🧾 How to Extract Data from PDFs into Spreadsheets with Lido

Q: Adding AI Columns

<h1 id="howaicolumnswork">How AI Columns Work</h1> <p>You can add any data field to the <strong>data extractor</strong> that doesn’t exist in the source file (e.g., Invoice Category, Expense Type, GL Code). These appear in your sheet but never need to be present in the uploaded document.</p> <p>Each AI column runs when a document is processed. Common examples of AI column uses:</p> <ul> <li>Classification – “Classify the expense descriptions into the closest of these 4 categories: food, gas, travel, other"</li> <li>Conditional coding – "If status column contains "approved", return 99" to auto-fill a GL code.</li> </ul> <p>${youtube}<a href="6fdbGtOMyXw">Adding AI Columns</a></p>

🎥 Watch the quick tutorial (2 min)

${youtube}Getting started with Lido

If your team handles a high volume of PDFs — invoices, forms, receipts, or reports — you know how time-consuming and error-prone manual entry can be. With Lido, you can automate the entire process. This guide shows you how to extract structured data (like invoice numbers, vendor names, and amounts) directly into spreadsheet rows — no manual typing required.

✅What You’ll Need

A Lido account (lido.app)
One or more documents to extract data from

📁 Supported file types: PDFs, scanned images, JPGs, PNGs, TIFFs, Excel files, and Word documents can all be processed.

🧠 Step 1: Click Extract Data and Upload Your Documents

Click the green Extract Data button on the left side of your file. Next, upload one or more documents you want to extract data from. Once uploaded, Lido automatically analyzes the files and intelligently populates column headers based on the content it detects — for example Invoice Number, Date Due, Vendor Name, and Amount Due. You can:

Add more headers to capture extra fields not automatically suggested
Remove or rename headers for data you don’t need
Reorder headers directly in the spreadsheet or inside the Extract Data interface

💡 The Lido column headers are your main instructions for what to extract. Be

Question 2

Adding AI Columns

Accepted Answer

How AI Columns Work

You can add any data field to the data extractor that doesn’t exist in the source file (e.g., Invoice Category, Expense Type, GL Code). These appear in your sheet but never need to be present in the uploaded document.

Each AI column runs when a document is processed. Common examples of AI column uses:

Classification – “Classify the expense descriptions into the closest of these 4 categories: food, gas, travel, other"
Conditional coding – "If status column contains "approved", return 99" to auto-fill a GL code.

${youtube}Adding AI Columns

Question 3

Managing your subscription

Accepted Answer

You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your subscription at any time in the Billing portal.

Cancellations are effective at the end of your current billing cycle. You'll have access to all features until that time, at which point you'll automatically be downgraded to our free plan.

Question 4

Pricing

Accepted Answer

Our pricing plans scale based on usage and start at $36/month. Data exporting to Excel and CSV is enabled on all of our paid plans. You can see our latest pricing here: https://www.lido.app/pricing or here: ${frame}

Annual vs. monthly billing

All of our plans are available billed on either a monthly or annual basis. Annual plans are paid upfront and not pro-rated if cancelled before the end of the 1 year period.

We offer a 20% discount on all annual plans, and all page credits for the year are available upfront. For example, our standard plan includes 100 PDF page conversions monthly. With a yearly plan, you would have access to all 1,200 PDF page conversions upfront (12 months x 100 pages) to use throughout the year. This is a great option for companies with variable or seasonal processing requirements.

Changing or canceling your plan

You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your plan at any time by yourself in our Billing portal. Cancellations are effective at the end of your current billing cycle. You'll have access to all features until then, at which point you'll be automatically downgraded to the free plan.

Question 5

How to process documents stored in OneDrive

Accepted Answer

**Check out this video!!: ** ${frame}

Question 6

Super-powered Extra Instructions (i.e., Directives)

Accepted Answer

Directives are deterministic instructions you add in the Extra Instructions section of your Data Extractor to fine‑tune extraction.

Each directive has a specific syntax and must appear on its own line at the bottom of the Extra Instructions.

File Extractor

@parallel:true / @parallel:false

What is this?

Controls whether the extractor treats each page separately or processes the whole document as one unit.

Use when

@parallel:true: Each page stands on its own. Example: one form or one table per page that does not need data from other pages.
@parallel:false: Pages depend on each other. Example: page 1 has the employee name and later pages list that employee’s hours. You want the extractor to keep that connection.

Why it helps

@parallel:true: Many documents have each page holding complete data for that page needed for a spreadsheet row output and each page follows the same structure. In this case, parallel mode speeds things up while keeping rows clean (for example, 1 spreadsheet row per page where each row only holds data for its associated page).
@parallel:false: Some documents rely on context set earlier. @parallel:false tells the tool to treat the uploaded document as a whole document. This prevents missing fields or mismatched rows when data spans pages (for example, when you want to output a spreadsheet row that combines page 2 and page 1 data).

How to use Add one line to the end of your Extra Instruc

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