Convert Quotes & Proforma Invoices to Excel Automatically | Tablola

Sales teams live and die by speed and accuracy. Yet a surprising amount of time each week disappears into the same repetitive task: opening a PDF quote or proforma invoice, squinting at the numbers, and carefully retyping every line item into a spreadsheet. One misplaced decimal can derail a deal. There is a smarter way.

Short answer: You can extract data from quotes and proforma invoices directly into Excel by uploading your PDF or image to Tablola. The AI reads every line item, price, quantity, and total — structured, clean, and ready to use in seconds.

Why Sales Teams Still Waste Hours on Manual Data Entry

The typical sales workflow involves collecting quotes from multiple suppliers or sending proforma invoices to prospects. Each document lands as a PDF, a scanned image, or an email attachment. To compare options, update a CRM, or build a pricing summary, someone has to move that data into Excel.

Manual retyping is the default approach for most teams — but it comes with real costs:

Human error: A single typo in a unit price or quantity can cascade into wrong totals and bad decisions.
Time drain: A mid-sized quote with 20–30 line items can take 15–20 minutes to enter by hand.
Version confusion: When documents are revised, the spreadsheet may not get updated consistently.
Bottlenecks: Only the person who received the document can enter the data, creating single-person dependencies.

None of this is necessary when AI can read and structure the document for you.

What Data Can Be Extracted From a Quote or Proforma Invoice?

Modern AI document extraction tools can reliably pull out nearly every field a sales team needs. From a standard proforma invoice or commercial quote, you can typically extract:

Supplier or buyer name, address, and contact details
Document number, date, and validity period
Line item descriptions, SKUs or product codes
Unit prices, quantities, and line totals
Discounts, tax rates (VAT/GST), and final totals
Payment terms, delivery terms (Incoterms), and currency
Bank details or payment instructions

All of this lands in a structured Excel table — one row per line item — so you can immediately sort, filter, and calculate without any cleanup.

Step-by-Step: Converting a Proforma Invoice to Excel With Tablola

Upload your document. Drag in a PDF, a scanned image, or even a photo taken on your phone. Tablola handles typed, printed, and moderately handwritten documents.
Choose a preset. Use the invoice to Excel preset for standard invoices or the PDF to Excel converter preset for general quote documents. Presets pre-configure which fields to extract so you do not have to build the logic from scratch.
Review the output. Tablola's AI populates a spreadsheet with every extracted field. You can edit cells directly in the browser if anything needs a quick correction.
Download or continue editing. Export to Excel (.xlsx) or CSV and import into your CRM, ERP, or pricing model immediately.

For teams that process batches of quotes at once — for example, comparing three supplier bids side by side — the merge multiple documents into one table preset combines all extracted data into a single consolidated spreadsheet automatically.

Scanned and Image-Based Documents Are Not a Problem

Many proforma invoices arrive as scanned PDFs or photographed pages, especially in cross-border trade. Traditional Excel import tools simply cannot read these. Tablola's AI uses optical character recognition (OCR) combined with document understanding, meaning it can extract data from a scanned page just as reliably as from a native digital PDF.

If you regularly work with scanned supplier quotes, the scanned PDF to Excel converter preset is purpose-built for exactly this scenario.

Practical Use Cases for Sales Teams

Once you can extract quote and invoice data into Excel effortlessly, a range of workflows become much faster:

Competitive bid comparison: Extract line items from three or four supplier quotes into a single table and add a comparison formula column.
Proforma invoice tracking: Build a running log of all proformas sent, with amounts, currencies, and statuses, without ever retyping a number.
CRM updates: Paste extracted deal values and product lists directly into Salesforce, HubSpot, or your CRM of choice.
Margin analysis: Pull cost data from supplier quotes and revenue data from your own proformas into one sheet for instant margin calculations.
Audit trails: Keep a clean Excel record of every quote received and issued, useful for reconciliation and dispute resolution.

Tips for Getting the Best Extraction Results

AI extraction is highly accurate, but a few practices make results even cleaner:

Use the highest-resolution scan or photo you can — blurry images reduce OCR accuracy.
If a document has an unusual layout, you can adjust column mappings in the Tablola editor after extraction.
For recurring document types from the same supplier, save your configuration as a custom preset so the mapping is applied automatically every time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Tablola extract data from a quote sent as a Word document or image?

Yes. Tablola processes PDFs, scanned documents, JPG/PNG images, and other common formats. Whether your quote arrives as a native PDF, a scanned paper document, or a photograph, the AI can read and extract the structured data into Excel.

What if the proforma invoice is in a foreign language or uses a different currency?

Tablola handles multilingual documents and extracts numeric fields regardless of currency symbol. Text fields such as product descriptions are extracted as they appear in the source document, so you retain the original language for reference.

Is there a way to process many quotes at once instead of one by one?

Yes. You can upload multiple documents in a single session and use the merge multiple documents into one table preset to combine all line items into a unified spreadsheet. This is especially useful when comparing supplier bids or consolidating a month's worth of received proformas for reporting.