Overview
An AP inbox is a dedicated email address that turns anything sent to it into a draft bill. Give the address to a vendor and their invoices arrive in Smartbills without anyone forwarding them. Finance Admins and Administrators can set these up.Why more than one
You can run several AP inboxes and route each to a team member or department. That gives you a natural split, for example one address per subsidiary, per cost centre, or per AP clerk, so bills land already attributed rather than needing triage.Create an inbox
1
Add an inbox
Choose Add AP Inbox and give it a name you will recognise in the list, such as “Main AP Inbox” or “Montreal office”.
2
Assign it
Optionally attach a team member and a department. Bills arriving at this address are attributed accordingly.
3
Set up forwarding, if needed
Enable forwarding and give a destination address to have incoming mail passed on as well as processed. Choose whether forwarding happens on receipt.
4
Verify
A new inbox shows Needs Verification until its address is confirmed. It becomes Active once verified and starts accepting mail.
The inbox list
What arrives
Mail sent to an AP inbox is read the same way an uploaded invoice is, producing a draft bill with the vendor, amount, invoice number, and due date filled in. Drafts are never paid automatically. They enter your normal approval and payment process. See Bill payment lifecycle.Both the message body and its attachments are processed, so a vendor who puts the invoice in the email itself is handled as well as one who attaches a PDF.
AP inboxes and the other forwarding addresses
Smartbills has three forwarding addresses and they are not interchangeable.Related
Bill payment lifecycle
What happens to a draft bill
Vendor portal connections
Collect invoices without waiting for email