How to update Shopify stock from a PDF invoice

Short version: A PDF invoice is either a text PDF (you can select the words) or a scan (it's a picture). Text PDFs can often be copied into a spreadsheet; scans and photos need OCR or typing. Either way, check the arithmetic before importing, then update stock and costs in Shopify.

Most suppliers don't send a CSV. They send a PDF generated by their accounting system, a scan of a paper delivery note, or a phone photo of the invoice that came in the box. Shopify has no built-in way to read any of them, so the quantities and costs have to be extracted first.

Step 1: Work out what kind of PDF you have

Open the PDF and try to select a word with your cursor.

You can select text: it's a text PDF. The numbers are stored as text and can be copied.
You can only draw a box around everything: it's a scanned image inside a PDF. There's no text to copy.
It's a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo: treat it like a scan.

Step 2a: Text PDFs, copy the table

Select the line items table and copy it.
Paste into a spreadsheet. In Excel, Paste Special › Text and then Data › Text to Columns can split columns. In Google Sheets, paste and use Split text to columns.
Check the columns line up. Descriptions that wrap onto two lines, and two-column layouts, often break the alignment.

Some PDF readers export tables to Excel directly, which keeps columns more reliably. Long price lists with a consistent table usually come out cleanly; invoices with mixed layouts less so.

Step 2b: Scans and photos, OCR or type

For images you need optical character recognition (OCR). Many PDF tools and phone scanning apps offer it. OCR is good at letters and weak at the things that matter most on an invoice:

Confusing 1 and 7, 0 and 8, 5 and S in codes and amounts.
Dropping or misplacing decimal separators, especially comma decimals on European invoices (12,50).
Losing column alignment, so a quantity ends up in the price column.
Struggling with skewed or crumpled photos and shadows.

For a short invoice, typing is often faster than fixing OCR output. Take the photo flat, in good light, with the whole page in frame.

Step 3: Check the numbers before anything touches Shopify

This step catches nearly every misread, and takes a couple of minutes in a spreadsheet:

Add a column: = quantity × unit price. Compare it with the invoice's line total. Any difference is a misread, a discount or a pack-size issue.
Sum the line totals and compare with the invoice subtotal (before tax and freight). If they don't match, a line is missing or wrong.
Check that every SKU or barcode exists in your store. Unknown codes are new products or supplier codes you need to map.
Look for pack quantities: "CS", "case", "x12", "6/pk". Convert to the units you sell (see case and pack pricing).

Step 4: Update Shopify

With a clean table, you have three options, covered in detail elsewhere:

Few lines: adjust each product under Products › Inventory with Adjust by, then edit Cost per item where the price changed. See receiving inventory.
Many lines: use the inventory CSV for stock and the product CSV or bulk editor for costs. See inventory CSV import and bulk cost updates.
Using purchase orders: import the lines into a native purchase order with its CSV import, then receive on the transfer.

How long does this take?

For a typical 20 to 40-line invoice, done by hand, budget roughly:

Step	Text PDF	Scan or photo
Extract lines	5 to 10 min	15 to 30 min
Check and fix	5 to 10 min	10 to 20 min
Map codes, convert packs	5 to 15 min	5 to 15 min
Update stock and costs	10 to 20 min	10 to 20 min

These are rough planning figures, not measurements. Your own numbers depend on how tidy your suppliers' documents are and how well your SKUs match theirs.

Where Box to Shelf helps

Box to Shelf does steps 1 to 4 for you. It reads text PDFs, scanned PDFs and phone photos (JPG, PNG, HEIC), plus CSV and Excel files, in seven languages. On text PDFs it checks that the amounts it read actually appear in the document. On every document it checks quantity × price against each line total and the lines against the subtotal, flags anything that doesn't add up, converts pack sizes, and matches each line to your products by SKU, barcode or name. You review the result next to the original document, fix or skip anything flagged, and apply stock and cost changes in one click, with undo.

Questions

Can I copy a table out of a PDF invoice?

Sometimes. Text PDFs often let you copy rows into a spreadsheet, but columns can shift and scanned PDFs have no text to copy at all.

What should I check after converting a PDF invoice?

Check that quantity times unit price equals each line total, that the lines add up to the invoice subtotal, and that every SKU exists in your store.

Sources

Shopify changes its admin often. Steps were checked against the Shopify Help Center in November 2026; if a menu has moved, the help center links above have the current version.