5 Steps to Turn a Receipt Photo into a Google Sheets Row

By Robert Breen · Published October 1, 2026 · From the free lesson AI Receipt Extractor: Receipts to Google Sheets with n8n

A visual guide: an n8n AI agent reads a receipt photo, pulls out the date, vendor and total, picks a category and adds a row to Google Sheets.

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Swipe or scroll sideways for all 7 slides. The whole guide is written out below.

The guide in text

An n8n agent reads the date, vendor and total, picks a category and logs it. 5 steps.

Step by step

Chat trigger and AI Agent
Create a workflow, add On chat message, then search for agent and add the AI Agent node.
Pick a model that can see
Add an OpenAI Chat Model, reuse your saved credential and change the model to gpt-4o, which can read images.
Point it at the Invoices sheet
Four headers: Date, Category, Vendor and Amount. Append Row, and the sparkle button next to each column.
Three short lines of instructions
You will get a receipt. Extract the date, vendor and amount, come up with a category, and use the sheets tool to add it.
Attach a receipt, check the row
A Corner Mart receipt (a made-up store): April 24, 31.57, filed as Groceries without being told. Spot-check the first batch.

Businesses and people in the examples are made up (Corner Mart is a made-up business). The steps, screens and wording come from the free lesson and the Stepthrough glossary and prompt library.

Do it yourself, free

AI Receipt Extractor: Receipts to Google Sheets with n8n. Drop a photo of a receipt into an n8n chat. An AI agent reads it, pulls out the date, vendor and amount, picks a category, and adds a row to Google Sheets. You do every step yourself in a practice copy of n8n, it checks your work as you go, and “Do it for me” finishes any step you get stuck on. Free, and nothing touches your real accounts.

Start the free lesson

Or read the full step-by-step guide

Plain-English definitions, each with an example from a free lesson.

Data extraction Multimodal AI Field mapping Append row Audit trail Chat model Credential Expense categorization

The full AI glossary

Receipt details extraction prompt: Pull date, vendor, tax, total and job from receipt photos into a table, with "Unreadable" instead of guesses and a check that…
Expense categorization prompt: Sort a batch of expenses into your own categories, with a short note each and a Needs Review bucket for anything unclear…
Expense report summary prompt: Summarize a month of expense or reimbursement rows for the owner: totals by category and status, what's waiting, and flags to…
Google Sheets columns plan prompt: Plan the Google Sheets columns for an n8n automation: header names, what goes in each, who fills it, and which must match your…

All free prompt templates

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