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What I did with AI today #1
I run a software agency and when I build something cool with AI I tell you about it here.
This morning our accountants asked me to renew a SaaS subscription that we use to get invoices into Xero.
All it does is give you an email address that, if emailed, uploads the attachments to Xero.
They want at least £855/year for that service at the tier we need.
I thought that was steep and I didn't like that I still had to forward the emails. So: I rebuilt the service in 3h with Claude Code.
Now Claude automatically looks at PDFs I receive, decides whether or not they're invoices and if so, uploads them correctly to Xero along with the file attachment.
And I no longer need to forward emails.
How it works
- Claude reads the PDF and figures out if it's an invoice, who it's from, and who it's addressed to
- It classifies the direction — is this a bill we received, or an invoice we sent?
- It extracts all the data — invoice number, date, line items, currency, supplier name
- It checks Xero for duplicates — if the invoice already exists, it skips it
- It creates the invoice in Xero and attaches the original PDF
Incoming invoices become bills (accounts payable). Outgoing invoices become sales invoices (accounts receivable). No manual data entry, no copy-pasting numbers.
The stack
- Node.js + Express API
- Claude API for PDF parsing and classification
- Xero API for accounting
What surprised me
The whole thing took one session to build. The hardest part wasn't the AI — it was getting Xero's SDK to accept the right property casing. We actually ditched the SDK entirely and went with direct API calls, which turned out to be simpler and more reliable.
Claude handles wildly different invoice formats without any custom parsing rules. A Google Workspace invoice and a GitHub receipt look nothing alike, but the same endpoint processes both correctly. And it handles outgoing invoices as well.
Bigger Picture
Software is about to change massively. Granted, I'm a software developer, but if I can build something like this in the space of 3h without actually writing a line of code, then why pay for SaaS? Why not write it yourself?
Get in touch
I'd love to hear what you think. Please comment or get in touch: andi@wakeflow.io
If you want something similar: I'd love to build it for you.
