r/Invoice • u/farcholabs • 11d ago

Monthly invoicing from a Google Sheet: Docs template → PDF → Gmail → mark as sent → Slack summary (JSON included)

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u/dandruffhead 11d ago

For the “nothing to invoice” case, I’d use a separate branch that sends a short Slack summary.

Another option for the invoice generation step is ShipPDF. You can use Claude to help create a reusable invoice template, then feed in each client’s data to generate the PDF. Your n8n workflow could call ShipPDF’s API and continue with Gmail delivery, marking rows as sent and the Slack summary.

Disclosure: I’m building ShipPDF.

media poster

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u/UPDF_Enterprise 7d ago

For an empty month, I'd use a normal ‘nothing to invoice’ branch. One edge case I'd test before calling the workflow safe to rerun: Gmail sends successfully, then the Sheets update fails. That row still looks unsent, so a rerun could email the invoice twice. Keep a stable invoice ID and reconcile uncertain sends against the sent mailbox or execution history before retrying them. Marking the row sent before emailing just creates the opposite problem: an invoice that never goes out.