Capture a bill by emailing it in

What it does

Every business tenant gets a unique inbound alias — {tenant-slug}@bills.blankitt.com. Anything that lands there with a PDF attached becomes a draft bill: the attachment is stored on the bill record, OCR runs over the first page, and the parsed supplier name, total, bill number, issue + due dates, and VAT amount are written straight onto the draft. You open the draft, sanity-check the fields, correct anything OCR fluffed, pick the supplier (or accept the auto-match), code the lines to GL, and Send to move it to approved.

Suppliers can email the alias directly, or you can forward from your AP mailbox — the alias doesn't care which.

How to use it

1. Open Settings → Bill capture and copy your tenant's alias.
2. Either give it to suppliers as your billing email, or set up a forward from your AP mailbox so anything matching "bill" / "invoice" auto-forwards.
3. When a bill arrives, the draft appears in Bills with status draft and an email_in source tag.
4. Open the draft. Check the parsed supplier, total, bill number, issue date, due date, and VAT against the attached PDF.
5. If OCR auto-matched the supplier, confirm it. Otherwise pick the contact (or create one).
6. Code the lines to the right GL accounts. Adjust quantities or split lines if needed.
7. Click Send. The bill flips to approved (or pending_approval if your policy catches it) and joins the normal AP flow.

Tips

• OCR isn't perfect on faded scans or photographed receipts — always eyeball the total and VAT before sending.
• Forwarded emails sometimes lose the original sender. The auto-match uses the PDF text, not the From address, so this rarely matters.
• Multiple attachments on one email create one draft per PDF.
• Each capture counts against your monthly OCR allowance — see OCR allowance, PAYG, and what happens at the cap.
• Non-PDF attachments (Word, images without OCR layer) are stored but skipped by the parser; you'll fill the fields by hand.

Related

• OCR allowance, PAYG, and what happens at the cap
• Record a partial payment on a bill
• Three-way match: PO, GRN, bill