5
Connected Monday boards
4
Orchestrating Make scenarios
3
Integrated systems
1
Central hub of truth (Monday)
🎯 The Challenge
The client needed to manage vendor invoices — line items, suppliers, GL accounts, and bill creation in Xero — with minimal manual input. PDF invoices arrived by email and had to be extracted, mapped, and pushed into Xero accurately, without duplicates or rekeying. They also wanted clear visibility into what each automation was doing, including errors and exceptions, so managers could intervene without digging into raw logs.
Goals:
- Manage vendor invoices, line items, suppliers, and GL accounts with minimal manual input
- Extract structured data from PDF invoices and map it correctly
- Keep Xero and Monday.com in sync for suppliers, items, and bills
- Reduce duplicated data, manual errors, and back-and-forth between tools
- Provide clear status feedback for every automation event — success, error, duplicate, etc.
🏗 The Architecture
The full pipeline in three nodes: PDF invoices arrive via email, get parsed and structured in Monday.com, then flow out as draft bills in Xero.
📧 Email Inbox
→
📋 Monday.com
→
💰 Xero
AI parses PDFs · 5 boards manage data · 4 scenarios orchestrate the flow
Inside Monday.com, five purpose-built boards handle the structured data with clear separation of concerns — one board per domain entity, all linked by relations.
Board 1
📋 Invoice Management
Central board for all invoice details. Used to initiate Xero bill creation and
track statuses end-to-end.
Board 2
📦 Item Management
Stores invoice line items and links them to invoices and suppliers. Handles item
codes and descriptions.
Board 3
👤 Suppliers Directory
Tracks all vendor records and their sync status with Xero. The source of truth
for "who we owe."
Board 4
💰 Xero Bills
Logs draft bills created in Xero, including links back to Xero and to related
Monday items.
Board 5
🏷 GL Account Management
Maintains Xero GL account codes to ensure correct coding for every item and bill.
🧩 The Automation Pipeline
Four Make.com scenarios orchestrate the entire flow. Each one owns a single responsibility — parse, sync suppliers, sync items, or create the bill — so the system is easy to maintain and extend.
01
Email → Invoice Parser
AI-powered
Scenario 1 listens to a dedicated email inbox for incoming PDF invoices. When
one arrives, it:
- Uses the OpenAI API to extract structured fields from the PDF (supplier, invoice number, date, totals, line items)
- Searches for matching suppliers and items in Monday.com
- Creates a new record in the Invoice Management board and related line items in Item Management
02
Supplier Sync — Monday ↔ Xero
Scenario 2 triggers when a supplier is approved in Monday.com:
- Checks Xero to see if the supplier already exists
- Creates a new contact in Xero if not found
- Writes back the Xero IDs and statuses to the Suppliers Directory board
03
Item Sync — with duplicate detection
Scenario 3 handles the same logic for items:
- Validates whether an item code already exists in Xero
- Creates or updates items as needed
- Detects duplicate codes and surfaces clear errors back into Monday — e.g. "Error — Item code already exists"
04
Bill Creation — Monday button to Xero draft
Scenario 4 triggers from a "Create Bill in Xero" button on the Invoice
Management board. It:
- Gathers validated supplier, item, and GL data from all related boards
- Creates a draft bill in Xero with the correct lines, amounts, tax, and GL coding
- Logs the result in the Xero Bills board with a direct link back to the bill in Xero
🛡 Error handling & transparency
Every scenario returns human-readable status messages
back into Monday.com. Errors, duplicates, and missing data are surfaced clearly —
no digging through Make.com execution logs to find out why something failed.
Managers see what happened and what to fix, right where they're already working.
🛠 Tools & Stack
Workflow & data
Monday.com — 5 connected boards, automations, relations, permissions, buttons
Orchestration
Make.com (Integromat) — 4 scenarios handling parse, sync, and bill creation
Accounting system
Xero — suppliers, items, draft bills, GL accounts
AI extraction
OpenAI API — structured field extraction from PDF invoices
📈 Results & Impact
- Manual data entry slashed — invoice parsing, item creation, and supplier checks all happen automatically.
- Errors & duplicates prevented — smart validation logic and two-way Xero sync catch issues before they propagate.
- Faster processing times — invoices move from inbox to draft bill with minimal human effort.
- High transparency — every automation step is logged with clear status messages and traceable workflows.
- Manager-friendly control — approvals and exceptions are handled directly inside Monday.com, no Make.com expertise required.
🖼 Screenshots
Monday — Invoice Management board (the central hub)
Monday — Item Management board
Monday — Supplier Directory (synced with Xero)
Monday — Xero Bills log with direct links to Xero
Make.com — all four orchestrating scenarios
Scenario 1 — email parsing to Monday Invoices board
Scenario 3 — approved items create or update in Xero
Scenario 2 — approved suppliers check/create in Xero
Scenario 4 — create draft bill in Xero from Monday button
Need bills flowing from inbox to accounting, no rekeying?
The same pattern powers insurance premium billing, QuickBooks ↔ Monday
reconciliation, supplier invoice automation, and any system where bills need to flow
from email or operations into your accounting stack — with AI extraction, two-way
sync, and clear error visibility for the people managing it.