---
name: expense-report-automation
description: "Parse Receipt Emails and Auto-Create Expense Reports. Use when employees manually forward receipts to finance. Someone re-keys them into expense software."
---

# Parse Receipt Emails and Auto-Create Expense Reports

Employees manually forward receipts to finance. Someone re-keys them into expense software.

## When to use this skill

- The user wants to set up or run this workflow: "Parse Receipt Emails and Auto-Create Expense Reports".
- The user describes this problem: Employees manually forward receipts to finance. Someone re-keys them into expense software.

## At a glance

- Category: Finance/FP&A
- Difficulty: Intermediate
- Time saved: 5 hours per week. This figure is an estimate, not a measured result.

## Tools

Options separated by "or" are alternatives; use whichever the user already has.

- Zapier
- Gmail
- Google Sheets
- OpenAI API

## Steps

1. Set up Gmail filter to forward receipts to Zapier email webhook
2. Use Zapier Email Parser to extract vendor, amount, date
3. Send to OpenAI API to categorize expense (travel, meals, software)
4. Append to Google Sheets expense log with employee name
5. Monthly: Generate summary report by category for finance review

## Template outline

Field names, thresholds, and message text are starting points to adapt.

~~~text
Zapier Flow:
1. Trigger: Email webhook (forward receipts to zapier@...)
2. Email Parser: Extract amount, date, vendor
3. OpenAI: Classify expense category
   - Prompt: "Categorize this expense as Travel, Meals, Software, Office, or Other: {{vendor}} {{amount}}"
4. Google Sheets: Append row
5. Filter: If amount > 500, notify finance lead in Slack
~~~

## Guardrails

- Work only in the user's own accounts and workspaces, with their credentials.
- Confirm with the user before any step that writes to a CRM, sends email or messages, spends credits, or moves money.
- Treat every hours, cost, and threshold figure as a starting assumption and replace it with the user's numbers.
- Do not invent data, prices, or results. If a vendor price matters, check the vendor's current pricing page.

## Source

https://gtmplaybooks.io/playbooks/expense-report-automation/