Written with AI assistance, then fact-checked and approved by Thomas Lovas Lokoy.
Last updated: October 2026
The short answer: PopAi’s spreadsheet product, PopAi Sheets, works in three steps that PopAi publishes on its own page: input (upload PDFs, receipts, invoices or messy CSVs, or search the web), process (it extracts and cleans the data into a structured table) and output (export for Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, or generate a report). It is best used to turn untidy source material into a clean table. You then do the analysis in Excel or Google Sheets, where every formula can be checked.
This tutorial walks through one realistic job from start to finish — turning a month of receipts and invoices into an expense table with category totals — and shows the checks that stop a confident-looking AI table from carrying a wrong number into your accounts.
What PopAi Sheets Is, and What It Is Not
PopAi Sheets lives at its own address, separate from PopAi’s main workspace, which PopAi presents mainly as an AI presentation and slides tool. On the Sheets page, PopAi says the tool translates “plain English instructions into accurate functions, pivot tables, and data formatting”, combines live web search results with data extracted from your uploads, and exports for Excel or Google Sheets.
It is not a plug-in that sits inside your existing workbook, and PopAi’s page does not describe one. Plan on moving data out of PopAi Sheets and into your spreadsheet, not on working inside Excel with PopAi alongside.
Before You Start: Credits, Plans and Privacy
- Trial: PopAi says it offers trial credits for new users, without saying how many. Use them on a small test batch first, not your whole archive.
- Paid plans: PopAi’s pricing FAQ describes two paid plans, Pro and Unlimited, each billed monthly or yearly. Pro has usage limits; Unlimited “removes most restrictions”. You can upgrade from Pro to Unlimited at any time, but Unlimited cannot be downgraded to Pro, and an annual plan cannot be switched to monthly until it ends. The prices themselves did not appear in the version of the pricing page we could read on 16 October 2026, and the Sheets page says subscription details vary by plan and region, so check the live pricing page before you commit to a year.
- Privacy: PopAi’s only statement on the Sheets page is that uploaded files and results “are treated as private business data”. That is not a security specification. Leave payroll, health or customer records out until you have read PopAi’s privacy policy and are satisfied with it.
Step 1 — Gather and Upload the Source Files
Collect the month’s receipts and invoices in one folder: PDF invoices, photos or scans of paper receipts, and any CSV export from your bank or card provider. PopAi lists PDFs, receipts, invoices and CSV files as accepted inputs. Count the documents before you upload — you will need that number in Step 3.
Open PopAi Sheets and upload the files. If a supplier’s details are missing, PopAi says the tool can also pull in live web search results, but keep web data in a separate column so you always know which values came from your own documents.
Step 2 — Describe the Table You Want, Column by Column
Vague instructions produce vague tables. Name every column, its format and what to do when a value is missing. For example:
“Make one row per receipt or invoice with these columns: Date (YYYY-MM-DD), Supplier, Category (Travel, Software, Office, Meals or Other), Net amount, Tax amount, Total, Currency (three-letter code), Source file name. If a value is not printed on the document, leave the cell empty — do not estimate it.”
The last sentence matters most. An empty cell is a visible gap you will fix; a plausible estimate is an error you will not notice.
Step 3 — Check the Extracted Table Before You Trust It
PopAi describes its extraction as “100% hallucination-free” and says values are verified against your source documents. Treat that as the vendor’s claim, not as your control. Four checks take about five minutes for a month of receipts:
- Row count. The table should have one row per document you counted in Step 1. Fewer rows means something was skipped; more means a document was split or duplicated.
- Arithmetic. Add a check column that subtracts Net and Tax from Total. Every row should come out at zero. Anything else is a misread figure.
- Spot-check five rows. Open five source files at random and compare them line by line with their rows, including the date format — 03/04 means March in some countries and April in others.
- Empty cells. Filter for blanks. Each one is either genuinely missing from the document or a value the extraction failed to read; open the source to find out which.
Step 4 — Export to Excel or Google Sheets
PopAi says the output can be exported for Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. To bring a file into Google Sheets, Google’s help centre describes the route: open a spreadsheet, click File > Import, choose a file that is not password-protected, pick an import option and click Import. Google Sheets accepts .xlsx, .xls, .csv, .tsv and several other formats.
Choose the import option deliberately. Insert new sheets adds the data as new tabs and leaves your existing work untouched; Append rows to current sheet adds it after your last row, which suits a running expense log; Replace spreadsheet overwrites everything. For a .csv file you can also set the separator (detect automatically, tab, comma or custom) — set it by hand if amounts with decimal commas land in the wrong columns.
Step 5 — Get Formulas You Can Audit
With clean data in your own spreadsheet, ask for formulas in plain English and paste them in, rather than accepting a finished number. For the expense table, “total of the Total column for the Travel category” becomes, if Total is column F and Category is column C:
=SUMIFS(F:F, C:C, "Travel")
Read the formula before you trust it. Microsoft’s documentation points out a trap that catches people and AI tools alike: the range being summed is the first argument in SUMIFS but the third in SUMIF, so converting one into the other by editing can quietly break it. SUMIFS takes up to 127 range-and-criteria pairs, so adding a second condition — Travel in a single currency, say — is just another pair at the end.
Repeat for each category, then add one grand-total cell that sums the whole Total column. The category totals must add up to it. If they do not, a row has a category that matches none of your five names — a typo such as “Travle”, or an empty cell.
Step 6 — Draft the Summary, Then Check Every Number
PopAi says Sheets can analyse trends and draft research reports from the data. That is useful for the words around the figures, such as a short note on which categories grew this month. Before you send it anywhere, compare every number in the draft against the formula cells from Step 5. The spreadsheet is the record; the report is a description of it.
Turn plain English into powerful spreadsheets
Try PopAI Pro →Want the verdict before the walkthrough? Our PopAi Sheets review covers what the tool does with formulas, pivot tables and extraction, and our PopAI review compares the wider PopAi workspace with ChatGPT, Google Sheets AI and Notion AI. Explore more in our AI Productivity category.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does PopAi Sheets work with both Excel and Google Sheets?
Yes, according to PopAi: the output can be exported for Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. In Google Sheets, bring the file in with File > Import and choose whether to add new sheets, append rows or replace data.
Is PopAi Sheets free?
New users get trial credits, though PopAi does not say how many. Beyond that you need a paid plan; PopAi lists Pro (with usage limits) and Unlimited, billed monthly or yearly. Check the current price on PopAi’s pricing page, as it varies by plan and region.
Can PopAi Sheets read receipts and PDF invoices?
PopAi lists PDFs, receipts, invoices and messy CSV files among its inputs and says it extracts them into a structured table. Count your documents and check the row count and arithmetic afterwards, as in Step 3.
Is the extracted data accurate?
PopAi calls its extraction “100% hallucination-free”. We have not tested that claim, so check it yourself: one row per document, net plus tax equal to total on every row, and five rows compared against their source files.
Can I move from Unlimited back to Pro?
No. PopAi’s pricing FAQ says you can upgrade from Pro to Unlimited at any time but cannot downgrade from Unlimited to Pro, and an annual plan cannot be switched to monthly until the current term ends. Start on the smaller plan if you are unsure.
