PDF Bill Templates

Work in progress

This page is a stub. A full walkthrough with screenshots is coming.

Provider bills are PDFs, and typing their figures by hand is tedious. HomeLog's template wizard lets you teach the app to read a given provider's layout once — after that, uploading a bill auto-fills the amount, period, meter reading, and more.

How it works

1. Upload a sample bill. HomeLog converts the PDF to text and detects tokens like amounts, dates, meter codes (POD/PDR), and numbers.
2. Tag the fields. Drag the value you want onto each field (total amount, period, provider reading…). HomeLog works out how to find it again — by the label next to it, or by the column of its table and which row — and shows the rule with the value it reads back from that same bill. A value no rule can read back stays red: take it from where it sits by its label or in its table. For the reading type, tap the words that mean an estimated reading.
3. Check and save. Optionally try the template on a second bill of the same provider, then save it. Future bills of that provider and service type are parsed with it; when you keep several, the one marked as default goes first.

The fields on offer depend on the service. Meter-specific ones (the reading the bill closes on, its date and type, the meter serial number) appear only for metered services, and so does period end: on a fixed-cost service it is derived from the billing frequency configured on the service, so check that the frequency matches the provider's real cycle.

HomeLog never guesses. Without a template a PDF is attached but nothing is filled in, and a field the template maps but a bill does not show is left empty and listed as not found, so you can type it in. When a provider changes its layout, create a new template from one of the new bills.

Sharing and moving house

A template belongs to the home, not to whoever created it: every member of the household can use, edit and delete it. When you move, export a template from Extraction Templates (a small JSON file with its rules) and import it in the new home.

Extraction strategy

To stay accurate even when a label appears more than once on a page, HomeLog tries several strategies in order: unique global IDs first, then anchor/label position, then the spot you originally tagged, then a pattern match with surrounding context.

TIP

Extraction patterns are restricted to a regex flavour without look-ahead / look-behind, which keeps parsing fast and predictable on low-powered hardware.