The Inbox allows you to receive all your bills and supporting documents in one place with unlimited storage to save time and increase efficiency.
Once documents have been added to the Inbox, they can be used to create new or associate to existing bills, invoices, payments received, vendors or customers.
A unique Inbox email address will be generated, which can be provided to vendors and customers so they can email bills and invoices directly into the account for processing.
All users can upload to the Inbox, but only users with Use Inbox permissions can setup the Inbox, and see or process documents after uploading
Jump to:
- Set or change your inbox email address
- Set or change your inbox preferences
- User roles with permissions to view and manage documents
- Bring in documents
- Supported file formats
- Process documents from the Inbox
- Delete documents from the inbox
- View documents in history, restore, or unassociate
- Order a backup DVD of all documents
- Troubleshoot issues uploading a file to the inbox
- Handle spam in your inbox
- Things to know
Set or change your inbox email address
By default, the inbox email address will be companyname@bill.com. For example: Acme and Company will be assigned the inbox email address acmeandcompany@bill.com. You can update the Inbox email address by taking the following steps:
- Select Inbox in the navigation menu
- Under Upload a bill, select edit next to the current inbox email address
- Enter the new inbox email address, using a minimum of eight (8) characters in front of the @bill.com domain
- Select Save
Provide this email address to your vendors so bills can now be sent directly to the Bill.com account.
Edit your inbox email address
From the inbox page
- Select Edit next to the current inbox email address
- Enter new inbox email prefix
- Select Save
Note: documents sent to your old inbox address won't forward to the new one after you change the address
Set or change your inbox preferences
Grid view and List view
You can switch between grid view and list view in your inbox at any time by selecting the view name you'd prefer in the top right corner of the inbox. Check out the differences between the two here.
Emails
After uploading or receiving your first document, you'll see an inbox preference popup, asking how you'd like to handle incoming emails that have a message in the email body (you can change this later if needed, steps below).
- Bring attachments and email messages into the inbox as individual documents: emails with content in the body will be in the inbox as separate documents
- Use this setting if you receive documents, invoices, or bills embedded in the email body
- Only bring in attachments (disregard email messages): anything entered into the body of the email will be ignored, and only attached documents will be shown in your inbox
- Emails received with no attachments will be shown in the inbox.
Attachments
The first time you select Enter Bill on a document with more than one page, you'll see the option to select your preference to attach all pages, or just the first page of multi-page documents to bills by default.
Edit your preferences at any time
- On the Inbox page, select the inbox gear icon, it should be next to the inbox email address
- Edit your preferences:
- Emails
- Keep both email messages and attachments: emails with content in the body will be in the inbox as separate documents
- Use this setting if you receive documents, invoices, or bills embedded in the email body
- Keep only attachments: anything entered into the body of the email will be ignored, and only attached documents will be shown in your inbox
- Keep both email messages and attachments: emails with content in the body will be in the inbox as separate documents
- Attachments
- Include only the first page of an attachment
- Include all pages of an attachment
- Emails
- Select Save
User roles with permissions to view and manage documents
The following roles have permission to view documents:
- Administrator
- Accountant
- Payer
- Clerk
Of these four (4) roles that can view documents, the following can also manage documents:
- Administrators
- Accountants
- Clerks
The role of Approver doesn't have permission to view or manage documents.
The role of Payer can view documents, but not manage them.
For more information about Users and Roles, review the list of Roles in your account:
- Select Settings
- We're currently rolling out a fresh new look for our Settings page, so you may see one of 2 designs. Please follow the steps that match what your Settings page looks like.
Select Roles under Permissions if your Settings page looks like this:
Select Roles under Roles & Permissions if your Settings page looks like this:
- Select a User Role to view the permissions
Bring in documents
All users can upload documents to the inbox, but only users with Use Inbox permissions can see or process those documents after uploading.
You can bring documents into the Bill.com inbox four (4) different ways:
Email: Email the document to the Bill.com inbox email address
Drag and drop: Locate the document on your computer and drag the document into the Drag and drop box
Browse your computer: Select Browse your computer, locate and select the document, select Open
Bill.com Mobile App: Take a picture of your document and tap Upload To Inbox
Fax: Fax the document(s) to the inbox fax number
The time and date each document arrived to the inbox will on the top right of each document
Supported file formats
Documents can be stored as any file format in Bill.com. The file types that will show a preview in your inbox are:
- Adobe PDF (version 5.0 or later)
- If the pdf is password protected, a preview won't be available. We suggest not using password protected files as a best practice.
- Microsoft Word (version 97 & 2003 or later)
- PowerPoint (version 97; 2003 or later)
- Excel (version 97; 2003 or later)
- .txt
- .png
- .jpg
- .gif
There are times when a PDF doesn't display an image. We work with a 3rd-party vendor to process this image conversion and will continue to improve the process so that the impact of this issue is limited.
- Document needs to be less than 25MB in size
- For files up to 250 pages, preview will show 250 pages
- For files with more than 250 pages, no preview will be displayed
- Documents/attachments can be stripped of data when they're auto forwarded to the inbox. It's recommended to email the document directly to the inbox.
- Any files arriving to the inbox as logo type files will be filtered to the inbox history tab
Process documents from the inbox
There are multiple options when processing a document from the Bill.com inbox.
Create a new
- Bill
- Vendor credit
- Payment received
- New document for
- Company
- Account
- Customer
- Invoice
- Payment received
- Vendor
Add to an existing
- Bill
- Vendor Credit
- Vendor document
- Company document
Bills detected by Intelligent Virtual Assistant
Once the documents start coming into the Inbox, Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) will try to detect and pre-populate some of the information for a bill from the document.
Select Review and save on those documents IVA was able to read to review the bill details we found, edit as needed, and save.
If we're confident enough in the IVA-detected details of a bill, you'll see bill details and an option to Quick Save the bill right on the document in the inbox. Select Save to save the bill as is, or select Edit to make changes and save.
Document order and splitting
Scan multiple invoices for different vendors all at once. Separate them as you create bills:
Select the document you'd like to use in your inbox
- If this a multi-page document and you haven't set a default preference, you'll see a pop up to set your preference to attach all pages by default, or just the first page. You can set your selection to be the default, and this can be changed later.
- You select which pages to include by selecting All or None next to associate to bill to include all/none, or check the box per page to select individual pages
- Check Associate to bill for each page you'd like to include
- Any pages not included will be available to use later
Select the action you'd like to take:
- Select Enter Bill to create a new bill
- Select another option to select Add to Existing bill, New document, etc.
- Select Add to recent to quickly associate one or more pages to one of the last 5 most recently created bills.
Complete bill details (or document, etc.)
Select Save and close, or Save and next if creating a bill
- Select save and next to save a bill, and the next unassociated page will open in the bill creation window
- If all pages have been associated, the next unprocessed document in your inbox will open
Reorder document pages on a bill
Once you have saved a bill, you can edit that bill and reorder the pages within the attachment if needed:
- Use arrows to move selected pages up or down
- Drag to re-order the pages
- Enter a page # to move the selected page to the right order
- Select Apply to see the re-order reflected immediately.
Delete documents from the inbox
When deleting documents from the inbox, we'll ask you to confirm you'd like to delete the item, but you can select not to have to see that confirmation each time if you'd like.
Delete inbox items
Select one or multiple items to delete, and select Delete.
Delete a page from a multi-page document
Enter the page number or navigate to the page with the arrows and select the trash can icon to delete the page.
Delete an attachment
If you have your inbox set to list view and want to delete an attachment from an email with multiple attachments, select the attachment thumbnail and then the trash can icon on the attachment.
View documents in history, restore, or unassociate
Every document to ever arrive to the Inbox is stored in Inbox history, regardless if it was subsequently deleted, added to a bill, etc. Documents can't be permanently deleted from history. You can restore (undelete) these documents, or remove them from a bill, vendor, etc. (unassociate) from the Inbox history, which will move the document back to the Inbox for processing.
Note: You must have Use Inbox permissions to view and edit documents in the Inbox, or Inbox history
In Bill.com:
- Select Inbox
- Select the caret arrow next to Unprocessed and select History
This view displays the Files History, which lists every document sent to the Bill.com Inbox, again, including deleted documents. Also show are the details including: Added By (user, email address, etc.) File Name, Added On (date), number of pages, and File Size. From either view, you can then filter the view to see a specific time period:
- To restore the document, select on the document name, and undelete:
- To remove the document from a bill or record, select on the document name, and unassociate:
Order a backup DVD of all documents
A backup copy of the data in the Bill.com account is available by request from an Administrator on the Bill.com account. A DVD of data contains bill documents and canceled checks that have been processed in Bill.com.
Cost and shipping details
The cost is $50.00 per Bill.com account for records on DVD. The order typically ships from Bill.com within 14 business days of the request. However, due to shelter-in-place orders tied to the current COVID-19 pandemic, please plan for delays in the processing of your DVD order requests.
When the DVD order is received, a charge is processed to the credit card associated with the Bill.com account.
Before you order
To make sure the information for your DVD is correct:
- Process all documents in the Bill.com Inbox
- Confirm that all check payments have cleared
- Confirm that the check images have been uploaded to the Bill.com account
Ordering instructions
Select this link to open the DVD Order form to submit your request.
Note: The request must be submitted by an Administrator on the Bill.com account.
What is included on the DVD
The following sections are sorted by create date:
- Vendor & Customer Bills & Invoices: Original File, Created Date, Vendor, Invoice Number, Amount (in the original format it was uploaded)
- Vendor Credits: Original File, Created Date, Vendor, Ref Number, Amount (in the original format it was uploaded)
- Checks Images: Vendor Name, Payment Amount, Check Number, Check Date (in PDF format)
How the data is presented on the DVD
- To access the information on the DVD, a randomly-generated password is emailed to the requesting Administrator on the request ticket when the DVD is shipped
- Files are sent in compressed .zip files, you'll need a program that can open those types of files
- One Folder for Documents
- One Folder for Cleared Checks
- Index (searchable links to documents)
Troubleshoot issues uploading a file to the inbox
Any file sent to the Bill.com Inbox must be smaller than 25 MB. If a file is larger than 25MB, look at ways to reduce its size before sending the file to the Bill.com Inbox.
Common issues and suggested solutions
If a pdf is password protected, a preview won't be available, and the file itself may not be accessible. We suggest not using password protected files as a best practice.
Review the file to see if it's unnecessarily high-definition or has dimensions that are needlessly large. Consider reducing the resolution to maintain a reasonable fidelity, but allows for a reduction in the file size.
By default, most scanners will scan documents at 300 DPI (Dots Per Inch). Depending on the number of pages, this can create a file size greater than 25MB. Decreasing the scanner's DPI setting to 100 DPI will create smaller files without a loss of quality.
Check the file for images. Too many images can dramatically increase the file size of a document. Consider removing unnecessary images or pages from the document to reduce the file size.
Review the file for color. If possible, try scanning in black and white rather than color. This will reduce file size.
Review the number of pages. There may be a large number of pages in the file. You may need to split the document into multiple documents so that each set of pages is below the 25MB limit. You can then add multiple documents to a customer, vendor, or bill.
Review the file type. Generally speaking, files meeting the above criteria that are of types: .pdf, Word files (.doc, .docx, etc), Excel files (.xls .csv, etc), .txt, .gif, .png, .jpg, and .jpeg will reliably upload.
Handle spam in your inbox
To ensure that all documents are delivered into the Bill.com Inbox, we don't filter any emails sent to the Inbox email address. If spam arrives in the Bill.com Inbox, you can attempt to unsubscribe from future emails. Mark it as spam and we'll make attempts to limit these emails in the future.
Mark an Inbox item as Spam
- On the Inbox page, select the checkbox for the document to mark as Spam
- Select Spam
- Select Delete
Tip to prevent spam
An Inbox email address with a single simple word, for instance Payables@bill.com, tends to be easy for spammers to find and add to their blasts. To reduce the chance of spammers blasting messages to the Bill.com Inbox, we recommend using a more complex Inbox email address that's unique to your company, but still familiar to your vendors and customers. You can update the Inbox email address to something specific, like YourcompanyPayables@bill.com. The Inbox email address must have at least eight characters in front of the @bill.com domain. Ideally, your company's Bill.com Inbox email address will have even more characters than that, adding to the complexity.
Things to know
- Users without Use Inbox permissions will see the inbox, but it'll be a limited view. They can browse and upload, drag and drop, or email documents to the inbox. Once uploaded, they won't see the document in the inbox, but a message that lets them know the document was uploaded successfully. Users with permissions can then process the document as needed.
- Bill.com allows for each document to be associated with one bill or item only. If needing to create multiple bills with the same document, send the same document to the Bill.com Inbox multiple times for each bill as needed.
