n8n Compliance Expiry Reminders: Google Sheets + Gmail + OpenAI

Stay ahead of compliance document expirations—automatically

This n8n workflow checks your Google Sheets compliance register every day, drafts urgency-based reminder emails with OpenAI, sends them via Gmail, and logs every reminder back into Google Sheets—so nothing slips past your deadlines.

What this workflow does

• Runs on a schedule: Executes daily at 08:00.
• Reads your compliance register: Pulls document data from a Google Sheets spreadsheet (source sheet Sheet1).
• Calculates expiration windows: Computes how many days remain until each document’s ExpiryDate, keeping key fields such as DocumentName, DocumentType, and recipient emails.
• Filters to what matters: Selects documents expiring in 30 days or less, including documents that are already expired.
• Generates a reminder draft with OpenAI: Uses an OpenAI chat model to produce a JSON reminder draft including an urgency tier, whether to CC a manager, and the email body content.
• Sends HTML emails via Gmail: Sends a formatted HTML email to the responsible party using Gmail, with a subject line derived from the urgency tier.
• Logs reminders back to Google Sheets: Appends a “reminder sent” record to Sheet2 including date, document details, recipient, urgency, and days remaining.

Use cases

• Automate reminders for expiring certifications, licenses, or internal compliance documents.
• Reduce missed follow-ups by notifying the ResponsiblePartyEmail (and optionally CC’ing ManagerEmail).
• Give SaaS ops and compliance teams a reliable daily escalation workflow without manual review.

Technical details

• Scheduler + logic: Uses if and set nodes to apply the 30-day window and prepare email data.
• Google Sheets: Reads from Sheet1 and appends logs to Sheet2 via Google Sheets OAuth2.
• Gmail: Sends HTML emails using Gmail OAuth2.
• OpenAI: Uses an OpenAI chat model to generate a JSON reminder draft with urgency and CC guidance.
• Nodes mentioned: sticky note and n8n-nodes-langchainagent.

Setup note: Ensure your Google Sheet includes columns named DocumentName, DocumentType, ResponsiblePartyEmail, ManagerEmail, and ExpiryDate (parseable date format), and configure spreadsheet + sheet references and Gmail OAuth2 for the sending mailbox.