n8n Workflow: Monitor Google Drive Vendor PDFs to Sheets

Auto-classify vendor compliance PDFs in Google Drive—and keep Sheets, Slack, and email in sync

This n8n workflow watches a Google Drive “Vendor Compliance Inbox” for new vendor compliance PDF files, extracts key details with OpenAI, records everything in Google Sheets, alerts your team in Slack when review is needed, and runs a daily compliance check that sends vendor reminders and a digest via Gmail.

What this workflow does

• Monitors a Google Drive folder and triggers as soon as a new file is created in the “Vendor Compliance Inbox”.
• Validates file type: if the uploaded file is not a PDF, it posts a Slack message and skips processing.
• Extracts document fields: downloads the PDF, extracts its text, then uses an OpenAI chat model to classify and extract vendor name, issuer, issue/expiry dates, coverage amount, summary, and confidence.
• Matches to your vendor records: compares extracted data against the Vendors tab in Google Sheets, validates results (e.g., missing expiry or low confidence), and upserts the record into the Documents tab.
• Routes exceptions for human review: posts a Slack alert when there’s no vendor match, partial match, low confidence, missing expiry for expiring document types, or bank information concerns.
• Runs daily compliance checks at 8 AM: reads vendors and documents from Google Sheets, evaluates active vendors against tier-based requirements, appends results to the Compliance Log tab, and triggers:
  • Vendor reminders via Gmail when reminders are due
  • A daily compliance digest to the compliance owner via Gmail and a summary message via Slack

Use cases

• Centralizing insurance/vendor compliance intake by automatically processing newly uploaded compliance PDFs.
• Reducing manual spreadsheet work by extracting, matching, and updating Google Sheets documents automatically.
• Improving compliance reliability with Slack-based exception handling and a daily 8 AM audit + reminder cycle.

Technical details

• Google Drive trigger for new files in the “Vendor Compliance Inbox” folder
• PDF text extraction + OpenAI chat classification and field extraction
• Google Sheets updates: “Vendors”, “Documents”, and “Compliance Log” tabs
• Slack alerts for skipped files and items requiring human review
• Gmail emails for vendor reminders and the daily compliance digest
• Workflow logic nodes include if, set, code, gmail, slack, and filter