How it works

An invoice arrives. It leaves checked, coded and approved.

Every bill is compared against what that vendor billed for that property before, and against your approval thresholds, on the way through. Everything here describes what the product does today, not what is planned.

Start free See pricing

The free plan processes 25 invoices a month with unlimited users, takes no credit card and does not expire. You get your own intake address at the end of setup.

Stage by stage

What happens at each step. And, where it matters, what it deliberately does not do.

01
Vendors email the invoice
FromBright Green Landscaping
Toharborview@yourco.inlet-ap.com
AttachedINV-4417.pdfReceived
In detail
Every organization gets its own intake domain.
Hand the address to your vendors, or auto-forward from the mailbox you already use — the invoice arrives as email, exactly as it does today.
- One catch-all address plus per-property mailboxes
- PDF, image file, photo and Office attachments, and invoices in the email body
- The same message arriving twice is refused at the door on a message-ID and raw-body key; matching on vendor, number, date and amount happens after extraction
- Auto-forward an existing address to a per-property mailbox and routing follows the mailbox
02
Fields come out with a confidence score
VendorBright Green Landscaping99%
Invoice #441799%
Total$1,595.0099%
Invoice dateJul 1598%
In detail
Vendor, invoice number, dates, totals, tax and line items are extracted per field — each one carrying a confidence score and the evidence it came from.
- Per-field confidence, not one score for the whole document
- “Why this value?” shows the text the model read
- Line-item totals are checked against the stated total and the variance is flagged
- Anything the model is unsure about is routed to a human instead of guessed at
03
Rules code it to the GL account and route it
Rule 2 · LandscapingMatched
Whenvendor is Bright Green Landscaping
Thenset GL account: Landscaping
PropertyHarborview Apartments
In detail
Map a source email to a vendor, a vendor to a default GL account, and an amount threshold to an approver.
Try a draft rule on a window of your recent invoices before you turn it on; it shows what the rule would do to them today.
Where one invoice covers several buildings, it is split here rather than retyped into a spreadsheet.
- Conditions on vendor, amount, property, sender and confidence
- Actions set coding, assign an approver, auto-approve or quarantine
- Rules run in order and every match is explained on the document
- Simulate is read-only — nothing is routed while you test
- One invoice splits across several properties by amount, percent, even share, unit count or square feet, and the split saves as a reusable template
04
A human sees only the exceptions
Invoice #441799%
Total$1,595.0099%
Tax$0.00?40%
Everything else is cleanNeeds review
In detail
Clean documents move straight to approval.
The review screen puts the original invoice next to the editable fields, so a correction is a glance and two keystrokes rather than re-keying the invoice.
- Split-pane: rendered document on the left, editable fields on the right
- Edits are tracked against what the model proposed
- ⌥S splits a line without leaving the keyboard; ⌘K jumps to any screen
- Sticky action bar: save, mark duplicate, request info, send to approval, or approve
- Ask the vendor for a corrected invoice from the review screen; when they reply, it arrives in the same workspace linked to the invoice it corrects
05
Approvals follow written policy
Up to $2,500 → Property manager$1,595.00
Over $2,500 → Controller
Written to the audit logAwaiting approval
In detail
Thresholds decide who signs off.
Approvers see why an invoice reached them, batch-approve what is routine, and every decision is written to the audit log with the comment attached.
- Amount tiers and per-property approvers, with low-confidence documents held in review before they reach the ladder
- SLA timers, with one overdue notification per invoice to everyone who subscribed to them
- Batch approve, with a comment required on rejection
- Every decision is attributable, and re-coding a signed invoice sends it back for approval
06
Approved bills post to your ledger
QuickBooks Online · BillPosted
VendorBright Green Landscaping
Amount$1,595.00
Class · GLHarborview · Landscaping
External IDrecorded on the document
In detail
Approved invoices post to the books you already keep — QuickBooks Online and Xero through direct connectors, or a CSV whose columns you define yourself for anything else.
Failed batches say what broke and retry without duplicating.
- QuickBooks Online bills with vendor, property class and GL account
- Xero bills with the supplier as a contact, an account code and its own tax on every line, and the source PDF attached where the invoice arrived with one
- A split invoice whose properties keep separate books posts as one bill per company or organization, and the export preview says how many before you press it
- A CSV export you map yourself: seven columns by default, up to 64, at document or allocation granularity
- External IDs recorded so a batch can be reconciled back to the document
- Retries are idempotent — a retry cannot double-post

To see stages 01 and 02 on an invoice of your own, email one vendor invoice to the Invoice Inbox Test and read the fields that come back. No account and no card.

Before the first invoice — optional

Set the portfolio up from a file. Not by typing it in.

Nothing here is required to start. Properties, units, vendors and entities, 5,000 rows per file — no invoices and no history.

1 · Match your columns

Prop CdCode

HV01 · MC02 · LS03

Three values from your file

2 · Read the preview

CreateProperty · Lakeshore
ChangeBright Green Landscaping · Payment terms~~Net 15~~ → Net 30
Error“Apex Plumbing” matches two records: Apex Plumbing Inc. and Apex Plumbing LLC

The preview writes nothing.

It matches on the same keys every time, so uploading the same file again updates what is there instead of creating it twice.

It is one file, read once at setup — not a connection to your property management system. You can also skip all of this and add properties and vendors as invoices arrive.

The steps in full

Export your property, unit, vendor or entity list from whatever you run today — or download the inletAP template, which describes every column and shows a filled example row.
Upload it as a .csv, or as an .xlsx workbook, which your browser converts to CSV before it is sent.
Match your columns to inletAP's fields once. Three real values out of your own file sit under each column name, so “Prop Cd” is recognizable before you commit to it.
Read the preview. Every row says whether it would create a record or change one, and a change lists each field with the old value beside the new.
A row that matches two existing records is reported as an error naming both, never guessed at. A required column nothing feeds makes the rows errors that name it, rather than rejecting your file.
Then import. It matches on the same keys every time, so uploading the same file again updates what is there instead of creating it twice.
5,000 rows per file. Properties, units, vendors and entities only — no invoices and no history.

The import preview writes nothing. It names every row it would create, every row it would change and, for a change, the old value beside the new one — and a row it cannot place, or could place two ways, is reported as an error naming both records rather than guessed at. That is the same promise this product makes at the other end of the pipeline: the export preview names the companies and the amounts before you press Export.

Most property management systems export through a report builder, so no two exports look alike — which is why the mapping step is the feature rather than a list of logos. You point each column in your file at the field it feeds, with three real values from your own file shown under each column name, and an unrecognized heading is ignored rather than fatal. What it is not: a connection to your property management system. inletAP reads a file you exported yourself, once, and nothing after that is kept in step — see which direction is which.

The honest part

What inletAP cannot do, stated up front. Where it starts, and where it stops.

Mail to your own domain
Your DNS and mail provider route it, not us. Auto-forward it to an inletAP mailbox.
inletAP
Receive, read, check, code, approve, post
Your ledger
QuickBooks Online, Xero or a CSV
Payment
No ACH or check disbursement rails, by design. Payment runs wherever it runs today.

The review screen

Extraction is not perfect on every vendor. So the review screen shows which field is unsure.

If a document reaches a person, the goal is that the correction takes seconds.

inletAP review screen: a GreenLeaf Landscaping grounds-care invoice rendered on the left, extracted fields on the right scored 99% for the invoice number, 98% for the due date, 97% for the purchase order, 99% for the total and 99% for the tax, with a note that the line items total $12,480.00 and matches the header total — and beneath them a coding section where the property reads 58% and the GL account 0%. — Marked Needs review because two fields are uncertain, not the whole document. The invoice covers three properties, so a single property guess reads 58% and the GL account has nothing behind it.Tap the image to open it full size.

What the screen gives you

Rendered document on the left with zoom and page navigation.
Editable fields on the right, grouped into vendor, header, amounts and coding.
A confidence chip on every field that has one.
“Why this value?” shows the text the value was read from.
Line-item totals checked against the stated total, with the variance named.
Edits tracked against what the model proposed, so corrections are visible.
Sticky action bar: save, mark duplicate, request info, send to approval, approve.
⌥S splits a line without leaving the keyboard.

When one invoice covers several buildings

Splitting happens on the document. Not in a spreadsheet.

Computed at stage 03, carried through approval, and settled at stage 06.

GreenLeaf Landscaping · grounds care

$12,480.00

One invoice, three properties.

Harborview Apartments$5,200.00Books: Harborview LLC
Maple Court$4,160.00Books: Maple Court LP
Lakeshore$3,120.00Books: Lakeshore Holdings

Adds up to the invoice total$12,480.00

Nothing saves until the remaining amount is exactly $0.00. Where the buildings keep separate books, it posts one bill per company.

How the split is computed

Properties named in the invoice text are matched against your property aliases and proposed as pre-filled rows, each with the exact text it was read from.
The split is computed by amount, percentage, even share, unit count or square footage, and nothing saves until the remaining amount is exactly $0.00.
The odd cent from a split three ways is given to a specific row by largest remainder and marked, rather than dropped or spread.
The split saves as a named template, optionally tied to that vendor, so next month is one action.
An approval can be scoped to one property's share, so a property manager signs for their own building.
At export, properties that keep separate books produce one QuickBooks bill per company, and the preview says how many before you press it.

How splitting works in detail — the five bases, the rounding rule, and the one QuickBooks setup where none of this is possible.

PricingPublished plans from free to $249/mo, unlimited users, per-invoice overage rates.IntegrationsYour ledger, your PMS by CSV, and how email intake is set up.Security & auditAccess control, the audit trail, and how documents are handled.

How it works — common questions

How do vendors know where to send invoices?

You tell them, the same way you told them the current address. Most companies do it in two waves: put the inletAP address on new purchase orders and vendor onboarding, and auto-forward the existing shared mailbox so nothing is missed while vendors update their records. Forward it to the mailbox that should handle it and the routing follows that mailbox.

Why can't inletAP just receive mail sent to invoices@mycompany.com?

Because the routing for a domain you own is controlled by your DNS and your mail provider, not by us. No third party can intercept it. What inletAP can do is receive mail on the domains it controls — your organization's *.inlet-ap.com subdomain. Point an auto-forward at one of those mailboxes and an address you already publish keeps working, with the destination mailbox deciding where the invoice goes.

What formats can it read?

PDFs, photos and images of paper invoices, common Office documents, and invoices typed into the body of an email with no attachment at all. Attachments are parsed out of the MIME structure on the server, so nobody downloads and re-uploads anything.

What does 'confidence' mean in practice?

Each extracted field carries its own score rather than the document carrying one. Any document whose vendor, number, date or total scores below 70% is sent to a human — a fixed bar rather than a dial to tune — and a value the model inferred rather than read is capped below that bar, so a guessed value cannot clear it on its own. Two other things route to review whatever the score says: a file we could not read at all, and an invoice whose property evidence was too weak to code on. A rule that quarantines a file holds it in its own state rather than in the review queue. An unmapped vendor and line items that do not sum to the stated total are caught later, at export, where the bill is parked instead of posted.

Can a rule approve an invoice without a person seeing it?

Not the rules engine — its “auto-approve” action sends a document straight to the approval queue instead of the review queue, so a person still signs it. What can approve without a person is a per-property auto-approve threshold: set a dollar amount on a building and that building's share of an invoice under it is signed off by the system when the invoice is sent for approval, and the decision is written to the audit log as a system actor.

We have hundreds of properties and units. Do we have to enter them by hand?

No. Export the property, unit, vendor or entity list from the system you already run — or fill in the inletAP spreadsheet template, which describes every column — and import the file. You match your columns to ours once, because most property management systems export through a report builder and no two exports look alike. This is a file you export yourself and we read once at setup. It is not a connection to your property management system, and nothing stays in step with it afterwards.

What if the spreadsheet is wrong?

You see it before it matters. The import preview writes nothing: it names every row it would create, every row it would change and, for a change, the old value beside the new one. A row it cannot place — or could place two ways — is reported as an error naming both records rather than guessed at, and a heading we do not recognize is listed and ignored rather than being treated as a reason to reject the file. Fix the spreadsheet and upload it again as often as you like. Importing writes in batches of 100 rows, so if a batch fails part-way the report says where it stopped and the rows before it stay saved — uploading the same file again finishes the job rather than duplicating it, because the import matches on the same keys every time.

What happens if extraction gets something wrong?

You correct it on the review screen and the edit is tracked against what the model proposed. Repeated corrections for the same vendor are the signal to add a mapping rule, which is usually a one-off fix rather than an ongoing cost.

Still deciding? Read the controller's view, the principal's view or the full FAQ, including the answers that rule inletAP out.

Start free and run your own invoices through it

25 invoices a month, unlimited users, no credit card. Send this month's vendor bills and watch each one get checked, coded and posted to your books.

Start free Talk to us first

An invoice arrives. It leaves checked, coded and approved.

What happens at each step. And, where it matters, what it deliberately does not do.

Vendors email the invoice

Fields come out with a confidence score

Rules code it to the GL account and route it

A human sees only the exceptions

Approvals follow written policy