InboxToDrive

Quick update on InboxToDrive, the side project I’ve been grinding on lately.

It started as a classic “scratch my own itch” build. I was wasting hours every month manually punching line items, totals and tax numbers from invoice PDFs into spreadsheets — mind-numbing, error-prone work that felt like pure busywork. So I put together an AI tool that parses invoice attachments automatically and dumps all the structured data straight into Google Sheets and Excel.

I submitted it to Uneed’s free queue today, and got assigned a September 28 launch.

Full transparency: I didn’t expect the free line to be almost 3 months long. That caught me off guard. But honestly, it’s probably a blessing in disguise — gives me way more time to iterate instead of rushing a half-baked launch.

Here’s what I’m prioritizing between now and launch:

• Product polish: Keep tightening up parsing accuracy, add support for more invoice formats, and work through all the feedback from early testers

• Launch assets: Put together a solid demo GIF, clean up product screenshots, and keep tweaking the landing page copy

• Cold start prep: Line up a small group of early users to help with initial traction on launch day, and map out my community promotion plan

I’d love to pick the brains of anyone who’s launched on Uneed before.

What actually moves the needle for ranking well on launch day? Is it all about cramming upvotes in the first few hours, or do comments and discussion carry just as much weight? Are there any common noob mistakes I should watch out for?

Also curious how you’d spend a 3-month lead time — is there anything obvious I’m sleeping on in my plan?

Any tips or war stories are much appreciated!

InboxToDrive — June update

Three new capabilities:

1. Direct upload — Drop PDF/PNG/JPG receipts on the dashboard. No email forwarding required.

2. Line items — AI extracts individual charges. Edit descriptions, amounts, and categories in review. Mismatched totals are flagged for you.

3. Better exports — Excel and Google Sheets now output one row per line item, ready for bookkeeping.

Same Magic Inbox, two input methods: forward by email or upload files directly.

Hey everyone,

I’m Ruizhi, a backend developer from China, and I wanted to share my very first micro-SaaS side project that I’ve been building slowly over the past few months.

Like a lot of us in our late 30s in tech, I’ve been dealing with constant layoff pressure and age-related anxiety lately. My company is trimming headcount right now, and it’s hard not to feel uneasy about the future.

Instead of just stressing passively after work, I decided to make good use of my extremely long daily commute — I spend around 4 hours every day traveling by train between Beijing, where I work, and Tianjin, where my family lives. Some days the train internet is spotty, so I planned most features offline and coded whenever I got a stable connection, little by little.

That slow, fragmented development process eventually turned into my tiny tool: https://inboxtodrive.app

I built it purely to solve my own pain point. Every month, I get dozens of invoices from AWS, Stripe, OpenAI, Shopify, and all sorts of SaaS subscriptions. Downloading PDFs, renaming files, sorting folders, and logging every expense into spreadsheets is such repetitive, tedious work. I got tired of wasting hours every month on manual bookkeeping that should just be automated.

The workflow I built is super simple and privacy-friendly.

You just set up a one-time auto-forward rule in your Gmail to the unique custom inbox we generate for you. We even auto-approve Google’s confirmation email, so you don’t have to manually copy any verification codes yourself.

After that, our AI parses every incoming invoice, extracts vendor names, dates, amounts, taxes, and currency details, then renames each file into a clean, consistent format like 2026-06-23_Shopify_$39.00.pdf. It automatically sorts everything into nested Google Drive folders and syncs all structured data straight to Google Sheets, or you can export it as Excel files for your own records or accountant.

Privacy was my top priority while building this tool. We never read your main inbox at all — we only process emails you actively forward to your custom address. All processed files and data get automatically shredded from our servers within 7 days, so nothing is stored long-term on our end. Your sensitive invoice data always stays inside your own Google Drive account.

Since this is a developer community, I’ll quickly share my ultra-low-cost stack I put together to keep hosting overhead super small:

- Frontend: Vite + React hosted on Cloudflare Pages (the free tier bandwidth is incredible for small indie tools)

- Backend: Python FastAPI running on a €5/month Hetzner VPS in Germany, using Docker Swarm for smooth rolling updates

- Database: Neon Postgres for local development, self-hosted Postgres container for production

- Payments & Mail: Creem (Estonia MoR) for global compliant payments, Resend for transactional emails

The product is fully live now. Google OAuth and Creem payment billing are both stable and ready to use.

For Indie Hacker community members, I’m locking in a permanent founding discount. Use code IH50 for 50% off forever — just $7.50/month instead of the original $15/month.

I’d really appreciate some honest feedback on the landing page, onboarding flow, feature set, or anything you think I could improve. This is my first real micro-SaaS, so all suggestions are more than welcome.

Alright, back to my daily commute coding grind!