Smart Inbox
Smart Inbox lets you forward expense receipts and PDF supplier invoices to Slonge Billing. Slonge creates drafts for you to review before saving or posting.
Supported core workflow
- Expense receipts from email text or image attachments → expense draft
- PDF supplier invoices with readable text → supplier-invoice draft
- Ambiguous messages → manual review
Other email workflows may be visible depending on configuration, but they are not part of the supported bookkeeping core. In particular, Smart Inbox does not currently process time entries or automatically archive general documents.
How it works
Forward email → route message → review draft → save, post, or discard
- Forward a receipt or supplier invoice to your personal inbox address.
- Slonge evaluates the subject, email text, and supported attachments.
- An expense or supplier-invoice draft is created.
- Review and complete the recognized details.
- Save, post, or discard the draft. Posting follows your tenant’s roles and permissions.
AI results may be incomplete or inaccurate. Smart Inbox does not replace professional review.
Setup
- Go to Settings > Smart Inbox.
- Activate Smart Inbox.
- Use the displayed personal address in this format:
inbox-{company-name}@inbox.slonge-billing.ch
Expense receipts
For expenses, Slonge first attempts to recognize details from the email text. If information is missing, a sufficiently large image may be processed as an AI-assisted recognition source.
Possible suggestions:
- amount and currency,
- date,
- vendor,
- description and category,
- expense account,
- VAT code.
Suggestions are stored in a draft. Check the amount, date, account, and VAT code in particular.
Foreign currencies
The original amount is retained for foreign-currency receipts. When posting, Slonge can retrieve a CHF rate for the receipt date. If no rate is available, review or complete the conversion.
Supplier invoices
The supported workflow requires an email with a readable PDF invoice. Slonge uses local text extraction and, when AI is available for the plan, may additionally analyze the extracted PDF text.
Possible fields:
- invoice number,
- issue and due dates,
- amount, currency, and VAT amount,
- vendor.
Unrecognized details remain empty or receive a technical fallback value. Review the draft and original PDF before approval.
Attachments become receipts
Every attachment that qualifies is attached to the created entry as its own receipt — with its own filename, format and size. An email with three PDF invoices therefore produces three receipts, not one.
Not every attachment is a receipt. Slonge selects as follows:
| Attachment | Becomes a receipt? |
|---|---|
| ✅ — every PDF in the email | |
| Images | ✅ — but only when the email contains no PDF |
| Images embedded in the email body (signature logo, dividers, tracking pixels) | ❌ — they belong to the layout, not to the receipt |
| Images under 20 KB | ❌ — too small to be a receipt |
| Other formats (e.g. Word, ZIP) | ❌ |
Further limits:
- At most 10 receipts per email. If more would qualify, the rest are not attached and the inbox records on the email how many they were.
- At most 10 MB per attachment. An oversized or unsupported attachment fails on its own: the other attachments of the same email are still attached, and the reason is recorded on the email in the inbox.
The AI still reads only one attachment — the first PDF, otherwise the first image. Attaching more receipts therefore costs no additional AI calls. The remaining attachments are stored and available as receipts on the entry.
Adding receipts retroactively
Emails processed before this change kept at most one attachment. The original files are still stored, so the missing receipts can be added afterwards.
On the entry in question, click Re-attach documents in the inbox. You then see how many receipts were added. The same action is available through the API:
POST /api/inbox/{id}/reattach
The action applies the same selection to the stored attachments and attaches whatever is missing. It is idempotent: a receipt that is already present is skipped, never duplicated. It requires the accountant or administrator role and reports how many receipts were added, skipped or refused.
Control and permissions
The inbox shows recognized fields and possible account and VAT suggestions. You can:
- save the draft,
- post an expense with the required permission,
- or discard the draft.
Expense posting is role-protected. Configurable auto-approval values are not currently used for automatic posting.
Restricting senders
Settings can contain permitted email addresses or domains. This whitelist supplements the protection of the personal inbox address. Keep it correctly formatted and review processing regularly.
Privacy
Depending on the document, the following may be sent to OpenAI:
- selected email content,
- receipt images,
- text read from PDF invoices.
This content may include personal and financial data. Forward only business documents whose processing is permitted and consult the privacy policy. Slonge stores the incoming email, processing data, and attachments for the inbox workflow; do not assume that emails are deleted immediately after processing.
Getting good results
- Use PDF for supplier invoices.
- Send one invoice per email where possible.
- Use a descriptive subject.
- Use readable images rather than small previews or signature logos.
- Compare every draft with the original.
Troubleshooting
No draft was created
- Check that Smart Inbox is active.
- Check whether the sender is on the whitelist.
- Use a readable PDF or image.
- Start processing again from the inbox.
Wrong routing or missing details
- Open the draft and correct the fields manually.
- Use a clearer subject.
- Send a readable PDF rather than a blurred image.
Corrections do not currently train a tenant-specific learning model.