So, I have something in mind that would save me an incredible amount of time if only I could automate it. But I cant figure out where the limitations are and what is even possible. So here is the scenario I wanted to automate:

I get lots of invoices in paper form that I have to scan and upload to two instances that refund the money to my bank account before I can pay them.

  1. What I was now thinking was to scan the papers with Paperless-ngx, upload them to my google drive account and then send it manually to the two instances in the same time.
  2. Afterwards I thought of something that maybe reads the uploaded documents via ocr and automatically inputs data like “amount, date, name” and so on to an excel or google spreadsheet. I do not know any cheap / free way to do that though.
  3. With Excel VBA Scripts I would try to move the collected data to specific spreadsheets that show me what state the transaction is in.

Now it gets tricky where I have no more clue what is even possible. In a perfect world,

  • My Amazon Alexa could interact with the spreadsheet and set a reminder for two weeks after I received the invoice that I have to pay it. This would be very important since I often forget to pay them.
  • Alexa reads the notifications of my Samsung Smartphone and notifies me when my Bank tells me that the invoice amount is refunded and is on my bank account. Ideally it would enter the amount of the refund into the spreadsheet but I do not think that this would be possible.
  • After the full amount of the refund entered my Bank account, Alexa would let me know that I can pay the bill. Maybe there is a trigger with Excel VBA I could use, for example to let Alexa notify me when a column of a spreadsheet changes color to green.

Do you guys out there think that something like this project would be possibe? Any tips on what tools I could use?

  • gbdavidx@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    This really isnt a home-automation item, perhaps try looking into power automate