Tan LE

Part 2 of 2. Part 1 introduced the product and the web application. This post covers the invoice-parsing engine (IProcessorPdfParser), the technology stack, and how we ship it. The problem GMD Stores buys from more than 60 vendors. Each one sends invoices as PDF attachments, and no two layouts are alike. Some are clean text PDFs, some are scanned, some are XPS files, and a few vendors have two completely different templates depending on which office issued the invoice. The goal was simple to state and hard to do: read every invoice that arrives in the mailbox, extract every line item, and save it to SQL Server with zero manual typing. IProcessorPdfParser: the always-on mailbox worker IProcessorPdfParser is a .NET Framework console application deployed as a continuous Azure WebJob next to the website. It runs a single instance (guarded by a named Mutex so a second copy exits immediately) and goes through this loop: Step 0: Connect to the mailbox The worker signs in to ...

Part 1 of 2. This post introduces the product and walks through the web application. Part 2 covers the invoice-parsing engine, the technology stack and the CI/CD pipeline. What is IProcessor? IProcessor is an internal operations platform built for GMD Stores, a multi-store retail business that buys from dozens of import vendors and ships goods through its own warehouse. Every week the business receives a flood of vendor invoices as PDF attachments, has to reconcile them against purchase orders, receive the goods, split them by store, verify pick-and-pack, and account for margins. Before IProcessor, most of this was manual data entry and spreadsheets. IProcessor turns it into a single flow: A vendor emails an invoice PDF to a shared mailbox. A background service picks it up, identifies the vendor, extracts every line item and saves it to the database. No human touches it. Buyers and accounting review and approve the invoice in the web app. Warehouse staff receiv...