Power Automate "Process invoices" (AI Builder) action failing with Forbidden error – License issue?

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Posted on by VM-20030314-0

Hi everyone,

I’m currently building an automated invoice processing flow in Power Automate and would appreciate some guidance.

🔹 What I’m trying to achieve:

I want to build a flow that:

Monitors incoming emails with attachments
Filters PDF invoices
Saves them into SharePoint in a structured folder path (based on date)
Reads invoice data (Invoice Number, Vendor, Amount)
Checks for duplicates
Logs details into an Excel file
Generates a summary report

🔹 Current issue:

When I try to use the “Process invoices” (AI Builder) action, the flow fails with a “Forbidden” error.

🔹 Environment details:

Power Automate Plan 2 Trial
SharePoint + Excel working correctly
Dataverse is available
AI Builder actions are visible but fail during execution

🔹 What I understand so far:

It seems like AI Builder requires additional capacity (credits), even if Dataverse is available.

🔹 My questions:

Do I need a separate AI Builder license/add-on to use invoice processing?
Is AI Builder always required for extracting invoice data from PDFs in Power Automate?
Are there any alternative approaches (without AI Builder) to extract invoice details reliably?
How can I confirm whether AI Builder is enabled in my environment?

Any advice or best practices would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

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AI Builder

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Tharusha Jayadeera 80 on at

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Hi @VM-20030314-0, Please check below answers.

1. Do I need a separate AI Builder license/add-on?
Yes. AI Builder relies on "credits" to process documents. Even though you are on a Power Automate Plan 2 Trial, that trial does not automatically grant you the capacity to run AI models. To use the "Process invoices" action, your specific Power Platform environment needs an AI Builder Capacity Add-on (or under Microsoft's newer licensing structure, Copilot Credits). If you are testing this out, you need to explicitly start an AI Builder Trial or have your admin assign seeded/purchased credits to your environment.

2. Is AI Builder always required for extracting PDF data?
No. If you search PDF in the actions panel, you can find different types of actions that you can work with.

3. Are there reliable alternatives to AI Builder?
Yes,

Azure Document Intelligence or any third-party connectors like Encodian, Plumsail, or Docparser have dedicated connectors in Power Automate. They require a separate subscription to their service, but they often offer free tiers for low-volume testing and are generally cheaper than a full AI Builder add-on.

Use PAD - If your PDFs are natively digital (not scanned images) and follow a strict, unchanging template, you can trigger a Desktop flow from your Cloud flow. You can use the "Extract text from PDF" action in PAD, and then use Regular Expressions to pull out the specific numbers.

4. How do I confirm AI Builder capacity in my environment?
You or your Power Platform Administrator will need to check the Power Platform Admin Center to see where your credits are sitting.

Go to the Power Platform Admin Center.

On the left navigation pane, select Resources > Capacity.

Look at the Summary tab or the Add-ons section to see if your tenant has an overall pool of AI Builder credits.

If this helped solve your issue, please mark it as ✅ Accepted Answer.
If you found it useful, a 🩷 Like is always appreciated.

Thanks,
Tharusha

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deepakmehta13a 369 on at

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Hi,

The “Forbidden” error in the Process invoices (AI Builder) action is usually related to AI Builder capacity or permissions, not the flow logic.

A few quick points:

AI Builder requires capacity
Even if you have Power Automate Plan 2 trial, AI Builder actions (like invoice processing) still require AI Builder / Copilot credits assigned to the environment. If no capacity is allocated, the action typically fails with errors like Forbidden.

How to confirm
Ask your admin to check:
Power Platform Admin Center → Environment → Capacity → AI Builder / Copilot credits
If it’s 0 or not assigned, the action won’t work.

Is AI Builder mandatory?
For structured invoice extraction (fields like invoice number, amount, vendor), AI Builder is the native and recommended option in Power Platform. You can use Get File Content action and some other if you will search.

Alternatives (without AI Builder)

Use third-party connectors (Encodian, Adobe PDF – premium)

Use HTTP + external service (Azure AI / OpenAI / custom API)

Convert PDF to text and parse manually (works but not very reliable for invoices)

Why you can see the action but it fails
This is expected — the action is visible, but execution requires capacity, which is enforced at runtime.

So overall, your understanding is correct — this looks like a capacity (credits) issue rather than a licensing UI issue.

Hope this helps.

If this helps resolve your issue, please consider marking the response as Verified so it can help others facing a similar scenario.

If you found this helpful, you can also click “Yes” on “Was this reply helpful?” or give it a Like.

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