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AP Emails

Stop typing in vendor invoices. Each business gets a unique inbox address (for example acme@dayzeromail.com). Forward invoices there, or have vendors send them there, and DayZero's AI reads the PDF or email body, identifies the vendor, extracts amounts and dates, and drops a draft bill into the Bill Inbox for review. Nothing posts to your books until you click Create bill, and the original email and attachments stay linked to whatever you create.

Key capabilities

  • A unique per-business address shown in the page header as Forward bills to (with Copy); owners and admins can create the address if the business has none yet
  • Inbound emails are received, stored, and read by AI in the background, with attachments processed in parallel
  • Per-email extraction of bills, purchase orders, and customer invoices; vendors and customers it spots are listed as Also mentioned
  • Vendor matching with a Search or create vendor field, plus a warning when a bill looks like a duplicate (same bill number, or same vendor and amount)
  • Split a bill across several expense accounts with Split across accounts
  • Due dates re-anchored to the date received when your Payment terms count from setting says so
  • Review tabs Pending, Reviewed, Rejected, and All, each with a live count, plus search by subject or sender and bulk Mark reviewed / Reject
  • Each row shows the vendor, amount, due date, and how many bills are created (for example "1 of 2 created")
  • Read again when the AI could not read an email, and per-attachment notes for files it could not open
  • Enter vendor credit to record a vendor's credit note
  • Keyboard shortcuts: j / k next and previous, r mark reviewed, x reject, Esc close
  • The original email body, attachments, and a downloadable zip stay on every record

How it works

The email is received and stored, which triggers background processing: it is parsed, AI extraction runs, and drafts are saved for your review before any bill is created.

sequenceDiagram
  participant V as "Vendor / you"
  participant IN as "Secure intake"
  participant BG as "Background processing"
  participant AI as "AI extraction"
  participant U as "Bill Inbox review"
  V->>IN: "Forward invoice"
  IN->>BG: "New email event"
  BG->>AI: "Parse email + attachments"
  AI-->>BG: "Draft bills / POs"
  BG-->>U: "Notify: ready to review"

How to use it

  1. Open the Bill Inbox and copy the address next to Forward bills to. If the page says the business has no inbox address, an owner or admin can click Create inbox address.
  2. Forward a vendor invoice to that address, or set an auto-forward rule in your email client.
  3. While the AI reads it the row shows Reading; when it finishes you get a notification and the email appears under Pending.
  4. Open the email. Each Bill to create card shows editable description, bill number, amount, due date, invoice date, vendor, and expense account, next to the source document.
  5. Confirm the vendor and expense account (or click Split across accounts), then click Create bill. Skip sets a card aside and Undo brings it back. A detected purchase order has Create purchase order.
  6. Click Mark reviewed (or Reject; Move to Pending reverses either), or tick several rows and use the bulk buttons. The download button saves the original email and attachments as a zip.

Pro tips

  • Create bill needs a vendor, a positive amount, and an expense account; the button lists what is missing under it. Split lines must add up to the bill amount.
  • With AP approval off, Create bill posts a Received bill and its journal entry immediately, so set the Invoice date correctly (the entry date follows it; override it under Posting date only if your accounting period requires). With approval on, the bill goes to Pending Approval instead.
  • If an email came back empty or wrong, check its Email and Attachments sections, click Read again, or reject it and enter the bill by hand with Create Bill on Bills.
  • Confirm the matched vendor before creating, so spend does not split across near-duplicate records. A red "looks like a bill you already have" banner means the bill number already exists.
  • Emails that contain nothing to process (notices, receipts) are hidden from the tabs; the footer of the list shows how many and a Show link.
  • Share the one business address with vendors rather than forwarding from personal inboxes. Plus-addressing such as acme+bills@dayzeromail.com reaches the same inbox.
  • A customer invoice found in an AP email is shown for context only; create it from Receivables.

In-depth guide

Mailbox and routing

  • Mail is matched to a business by the mailbox name in a DayZero inbox address (To, Cc, or a forwarding header such as Delivered-To). An address on another domain, like ap@yourcompany.com, never matches on its own name.
  • If no inbox address matches, DayZero falls back to the sender, but only when the sender's domain passed email authentication and the sender belongs to exactly one business. Otherwise the email is skipped.
  • Duplicate deliveries of the same message are detected and skipped, so one invoice is not drafted twice.

AI extraction and review

  • For each detected bill, AI extracts vendor, amount, due date, bill number, and description, and matches vendor and expense account when it can. Low-confidence matches are left blank so you choose.
  • Attachments that cannot be read (password-protected, unsupported type, too large, empty) are listed in the email's notice, and low-confidence reads are flagged "hard to read".
  • Create bill creates the bill and its AP journal entry (or sends the bill to Pending Approval when AP approval is on) and links the draft to it. Conversion is locked per draft, so double-clicking cannot create two bills.
  • An email can finish with no detected entities. It still lands in the inbox with its body and attachments; use Read again or reject it.

Where it fits

  • Drafts become Bills, which feed AP aging and, when enabled, the AP Approval Workflow. Contract comparison runs against Vendor Contracts.