Inboxes: send documents by email
What an inbox is, how to forward receipts and invoices to it, who is allowed to send, why an email may not show up, and what happens to the old extract+ addresses.
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An inbox is an email address your workspace owns. Forward a receipt, an invoice or a statement to it — or have a supplier send there directly — and every Document Extractor feed attached to the inbox extracts the document and writes the rows to its destination. One inbox can feed several extractors, and one extractor can listen to several inboxes.
Each inbox has its own delivery log: every email the address received and what happened to it. If an email did not turn into rows, the log says why, in one line.
Creating an inbox#
Open Feeds and choose Inboxes in the header, or open a Document Extractor feed's
Sources tab and choose New inbox for this feed. The address is generated for you, looks
like quiet-otter-7f3k@inbox.banksync.io, and never changes. You can rename the inbox (the name
is only for you) but not the address.
The address is all lowercase, and mail addressed to it in any capitalisation arrives. Copy it from the pane and paste it into a forwarding rule in Gmail, Outlook or your accounting software.
Inboxes replace per-feed addresses
Attaching feeds#
An inbox delivers to every feed attached to it. Attach and detach feeds from the inbox's page (Attached feeds) or from a feed's Sources tab (Attach an existing inbox). Each attached feed runs its own extraction on every email, with its own job in that feed's history.
An inbox with no feeds attached still receives: the email is logged as No feeds attached and nothing runs. Attach a feed and forward the email again.
Who may send: the allowlist#
By default an inbox accepts mail from anyone (Open). Switch it to Allowlist to accept only senders you name:
- an exact address —
ap@supplier.com - a whole domain —
@supplier.com(orsupplier.com). A domain entry admits every address on that domain and no subdomain of it, so@supplier.comdoes not admitbilling.supplier.com.
When you forward an email yourself, BankSync also reads the original sender inside the forward, so a forwarded supplier invoice is judged by the supplier's address as well as yours. With the allowlist on, an email whose sender and original sender are both unlisted is logged as Sender not allowed and nothing runs. The log row offers Allow sender, which adds that address in one click.
An entry that is neither an address nor a domain is refused when you type it. The allowlist is the inbox's, so every feed attached to it shares it.
Why an email may not show up#
Open the inbox and read its delivery log. Each email is one row with one outcome:
| The log says | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Sent to N feeds | Each attached feed started a job. The row links to them. | If a job then failed, its feed's history explains why. |
| Sent via legacy address | The email arrived on the feed's old extract+ address and was delivered. | Nothing. Use the new address in new forwarding rules if you like. |
| Sender not allowed | The allowlist is on and neither the sender nor the forwarded original sender is on it. | Allow sender on the row, or add the domain. |
| No feeds attached | The inbox has no feed to deliver to. | Attach a feed and forward the email again. |
| Over monthly document limit | Your workspace has used its monthly document quota. | Upgrade, or wait for the reset on the 1st. The email was not lost; forward it again afterwards. |
| No document found | The email had no PDF, image or CSV attachment and no text in the body. | Send the document as an attachment. Some mail clients strip attachments when forwarding inline. |
| Too large (25 MB limit) | The email was over 25 MB. | Split it, or compress the attachments. |
| Duplicate | The same email was delivered twice by the mail system. It was extracted once. | Nothing. |
| Failed | The email could not be read, or a feed could not be started. The row shows a code. | Forward it again. If it fails again, tell support the inbox name and the time; never paste the email itself. |
If there is no row at all, the email never reached the inbox: check the address in your forwarding rule character by character (including the domain), and check your mail provider's sent folder or forwarding log. BankSync never bounces mail to an unknown address, so a typo is silent on the sending side too.
Pausing and deleting#
Pause an inbox to stop delivering: while it is paused, mail to its address is not delivered to any feed and does not appear in the log, so forward anything that arrived meanwhile again after you resume. Delete an inbox when you no longer need it: its address stops receiving and is never given to anyone else, and its delivery log stays readable. Deleting an inbox does not delete the feeds attached to it or anything they extracted.
Your old extract+ addresses#
Before inboxes, each Document Extractor feed had an address like
extract+FEEDID@receipts.banksync.io. Those addresses keep working indefinitely: mail sent
to one is delivered to the feed's inbox and appears in its log as Sent via legacy address.
You do not need to change any forwarding rule. The inbox's page shows both addresses.
What BankSync keeps#
For each email an inbox receives, BankSync keeps the sender's address and subject line as they appeared in the message, the outcome, and the raw email, for 90 days, so you can read the log and so a routing problem can be investigated. After 90 days the row and the raw email are deleted together. The documents themselves live on as the rows your feeds extracted, in your destination.
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