n8n: Import Bank Statements to Google Sheets via Drive + OpenAI

Automatically import bank statements into Google Sheets—using Google Drive + OpenAI (with balance reconciliation)

This n8n workflow watches a specific Google Drive folder for new bank-statement files, extracts transactions using OpenAI, verifies that opening + transaction totals equal the closing balance, and then appends only new (non-duplicate) transactions to your Google Sheets—while emailing you when a statement fails reconciliation.

What this workflow does

• Monitors your Google Drive folder and triggers when a new statement PDF or CSV is created.
• Downloads and extracts content from the file (PDF text extraction or CSV-to-text) to capture the statement details.
• Uses OpenAI to produce structured data in JSON, including account details, statement period, opening/closing balances, and a transaction list.
• Validates balance integrity by checking that opening balance plus all transaction amounts equals the closing balance (in integer cents), with optional identification of the first running-balance mismatch.
• Handles failures safely: if reconciliation fails, it logs the refused import to Google Sheets and sends you a Gmail email describing the discrepancy and suspected sign error.
• Prevents duplicates: if reconciliation succeeds, it reads category rules and existing transaction fingerprints from Google Sheets, categorizes transactions, and keeps only transactions not previously imported.
• Appends results to the Transactions tab and writes a summary entry to an Import log tab.

Use cases

• Freelancers and SaaS operators importing monthly statements from bank exports into a single Google Sheets ledger.
• Automation engineers standardizing ingestion + categorization for recurring statement PDFs/CSVs.
• Teams needing reconciliation checks to catch parsing issues or sign mismatches before updating records.

Technical details

• Google Drive: triggers on new files and downloads statement documents.
• OpenAI: converts extracted text into structured JSON (account, balances, transactions).
• Google Sheets: reads category rules and transaction fingerprints; appends new transactions and writes to an import log.
• Gmail: emails alerts when a statement fails reconciliation.
• Additional workflow logic uses nodes such as if, code, split out, and sticky note for control flow and processing.