a future release).

Yes. AI invoice scanning consumes credits per page extracted – this is the genuine ML cost of running the extraction. Most garages handle this comfortably within their included credit allowance. See pricing for the credits explanation.

You can scan credit notes the same way. Set the document type to Credit Note in the review screen and link the original invoice. Note: credit notes don’t currently sync to Xero (we’re working on it).

Each scan address has a per-hour rate limit you set yourself – Low (20/hr), Standard (50/hr), or High (200/hr). There’s also a global per-IP limit on the receiving end to protect against abuse. Both limits are well above any normal volume.

Ready to stop typing?

Start a free trial, create a scan address in 30 seconds, and see your first scanned invoice on the screen in under a minute.

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