Guide
Turn a folder of receipts into a spreadsheet.
The shoebox problem, digital edition: a month of receipts and invoices as PDFs, photos, and email attachments — and a spreadsheet that wants numbers. This is the job on Nabu’s own home page screenshot, because it’s the job people bring first.
How it works with Nabu
- Gather the files into one folder — PDFs, photos of paper receipts, scans. Mixed formats are fine.
- Ask for the table you actually want.
You ask
Read every receipt in this folder and build July-costs.csv — date, vendor, amount, category — so I can open it in Excel. Flag anything you couldn’t read.
- Watch it read. The live log lists each file as Nabu works through it — read scan_003.pdf · Acme Cleaning, 12 Mar — so a wrong pick is visible immediately, not at tax time.
- Get the spreadsheet, keep the originals. Nabu writes a new file that any spreadsheet app opens; your receipts stay exactly as they were. Creating the file is a change, so it shows up in the log — and can be undone.
- Check the flags. Because you asked for them, anything blurry or ambiguous is listed as “couldn’t read” instead of becoming a silent guess.
Why this is safe
- The log shows its reading. Each receipt appears in the action log as it’s read — errors surface immediately.
- Your originals are never touched. Nabu writes a new spreadsheet; the receipts stay as they were.
- The new file is undoable. Every change is snapshotted first — including created files.
What you need
Nabu is a free desktop app for macOS — a universal build for Apple Silicon and Intel, signed and notarized by Apple. For the reading itself, use any AI model: your own API key for OpenAI, Claude, or any OpenAI-compatible provider; twelve models included with Pro+ and Max; or a local model from the Model Hub if the receipts shouldn’t leave your machine.
Questions
What file types can it read?
PDFs, images — photos and scans — Word documents, and Excel sheets. Mixed together in one folder is fine.
Do my receipts leave my machine?
Only to the model you chose. Run a local model from the Model Hub and nothing leaves your computer at all.
Can it do this automatically every month?
Not yet — scheduled and background runs are on the roadmap. Today you ask when you need it, and saving the request as a playbook makes that a single click.
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