TL;DR: Read and summarize up to 500 PDF invoices/month for free with a free-tier OCR connector plus Azure AI Language summarization.
💡 Challenge
Accounts-payable still receives hundreds of PDF invoices, reminders, and receipts every month. Manual keying of amounts, due dates, and suppliers is slow, costly, and error-prone.
✅ Solution
Combine any free-tier OCR connector (Adobe PDF Services, Cloudmersive PDF/OCR, or Azure Document Intelligence Read F0) with Azure AI Language, Abstractive Summarization F0. One Power Automate flow extracts text from each PDF and returns a clear, three-bullet summary, at zero cost up to 500 pages per month.
🔧 How It’s Done
1. Trigger
🔸 When a file is created (SharePoint / OneDrive → folder Incoming Invoices).
2. OCR action, pick one connector
🔸 Adobe PDF Services (standard)
🔸 Cloudmersive PDF (premium)
🔸 Azure Read F0 (standard)
3. Compose
🔸 Capture the plain OCR text (content or text field).
4. HTTP
🔸 Call Azure AI Language /language:analyze-text with kind=AbstractiveSummarization and summaryLength=short.
5. Post-process
🔸 Send a Teams/Outlook summary, store it in the Dataverse table InvoiceSummaries, then move the PDF to an Archive folder.
🎉 Result
Every new invoice now triggers an automated pipeline, OCR → AI summary → messaging/storage. Finance receives the key facts (total, due date, supplier) within seconds and can focus on approvals instead of data entry.
🌟 Key Advantages
🔸 €0 budget for up to 500 pages per month
🔸 100% Power Platform, no external servers or scripts
🔸 Swappable OCR connectors; keep the same summarization step
🔸 Handles multilingual invoices and receipts
🔸 Seamless upgrade path when your volume grows
🛠️ FAQ
1. Do I need a premium licence? Only if you choose Cloudmersive (premium connector). Adobe PDF Services and Azure Read F0 use standard or HTTP actions.
2. What about multi-page PDFs with Azure Read F0? The free tier processes only the first two pages. Split longer invoices or upgrade to S0 (€0.01 / page).
3. How do I avoid hitting Azure AI token limits? F0 allows 16,384 characters per request, trim or chunk OCR text for very long invoices.
🔗 Related Tips
- #PowerPlatformTip 115: AI OCR Models, OCR options for reading documents.
- #PowerPlatformTip 143: Reduce AI Costs with Thumbnail-First Document Processing, cut AI spend on document pipelines.
Marcel Lehmann
Microsoft MVP