Automated Invoice Processor

Overview

This project is a demonstration of an automated invoice processing system. It provides the minimal features needed for automated invoice processing and can serve as a starting point for those looking to automate their own invoice workflows.

Features

• Invoice ingestion from email attachments and manual uploads
• OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for extracting text from PDF and image invoices
• Data extraction and validation for key invoice fields
• Basic error handling and reporting
• Simple search functionality using ElasticSearch
• Web interface for uploading invoices and viewing processed results

Tech Stack

• Backend: Python 3.x with Django
• Database: SQLite (for simplicity, can be easily switched to PostgreSQL for production)
• OCR: Tesseract (via pytesseract)
• PDF Processing: pdf2image
• Task Queue: Celery with Redis as the message broker
• Search: ElasticSearch with django-elasticsearch-dsl
• Frontend: Django templates (basic HTML/CSS)

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed:

• Python 3.x
• pip (Python package manager)
• Redis server
• Tesseract OCR
• ElasticSearch
• (Optional) MacPorts (if you're using macOS and prefer it over Homebrew)

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/fuchen2624/automated-invoice-processor.git
   cd automated-invoice-processor
   

2. Create a virtual environment and activate it:

   python3 -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows use `venv\Scripts\activate`
   

3. Install the required Python packages:

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

4. Apply database migrations:

   python manage.py migrate
   

5. Create a superuser for the Django admin interface:

   python manage.py createsuperuser
   

6. Build the ElasticSearch index:

   python manage.py search_index --rebuild
   

Configuration

Email Configuration (Optional)

To enable automatic email checking for invoices, you need to set up a .env file in the root directory of the project with your email credentials:

1. Create a file named .env in the project root.

2. Add the following content to the file:

   EMAIL_HOST=your_email_host
   EMAIL_USER=your_email_username
   EMAIL_PASSWORD=your_email_password
   

   Replace your_email_host, your_email_username, and your_email_password with your actual email server details.

3. Make sure to add .env to your .gitignore file to avoid committing sensitive information.

Running the Application

1. Start the Redis server (if not already running)

2. Start the Celery worker:

   celery -A invoice_processor worker -l info
   

3. Start the Celery beat scheduler:

   celery -A invoice_processor beat -l info
   

4. Run the Django development server:

   python manage.py runserver
   

5. Access the application at http://localhost:8000

Usage

1. Upload invoices through the web interface at http://localhost:8000/ingestion/upload/
2. View processed invoices and search results at http://localhost:8000/ingestion/search/
3. Access the admin interface at http://localhost:8000/admin/ to manage invoices and other data
4. The system will automatically check for new invoices in the configured email account at regular intervals

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is open-source and available under the MIT License.

Disclaimer

This is a demonstration project and may not be suitable for production use without further development and security enhancements. Use at your own risk.