Read any invoice
into data

What this invoice parser reads

Drop in a supplier invoice and the parser returns every detail a UK bookkeeper needs, field by field. Each value comes with a confidence rating, so you can see at a glance which figures were read clearly and which are worth a second look against the original.

How it reads an invoice

It is the same reader TapTax runs on every receipt and bill in the app, not a cut-down demo. A PDF with a text layer, the kind accounting software produces, is read from its text, which is faster and more accurate than reading a picture of it. A scan or a phone photo is read visually. When the first reading is unsure, or its figures do not add up, the reader tries once more with a stronger model before it answers.

Then the figures are checked, not trusted. Net plus VAT must equal the total, the VAT rate must be one that exists in the UK, the dates must be real dates that are not in the future, and a supplier VAT number must have the right shape. Anything that fails is shown to you above the results, in plain words, so a misread figure never slips into your records unnoticed.

Your file, and what happens to it

Invoices carry names, addresses, bank details and figures, so the parser is built to forget. Your file is held in memory while it is read and then dropped. It is not saved, it is not added to anyone's records, and nothing about what it says is logged. The reading is done by TapTax's AI processor, as our privacy notice explains. Downloads (CSV or JSON) are created in your browser from the result on screen.

To keep the free tool free, it reads up to 20 documents a day for each person, a few minutes apart at most five at a time, each up to 10 MB and 5 pages. If it ever reaches its daily running budget it pauses until the next day rather than keep going.

Getting invoices into your books

The CSV download lists each field on its own row and the line items beneath, which suits a spreadsheet or a quick copy into bookkeeping software. The JSON download carries the same data for anyone building their own workflow. For a stack of receipts rather than one invoice, the receipt to CSV converter puts each receipt on one row of a single sheet, the shape most bookkeeping imports expect.

If you are self-employed and your income is over £50,000, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax asks you to keep digital records and send quarterly updates from 6 April 2026, with the threshold falling to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028. A TapTax account reads receipts and bills straight into those records, matches them to your bank statement so nothing is counted twice, and builds the quarterly update from them.

What a UK invoice has to show

GOV.UK lists what every invoice must include: a unique invoice number, your business name and address, the customer's name and address, a clear description of what you are charging for, the date the goods or services were supplied, the date of the invoice, the amount being charged, VAT if applicable, and the total. A VAT-registered supplier must also show its VAT registration number, and a full VAT invoice sets out the VAT rate and amount for each rate charged.

So when the parser cannot find a supplier name, a date or a total, it says so. An invoice missing one of them may not be a valid invoice at all, and for VAT you may not be able to reclaim VAT on it until you have a proper one. For your own invoices, the invoice number generator and the due date calculator cover the numbering and the payment terms.

When the parser gets it wrong

No reader is perfect, human or machine. Faded thermal till receipts, handwriting, creased paper, glare across a total and invoices photographed at a steep angle are the usual culprits. The confidence rating on each field is the tool being honest about that: "Clear" means it read the value cleanly, "Check" means it is worth a glance, and "Unsure" means look at the original before you use it.

For the best result, upload the original PDF when you have one rather than a photo of it, photograph paper flat and in good light with the whole page in view, and keep one invoice to one file. A multi-page invoice is fine as long as it is one document.