This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by ali
Why I Did This to Myself
Invoices are like bosses: they all look different, they all demand money, and they all ruin your day.
So I thought: “Why not let AI suffer instead of me?”
Boom. Invoice Digitization & Tax Prediction Tool.
Now my AI squints at messy PDFs and scans, while I sit back and pretend I’m productive.
The Tech Stack (aka Weapons of Mass Frustration)
- - OCR → For turning “blurred coffee-stained PDF” into “blurred text file.”
- - Regex → Because nothing screams fun like 200-character patterns.
- - ML-ish GST Predictor → Basically a model that guesses taxes better than me on exam day.
- - Python + pandas → To wrangle the chaos into something that looks like data.
How It Works
- You upload an invoice.
- OCR panics but spits out text.
- Regex plays “Where’s Waldo” with GST numbers.
- AI pretends to be an accountant.
- You get structured output and tax predictions.
Bugs That Almost Broke Me
OCR Hallucinations:
Me: “That’s ₹1200.”
OCR: “Did you mean ‘12008S’?”
Regex PTSD:
Finding GST numbers in text feels like hunting shiny Pokémon.
The BTS Incident:
OCR once read “18% GST” as “BTS.”
For 2 minutes, I thought I’d invented a K-Pop tax predictor.
Code Snippet: My Regex Therapy Session
import re
def extract_gst(text):
pattern = r"\d{2}[A-Z]{5}\d{4}[A-Z]{1}[1-9A-Z]{1}Z[0-9A-Z]{1}"
match = re.search(pattern, text)
return match.group(0) if match else "No GST found, cry harder."
invoice_text = "Invoice #123 GSTIN: 22ABCDE1234F1Z5 Amount: ₹1200"
print(extract_gst(invoice_text))
# Output: 22ABCDE1234F1Z5
Results (Sort of)
- Structured PDFs? Works like a charm.
- Low-quality scans? Good luck, buddy.
- Predicts GST fairly well — which is more than I can say about me filing taxes.
What’s Next
- Teaching it sarcasm so it can also roast invoices.
- Export to Excel/CSV (for those who still trust spreadsheets).
- Maybe SaaS — so small businesses can suffer too.
Final Thoughts
This project taught me:
- AI isn’t about intelligence.
- It’s about tricking machines into crying over messy data instead of you.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by ali
ali | Sciencx (2025-08-28T19:03:27+00:00) How I Built an AI Tool to Read Invoices and Predict GST — Without Losing My Mind. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/08/28/how-i-built-an-ai-tool-to-read-invoices-and-predict-gst-without-losing-my-mind/
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