Understand your invoices. Automate invoice entry.

Octopodi helps you work with client invoices in SquidWeb in two ways: ask questions about your invoice data or turn existing invoice documents into draft invoices ready for review.

Get answers about unpaid invoices, outstanding amounts and payment behaviour, or let Octopodi extract information from an invoice document instead of entering it manually.

Two ways to work with invoices

Ask questions about your invoices

Use the Octopodi Chat to ask questions about your client invoices in plain language. Get information about outstanding payments, payment behaviour and your largest invoices without having to search through your invoice list manually.

For example, you can ask Octopodi:

• How many unpaid invoices do we have, and what is the total outstanding amount?
• What is the average time it takes our clients to pay?
• What are our largest invoices from the last 12 months?
• How many unpaid invoices are in each dunning level?

Octopodi retrieves information from your SquidWeb data and calculates the requested figures. Asking questions is read-only, so your invoices remain unchanged.

Create draft invoices from documents

Octopodi can also process an existing invoice document issued by your company to a customer and turn it into a draft invoice in SquidWeb.

Instead of entering the information manually, Octopodi extracts the available details, matches the customer where possible and proposes suitable accounts and tax types for the invoice lines.

The original document is attached to the draft so you can check the extracted information before releasing the invoice.

Multiple ways to create invoices

You can send invoice documents to Octopodi from different places in SquidWeb, depending on where the document is stored.

From document to draft invoice

Whichever entry point you use, the document follows the same basic processing workflow.

Queued

The document is sent to Octopodi for processing and enters the processing queue.

Notification

When processing is complete, SquidWeb displays a notification in the notification bell. Open the notification to check the result and access the created draft invoice when available.

Draft invoice

When Octopodi successfully processes the document, it creates a draft invoice in Design.

Octopodi extracts the available information and prepares the invoice for you to review.

Review and release

Open the draft invoice and compare the extracted information with the original document.

Check the customer, invoice date, service period, invoice lines, accounts and tax types. SquidWeb calculates the totals from the invoice lines, and the review panel highlights differences between the calculated totals and those printed on the original document.

Once you have checked the information, you can release the invoice.

Releasing the draft does not generate a SquidWeb invoice PDF or send an invoice to the customer. The original document remains the issued invoice.

What Octopodi extracts

Octopodi reads the invoice document and prepares the available information for the draft.

Depending on the document, this can include:

• Customer information
• Invoice number and date
• Service period
• Invoice line descriptions
• Quantities and unit prices
• Line totals and VAT information
• Accounts and tax types

Octopodi also tries to match the customer against existing SquidWeb contacts and uses previous invoices for that customer to help propose accounts and tax types.

If information is uncertain or several options are possible, Octopodi may leave a field empty and highlight it for review rather than guess.

Review before releasing

Before releasing a draft invoice, you can compare it with the original document and check the information extracted by Octopodi.

The review panel helps you identify details that may need attention, including customer information, invoice lines and differences between the printed and calculated totals.

If the customer cannot be matched, you can link an existing contact or create one if necessary and you have the required permissions.

Octopodi prepares the draft. You check the details and decide when it is ready to be released.

Automatic invoice processing with drop folders

If you regularly process invoice documents, you can configure a drop folder to automate the process.

Once the folder is configured with the category Invoices, new supported PDFs or images saved to it are processed automatically. Octopodi creates a draft invoice for the folder’s company, ready for review.

This is useful when you want to reduce repetitive data entry without manually starting the process for every document.

Invoices or receipts?

Octopodi has separate workflows for client invoices and supplier receipts.

• Invoices: Documents issued by your company to customers — money your clients owe you.
• Receipts: Supplier invoices, till receipts, fuel receipts and other documents relating to money your company pays to suppliers.

Even if a supplier document is labelled “Invoice”, it belongs to the Receipts workflow, not the Invoices workflow.

One skill. Two ways to work with invoices.

Whether you need answers about outstanding payments or want to reduce manual invoice entry, Octopodi helps you work with your client invoices more efficiently.

Crew members frequently incur expenses while working on-site, such as parking tickets, fuel, meals, or public transport. Traditionally, collecting these expenses and passing them on to the accounting team involves manual chasing, emailing, and local file management.
SquidWeb streamlines this workflow by connecting the mobile app, Project Documents, and Octopodi. Crew members upload expense documents directly from their mobile devices while in the field. These attachments automatically appear in the project’s document section, allowing office teams to process them instantly with Octopodi without switching contexts or downloading files manually.

Requirements:

Before processing project receipts, ensure that:

• Crew members have access to the mobile app to upload expense documents.
• Uploaded files are correctly stored in the project’s Project Documents section.
• Your user role has permissions to create and review receipts within the project’s company context.

Uploading Receipts from the field:

Crew members can capture and upload receipts on the go directly from their smartphones.

1. Open the mobile app while on-site or after completing an expense.
2. Select and upload the expense document (such as parking tickets, fuel receipts, or hotel invoices).
3. The file is instantly transmitted and stored securely within the relevant project’s Project Documents section.

Processing the Receipt with Octopodi

Once the document is uploaded by the crew member, office users can process it directly from the project workspace.

1. Open the project inside SquidWeb and navigate to Project Documents.
2. Locate the uploaded receipt in the list of project files.
3. Open the document’s action menu.
4. Select Create receipt with Octopodi.
5. Octopodi automatically analyzes the document, extracts the available information, and populates a new draft receipt.

Reviewing the Receipt

After processing is complete, SquidWeb generates a Draft Receipt.

• The extracted data is automatically filled in, while the original mobile upload remains attached for easy verification.
• Office users review the extracted information against the original file to ensure accuracy.
• Once verified, the accountant can approve or reject the receipt according to the company’s standard accounting workflow.

Benefits

Processing project receipts from project documents helps teams to:

• Enable seamless mobile expense submissions for field crew members.
• Maintain centralised project documents without scattered local files.
• Speed up expense handling and reduce manual data entry.
• Eliminate unnecessary file downloads before starting the receipt workflow.
• Keep full control over approvals with human-in-the-loop review.

Flexible Workflow

Every company handles project expenses differently. The receipt creation process can be configured to match your specific organizational requirements, including validation rules, custom approval steps, and automations. SquidWeb Support can assist in tailoring the workflow to fit your business needs.

Video Tutorial

Watch the video below to see how crew members upload receipts via mobile and how office users process them instantly using Octopodi from Project Documents.

Octopodi Receipts use cases

The following tutorials show specific ways to use Octopodi Receipts in SquidWeb.

Accounting teams often receive receipts by email from employees, crew members and suppliers. Processing these documents manually usually involves downloading the attachment, saving it locally, creating a receipt and entering the information before it can be reviewed.

SquidWeb simplifies this workflow by allowing users to create receipts directly from email attachments. With a single action, the attached document is processed by Octopodi, which extracts the available information and creates a draft receipt ready for review.

This reduces repetitive manual work while keeping users in full control of the approval process.

Requirements

Before processing receipts, ensure that:

• The receipt is attached to an email available in a configured Public Mailbox.
• The attachment is in a supported format (such as PDF).
• Your user has permission to create and review receipts.

Processing a Receipt

Open the email inside the configured Public Mailbox.

From the attachment menu, select Create Receipt with Octopodi.

The attachment is automatically sent to Octopodi for document analysis.

Octopodi extracts the available information from the receipt and creates a draft receipt inside SquidWeb.

Reviewing the Receipt

After processing, the generated receipt is created as a Draft Receipt.

The extracted information is automatically populated, while the original attachment remains available for comparison.

Before the receipt is approved, users can review and edit the extracted information if necessary.

Once verified, the receipt can be approved or rejected according to the company’s accounting workflow.

Notifications

During processing, SquidWeb keeps users informed through the Notification Center.

Typical notifications include:

• Receipt created successfully
• Receipt ready for review
• Receipt not booked
• Processing failed
• Validation warning

Notifications provide quick access to the generated receipt and highlight any actions that require user attention.

Benefits

Processing receipts directly from emails helps accounting teams to:

• Create receipts without downloading attachments
• Reduce manual data entry
• Automatically extract receipt information
• Keep the original receipt linked to the draft
• Review information before approval
• Speed up the accounting workflow

Flexible Workflow

Every company has its own accounting process.

Receipt processing can be adapted to match your organisation’s workflow, including validations, approval steps and additional automations. SquidWeb Support can help configure the process to meet your specific business requirements.

Video Tutorial

Watch the video below to see how to create a receipt directly from an email attachment using Create Receipt with Octopodi.

Octopodi Receipts use cases

The following tutorials show specific ways to use Octopodi Receipts in SquidWeb.

When multiple crew members travel together, coordinating vehicles and passengers can quickly become difficult. Travel Groups allow you to organize shared transportation directly within a project, making travel planning part of your normal scheduling workflow.

Each Travel Group represents a single journey, such as a car, train or shuttle, and crew members are assigned directly from the Project Crew Item grid.

When should I use Travel Groups?

Travel Groups are useful whenever crew members travel together to a project.

Typical examples include:

• Car sharing between crew members
• Company vehicles
• Train journeys
• Shuttle buses
• Airport transfers

Instead of managing transportation separately, all travel information remains connected to the project.

How to create a Travel Group

1. Open the project.
2. Go to the Travel Groups side panel.
3. Create a new Travel Group.
4. Select the transport type.
5. Enter the departure information.
6. Define the vehicle capacity.
7. Save the Travel Group.

Once created, it becomes available for crew assignment.

Assign crew members

Crew members are assigned directly from the Project Crew Item grid.

For each assignment you can define:

• Travel Group
• Travel Group Function

Available Travel Group Functions include:

• Driver
• Passenger
• Driver Spare

This keeps transportation planning integrated with workforce planning.

Capacity control

Each Travel Group has a maximum capacity.

When assigning crew members, SquidWeb validates the configured capacity to help prevent overbooking.

For example, a vehicle with a capacity of four people cannot have more than four assigned Project Crew Items.

Example

A project requires 8 crew members working from 10:00–18:00.

The crew travels in two cars.

Travel Group 01

• Car Pool
• Capacity: 4
• 1 Driver
• 3 Passengers

Travel Group 02

• Car Pool
• Capacity: 4
• 1 Driver
• 3 Passengers

Each crew member is assigned to a Travel Group directly from the Project Crew Item grid, making it easy to see who is travelling together.

Good to know

• Multiple Travel Groups can be created for the same project.
• Crew assignments are managed directly from the existing Project Crew Item grid.
• Travel Groups store journey information such as departure details and capacity.
• Internal and customer travel calculations are performed by the assigned Project Crew Items, not by the Travel Group itself.

Best practice

Create one Travel Group for each shared journey instead of creating individual travel records for every crew member. This keeps transportation planning simple, makes drivers easy to identify and helps planners manage vehicle capacity more efficiently.

See here a short tutorial to learn how to use it!

Workforce planning becomes increasingly complex as your organisation grows.

With dozens of planners, multiple projects and hundreds or even thousands of crew members, manually selecting the best person for every position quickly becomes one of the most time-consuming parts of the planning process.

Who should receive this job?

Who still needs contract hours?

Who worked on this project yesterday?

Who has the required qualifications?

Who lives closest to the venue?

The answer is rarely based on a single factor.

Every business has its own priorities.

That’s why SquidWeb introduces the Crew Optimizer.

Instead of manually comparing every available crew member, the Crew Optimizer analyses all eligible candidates, applies your company’s planning rules and instantly recommends the best matches.

Planning based on your own rules

Every company plans differently.

Some organisations prioritise reducing travel distances, while others focus on maintaining team continuity, balancing contract hours or complying with customer-specific planning requirements.

The Crew Optimizer adapts to your planning strategy—not the other way around.

You decide which criteria are most important for your organisation.

Examples include:

• Travel distance
• Team continuity
• Contract fulfilment
• Skills and qualifications
• Working time limits
• Availability
• Required tags
• Company constraints
• Client memberships
• Rate cards
• Block dates

All these factors are considered automatically when generating recommendations.

Configure your optimisation strategy

Every Optimizer Method can be fully customised to match your organisation’s planning strategy.

After creating a new method, planners can define how the Crew Optimizer evaluates and ranks candidates by adjusting multiple configuration areas.

Weight Factors

Weight Factors determine how much influence each criterion has on the final candidate ranking.

The default optimisation methods include factors such as:

• Travel Distance
• Team Continuity
• Contract Fulfilment

Additional weighting factors can be added depending on your planning strategy, including:

• Cost Optimisation
• Membership Bonus
• Fairness
• Spare Priority
• Accounts
• Job Priority
• Skill Bonus

The total weighting across all factors must always equal 100%.

Planner Crews

Select which Planner Crews are included when running the optimisation.

Only crew members belonging to the selected Planner Crews will be evaluated.

Constraints

Define mandatory conditions that every candidate must satisfy before being considered.

Available constraints include:

• Function matching
• Region matching
• Active Rate Card
• Break times
• Blocklist validation
• Working hour limits

Crew members that do not satisfy the enabled constraints are automatically excluded from the optimisation.

Working Time Limits

Configure operational limits such as:

• Maximum working hours per day
• Maximum consecutive working days

These settings help maintain legal compliance and reduce scheduling conflicts.

Block Dates

Choose which unavailable crew members should be excluded from the optimisation.

Supported block types include:

• Self-blocked
• Dispatcher-blocked
• Request-blocked
• No-answer

Output Options

Define how the optimisation results are presented.

Examples include:

• Prioritise existing spare crew
• Number of suggested alternatives

Required Tags

Limit the optimisation to crew members matching specific tags or qualifications.

Notification Settings

Select the notification template that will be used when requesting suggested crew members.

Save and reuse optimisation methods

Once configured, each Optimizer Method can be saved and reused at any time.

Methods can also be shared with different visibility levels:

• Personal – Available only to the planner who created it.
• Company – Shared with all planners within the same company.
• Tenant – Available across the entire SquidWeb tenant.

This allows organisations to standardise planning strategies while still giving individual planners the flexibility to create specialised methods for different customers, projects or operational scenarios.

Create multiple optimisation methods

Planning priorities often vary depending on the customer, project or business unit.

For this reason, SquidWeb allows you to create multiple Optimizer Methods.

For example, you may configure different methods for:

• Festival operations
• Logistics projects
• Premium customers
• Warehouse staffing
• Regional planning
• Different business units

Each method stores its own configuration and can be reused whenever required.

This gives every planner access to consistent planning strategies while still allowing flexibility where needed.

Supporting better planning decisions

The Crew Optimizer is designed to support planners, not replace them.

It provides objective recommendations based on your configured business rules while keeping the final decision entirely under the planner’s control.

Every suggested crew member includes additional information such as travel distance, memberships, skills, planning history and overall ranking, making every assignment more transparent and easier to justify.

Benefits

Using the Crew Optimizer helps organisations:

• Reduce manual planning time
• Improve planning consistency across teams
• Balance contract hours more effectively
• Reduce unnecessary travel
• Maintain team continuity across projects
• Respect company rules and legal constraints
• Improve workforce utilisation
• Support objective assignment decisions
• Scale workforce planning as operations grow
• Improve planning transparency
• Standardise workforce planning across teams

Fully integrated into SquidWeb

The Crew Optimizer is fully integrated into the SquidWeb planning workflow.

Select the missing crew positions, choose an optimisation method, review the suggested candidates and assign or request the crew member that best fits your planning strategy.

No exports.

No spreadsheets.

No manual comparisons.

Just faster, smarter workforce planning.

Watch the tutorial

Want to see the Crew Optimizer in action?

Watch the video below to learn how to configure optimisation methods, adjust planning rules and generate the best crew recommendations directly inside SquidWeb.