Upload PDFs for an external system or your ERP is they cannot be synced automatically using the Invoice PDF Manager.
Last updated: March 19, 2025
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Use the Invoice PDF Manager to manage your invoice PDFs where:
- Your invoice PDFs are not accessible to Chaser: Some systems (e.g. Sage200) don't support allow systems like Chaser to get PDF documents, and in some cases Chaser customers store their invoice PDFs in a different system which Chaser does not integrate with. The PDF Manager helps by automatically importing these PDFs into Chaser.
- Your invoice PDF require splitting or merging: The tool helps you manage large PDF files by breaking them down into smaller, well-organized documents. Instead of simply splitting pages, it makes sure that related pages stay together—so if you have a multi-page invoice, all its pages are kept in one complete file.
For users who want to automatically send invoices to Chaser, the Invoice PDF Manager can sync your invoice folder every 30 minutes. This means that as soon as an invoice PDF is saved to your folder, the app will try to send it to Chaser without you needing to open it manually.
Set up
System requirements
The Chaser Invoice PDF Manager is an on-premise application which is currently only compatible with Microsoft Windows 10, Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 and up. Recommended system specifications : 64bit processor, 4 GB RAM, 300MB of free disk space.
Installation
- Download the Chaser Invoice PDF Manager installer below:
Download the .exe file directly
Download the .zip folder and extract (some systems may require this step) - Locate the .exe file and double click to begin the installation. Depending on your browser, you can find the downloads in your Download history or your Downloads folder on your Windows desktop device.
3. Once you have double clicked the .exe file, the installation you may be prompted by the following screen - simply by-pass it by selecting More info followed by Run anyway:
4. The installation wizard will then begin. Please review the licence agreement. If you agree, select I accept the agreement and click Next:
5. Review the information on the following step and click Next:
6. Leave Create a desktop shortcut selected to ensure you can easily find the application on your desktop. Then click Next:
7. Click Install to begin running the installation:
8. Once the installer is finished you can choose to Launch Chaser Invoice PDF Manager and select Finish. The application should now start:
9. Depending on the version of the application you downloaded, you should be greeted by a screen that looks like this:
10. When the application is opened, it is also accessible in the icon tray. Please note that closing the application minimises it to the system tray. You'll need to right-click on the app icon in the system tray and select Quit to shut it down completely.
Configuration
Using the Invoice PDF Manager without Chaser
To use the Invoice PDF Manager for its PDF splitting functionality without Chaser, skip the API set-up and move on to either Option 3 or Option 4 depending your requirements.
Setting up the Chaser API
1. Login to your Chaser account at https://my.chaserhq.com/login
2. Navigate to Organisation settings:
3. Navigate to Integrations:
4. In the Chaser API module, select Get API keys. If you don't see this option please reach out to integrations@chaserhq.com to activate the Chaser API on your Chaser account :
5. You'll now be presented with your Chaser Key and your Chaser Secret. Leave this window open. In the next section you'll copy these values into the Chaser Invoice PDF Manager application:
Uploading your first invoice to Chaser
To test if your configuration is set up correctly, try uploading your first invoice PDF to Chaser. Before you do, make sure you meet these requirements:
- Your Chaser account has the API activated.
- You have an existing invoice in Chaser that you can send the PDF to.
Step 1 - Select the option which best suits your accounting system invoice PDF export
Open the Invoice PDF Manager desktop application and navigate to the Settings module. From there, choose the option that best suits your setup. For this example, the most common configuration has been used: "Option 2: My invoice pdfs are named using the invoice number."
This option works by matching the PDF file name with the invoice number in Chaser. It will automatically find the most recently uploaded invoice in Chaser that has a matching invoice number and attach your PDF to that invoice.
Step 2 - Select the desktop folder where your invoices are being stored
Click Select folder, then locate the invoice folder. This would be the folder you save your invoice PDFs to after they have been printed or generated in your accounting system.
In the example above, the folder invoice_option2 is being used (you can use any folder name).
Below is a preview of the contents of the invoice_option2 folder; there is a single invoice pdf titled INV-88.pdf. With Option 2 selected, the Chaser Invoice PDF Manager desktop application will extract the name INV-88, find the most recently uploaded invoice in the Chaser browser application with the Invoice Number INV-88 and then attach INV-88.pdf to the invoice in Chaser. This will ensure the invoice pdf is attached to any email chases and is available to download in the Chaser payment portal.
Step 3 - Enter your Chaser API Key and Secret
3.1 In the Chaser browser application, copy your Chaser Key by selecting the copy icon:
3.2 In the Chaser Invoice PDF Manager desktop application paste your Key into the Chaser Key field - use ctrl + v to paste the value into the field.
3.3 In the Chaser browser application, copy your Chaser Secret by selecting the copy icon:
3.4 In the Chaser Invoice PDF Manager desktop application paste your Secret into the Chaser Secret field - use ctrl + v to paste the value into the field.
Step 4 - Send the invoice PDF to Chaser
When looking at the invoice INV-88 in the Chaser application in the browser, there is currently no Invoice PDF attachment:
Selecting Process operation in the Invoice PDF Manager, will begin processing and then uploading the invoice pdfs to Chaser:
After the invoice pdf is successfully processed and sent to Chaser, INV-88.pdf is then moved to a date-stamped folder on the desktop. This ensures you can easily check when invoices were successfully uploaded to Chaser:
Refresh the Chaser application in the browser. The invoice PDF is now available to download:
How to use the configuration options
The Chaser Invoice PDF Manager offers four different configuration options to cater to various invoice export scenarios based on your accounting software.
- Option 1 and Option 2 are specifically designed to work with the Chaser API, meaning you’ll need a Chaser account to use them.
- Option 3 extracts the invoice number from the file name and sends the file to Chaser. However, it can also be used independently to just extract the invoice number and rename the file to match it, without needing the Chaser API.
- Option 4 is ideal for bulk export documents (PDFs containing multiple invoices). It uses a unique identifier to split the invoices into separate documents, which can then be either sent to Chaser or saved directly to your device without using the Chaser API.
Each option is designed to make managing your invoices easier, depending on how your system is set up.
Option 1: My invoice pdfs are named using the invoice ID (Chaser API only)
When to use
Use this option only if your accounting system exports your invoice pdfs with the invoice ID. This is a unique identifier which is different from the invoice number. It is typically a long string of different characters and may look something like this : "23e23dwe34dewddcww233r3.pdf".
How to use - example
To confirm that the Invoice PDF Manager has been configured correctly for Option 1, please ensure that your Chaser API keys are properly set up and that a corresponding invoice exists in the Chaser browser application. If you attempt to post an invoice to Chaser using the invoice ID and no matching invoice is found, the invoice will remain in the folder. The desktop application will continue to attempt processing it until the relevant invoice becomes available in Chaser.
Step 1
Export your invoice pdf from your accounting system and save it to your desktop folder:
Step 2
Check to confirm you have a corresponding invoice in Chaser. Invoice IDs can be seen in the URL of the invoice in the Chaser browser application. In the example below, you can see the invoice id for invoice number 4 in the URL matches the name of the invoice pdf on the desktop:
Step 3
Select Option 1 in the dropdown on the Invoice PDF Manager desktop application. Click Select folder and select the folder where your invoice pdfs will be stored. Ensure you have inserted both your Chaser key and Chaser secret.
Step 4
Select Process operation. Once the operation is completed you should be able to download the invoice PDF on the invoice inside the Chaser Browser application:
Option 2: My invoice pdfs are named using the invoice number (Chaser API only)
When to use
Use this option only if your accounting system exports invoice PDFs with the invoice number. Note that the invoice number is not a unique identifier, meaning multiple invoices in Chaser can share the same number. If you select this option and there are multiple invoices with the same number, the Invoice PDF Manager will typically attach the PDF to the most recently created invoice in Chaser.
How to use - example
How to use Option 2 is used as an example in the Chaser API setup. Please refer back to this example for using Option 2.
Option 3: My invoice pdf names contain additional text as well as the invoice number
When to use
Use this option if your accounting system exports invoice PDFs with file names that include additional text along with the invoice number. This option will extract the invoice number from the file name, rename the document to match the invoice number, and then send the PDF to Chaser using only the invoice number. Sending the renamed invoice to the Chaser browser application via Chaser API keys is optional.
How to use - example
To confirm that the Invoice PDF Manager has been configured correctly for Option 3, please ensure that your Chaser API keys are properly set up and that a corresponding invoice exists in the Chaser browser application. If you attempt to post an invoice to Chaser using the invoice number and no matching invoice is found, the invoice will remain in the folder. The desktop application will continue to attempt processing it until the relevant invoice becomes available in Chaser.
Step 1
Export your invoice pdf from your accounting system and save it to your desktop folder. In the example below is the invoice Printed Invoice INV-21_17032025.pdf - In this example, the invoice number which needs to be extracted is INV-21 - this is the value which needs to be used to find the corresponding invoice inside of Chaser.
Step 2
Check to confirm you have a corresponding invoice number in Chaser. In the example below, you can see the invoice number does indeed exist in the Chaser browser application:
Step 3
Select Option 3 in the dropdown on the Invoice PDF Manager desktop application. Click Select folder and select the folder where your invoice pdfs will be stored. Ensure you have inserted both your Chaser key and Chaser secret if you intend uploading the renamed pdfs to Chaser.
Step 4
Configure Option 3 to ensure the invoice number is extracted correctly. In this step, all settings need to be applicable to every invoice exported. Using a date stamp for example, wont work for invoices not posted on that specific date, please ensure you use consistent identifiers or characters.
In the below invoice pdf, the file name is Printed Invoice INV-21_17032025.pdf - the string 'Printed Invoice ' (including blank spaces) will appear on all exports. The underscore '_' which appears after the actual invoice number 'INV-21' will also appear on every invoice export, the date stamp '17032025' however, will not appear on every invoice and differ depending on the day the invoice is exported from the accounting system, this means that it cannot be used to assist in the extraction pattern.
In order to extract the invoice number correctly, the following rules are applied, these are also know as the extraction pattern:
1. The prefix before every invoice will always be 'INV-'. This is provided so that it is included in the invoice number.
2. There is no suffix in this case, some invoices may contain characters at the end of their name. For example '1023-INV' - the suffix would be '-INV'.
3. Every invoice export would contain the text 'Printed Invoice ' (including the space) before the invoice number, this helps the Invoice PDF Manager to more accurately narrow down on where the invoice number sits in the file name.
4. Every invoice export would contain the underscore '_' directly after the invoice number and before the timestamp. This further helps narrow down the position of the invoice number in the file name.
5. In this case the invoice pdf name is set to be updated to only contain the invoice number after it has been processed. The option to post the invoice to Chaser after processing has also been selected - this requires Chaser API Keys. If you wish to only change the file names, you can unselect this option.
Step 5
Select Process operation. Once the operation is completed you should be able to download the invoice PDF on the invoice inside the Chaser Browser application:
On the desktop, the invoice has been moved to a date stamped folder 18-03-2025, inside the processed folder. The invoice pdf has been renamed to INV-21.pdf :
Option 4: My accounting system exports all my invoices in a single pdf document
When to use
Use this option if your accounting system exports all invoice PDFs in a single bulk PDF file. This option will extract each page and then group the invoices by their unique identifier—usually the invoice number— it will then save each invoice as an individual PDF, named according to the invoice number. The invoice PDF will then be sent to Chaser and attached to its corresponding invoice based on the invoice number. Sending the extracted invoices to the Chaser browser application via Chaser API keys is optional.
How to use - example
To confirm that the Invoice PDF Manager has been configured correctly for Option 4, please ensure that your Chaser API keys are properly set up and that corresponding invoices exist in the Chaser browser application. If you attempt to post an invoice to Chaser using the invoice number and no matching invoice is found, the invoice will remain in the folder. The desktop application will continue to attempt processing it until the relevant invoice becomes available in Chaser.
Step 1
Export your bulk invoices pdf from your accounting system and save it to your desktop folder. In the example below is the invoices file Invoice_to_split.pdf. For Option 4, the file name is irrelevant, you can place it in the folder 'as is' exported from your accounting system.
Step 2
Check for corresponding invoice numbers in the Chaser browser application - the invoice pdf contains invoices for invoice numbers '75', '76', '77' and '84'. On the invoices receivables page in the Chaser browser application, the invoice do indeed exist:
In this example, the Invoice PDF Manager should extract the invoices '75', '76', '77' and '84' from the PDF and upload them to the Chaser browser application. Invoice number 76 spans across two separate pages in the pdf document. Both pages for invoice 76 will be saved to a single pdf document.
Below is a diagram example of how you would expect the Invoice PDF Manager to split the Invoices_to_split.pdf document:
Step 3
Select Option 4 in the dropdown on the Invoice PDF Manager desktop application. Click Select folder and select the folder where your invoice pdfs will be stored. Ensure you have inserted both your Chaser key and Chaser secret if you intend uploading the split pdfs to Chaser.
Step 4
For option 4 you'll need to upload and example file so that you can instruct the Invoice PDF Manager how to identify your invoice number (or other unique identifier).
In the invoice PDF example below, the invoice number '75' which matches the value of the invoice number inside the Chaser browser application contains the header Invoice No , it is this header which appears on every page which can be used to identify where the invoice number sits. This is needed to instruct the Invoice PDF Manager to find this header and extract the following field (invoice number) on every page and then separate the pages according to the Invoice No.
The splitter is not limited to this field, but can be used to merge documents by any other consistent headers, such as Invoice Date, Order No or Account Ref depending on what is available on each page and your specific accounting export. Because the result is being uploaded to Chaser, in this example the Invoice No is needed.
Click on the button Choose file below Upload sample invoice pdf . Select your bulk invoice pdf export file from your accounting system, in this example the document Invoices_to_split.pdf is being used.
Immediately a list of fields is generated in the drop down below:
As mentioned previously, the invoice header and not the invoice number itself, needs to be selected, which will help to identify where the invoice number sits on each page. In the example above the Invoice No header is selected.
Step 5
In some cases the invoice number header may appear after the actual invoice number. In which case, simply select the option Reverse header: my invoice number header appears after my invoice number in the above list - this will essentially tell the Invoice PDF Manager to search for the invoice number itself in reverse.
In this example the Invoice PDF Manager has been set to Post the invoice to Chaser - this is optional.
Step 5
Select Process operation, once the operation is completed you should be able to download the invoice PDFs from the corresponding invoices inside the Chaser Browser application:
In the operation logs you can see that first the invoices are found, then the pdfs are created, then the invoices are located in the Chaser browser application and then uploaded to the Chaser browser application:
Inside of the Chaser browser application you can see that the invoice PDFs are now available for download:
In the desktop folder invoices_option4 you can see that a folder named processed has been created and that the file Invoices_to_split.pdf has been moved to a date stamped folder 18-03-2025 inside the processed folder. The individually extracted invoice pdfs also can be found in the 18-03-2025 folder.
How to use Auto sync
After you have selected and updated your configuration options, if the Auto sync toggle is switched on, the Invoice PDF Manager will check your invoice folder every 30 minutes and process PDF documents in the folder according to any rules or settings you have implemented.
Selecting the minimise button or the close button will send the Invoice PDF Manager to the icon tray and it will continue running in the background, running an auto sync every 30 minutes. This functionality is intentional and ensures that the application is not turned off by mistake.
You can shutdown the application completely by right clicking the app in the system tray and clicking quit.
The Auto sync option is enabled by default when ever you open the application. If you don't wish the to use the Invoice PDF Manager alongside Chaser, then you may wish to turn this option off. Simply select the blue toggle, a grey toggle means that Auto sync is switched off.
Please note that the application will also start up automatically on a system restart, this ensures that it is always running and checking the invoice folder every 30 minutes if Auto sync is turned on.
You can process a batch of invoices at any time regardless if Auto sync is turned on by simply selecting Process operation:
Monitoring progress
- The Operation logs section at the bottom of the Invoice PDF manager displays real-time information about the sync process
- You can view which files are being processed, whether uploads were successful and any errors that occurred during the upload process.
Updating the Invoice PDF Manager
Within the Invoice PDF Manager there is an option to Check for Updates to see whether you are running the latest version. The application will also check for updates every time it is restarted:
Clear credentials
Click Clear Credentials to reconfigure your Chaser API credentials.
Troubleshooting
PDF is not uploading
Verify your Chaser API credentials are correct - Ensure your invoice PDFs follow the naming convention you've configured - Check that the invoices exist in your Chaser account.
Also check if you have multiple invoices with the same invoice number, it may have been uploaded to an older or newer invoice with the same invoice number.
PDF is not moving into the processed folder
This generally occurs if the pdf being processed is open in another window. Please ensure all pdfs are closed before attempting to upload the pdf to Chaser.
Invoice matching issues
If you selected the option My invoice PDFs are named using the invoice number or My invoice PDF names contain additional text as well as the invoice number when configuring your Invoice PDF Manager, the PDF file names must match exactly with the invoice numbers in Chaser. If you selected the option My accounting system exports all my invoices in a single PDF document the text pattern must correctly identify each invoice in the document.
Sync process taking too long
Large PDF files may take longer to process - Processing many files at once can extend the sync time - Consider syncing smaller batches of files if needed.
Best practices
Organise your invoices: Keep your invoice PDFs in a dedicated folder for easier management
Use consistent naming: Maintain a consistent naming convention for your invoice PDFs
Regular syncing: Enable auto-sync to ensure your Chaser account stays up to date
Monitor logs: Periodically check the operation logs to ensure everything is working correctly Keep updated: Regularly check for and install application updates for the best performance and features.