> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://zenofirm.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Process bills, receipts, and statements

> Add documents to the inbox, assign the client, and prepare bookkeeping work from the evidence.

Start on **Inbox** when a bill, receipt, or statement needs bookkeeping work.
Upload the file or forward the email, assign it to the right company, and ask
your assistant to prepare the proposed entries for review. Adding a document
does not post it to QuickBooks.

## Before you start

Check that the company is connected and that you can identify which client
the document belongs to. Use a readable file with the full date, amount,
and supplier details. Keep uncertain documents unassigned until you know
whose books they belong to.

## Getting documents in

Two ways: forward the mail, or upload the file. Either way the document lands
on the **Inbox** page, waiting for somebody to say whose books it belongs to.

## Forward by email

Every firm has its own inbox address. It is printed at the top of the
console's **Inbox** page, with a **Copy** button beside it. It is your firm's
name followed by a short code:

```
harbor-books.7kq2m9xw4p@in.zenofirm.com
```

Anything sent to that address arrives in your inbox within a minute or so.
Each attachment becomes its own document, filed under the sender's address
and the mail's subject.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Forward the mail">
    Forward a bill, receipt or statement from your own mailbox to the inbox
    address, with the attachment on it. Several attachments on one mail are
    fine: each one becomes a document.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Open the Inbox page">
    The documents show under **Waiting**, marked *by email* with the address
    they came from. A forwarded document does not know which client it is
    for, so it arrives unassigned.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Say whose books it is">
    Pick the client in the **Company** column and the kind of evidence in
    **Kind**, or ask your assistant to sort the inbox for you.
  </Step>
</Steps>

### Clients can send to it directly

Give clients the address and they can send their bills straight in, with no
forward through you. They should save it as a contact, because nobody types
it twice. The address only lets someone put a document in your inbox, where
a person reads it before anything is done with it. It cannot read your inbox,
sign in, or reach anybody's books.

### A forwarding rule

To send a whole mailbox's bills without forwarding them by hand, set up a
forwarding rule to the inbox address, in Gmail, Outlook or anywhere else.
Rules that match only the mail you want (from a vendor, or with *invoice* in
the subject) keep the inbox from filling with newsletters.

Gmail checks that you own an address before it will forward to it. It mails
a confirmation code to the address you entered, and that mail lands in your
Zeno inbox as a text document. Open it on the **Inbox** page, copy the code
back into Gmail, and then dismiss the document.

### What is kept

* **Attachments.** Each becomes a document. PDFs and images open right on the
  page.
* **The mail's words, when there is nothing attached.** A client's
  instructions are evidence too, so a mail with no attachment is kept as a
  text document named after its subject.
* **Not signatures and logos.** Pictures placed in the body of a mail, rather
  than attached to it, are dropped, because a company footer is not a bill.
  If a phone puts a photo of a receipt in the body, send it as an attachment.
* **Only document files.** Zeno keeps PDFs, photos and scans (JPEG, PNG,
  HEIC, TIFF and the like), CSV and OFX statement exports, IIF files, `.xlsx`
  and `.docx`, plain text, and emails saved as `.eml`. Anything else is
  refused: programs, scripts, `.zip` and other archives, and the Office
  formats that can carry macros (`.xls`, `.xlsm`, `.doc`, `.docm`). The
  mail's words are still kept, as a text document that names each file it
  refused and why, so nothing arrives and vanishes. Send the PDFs themselves
  instead of a zip, so each one can be read and coded on its own, and save an
  old spreadsheet as `.xlsx` or PDF.
* **Nothing the malware scanner flags.** Every file is scanned before it is
  kept. A flagged file is never stored, and the text document names it too.

One mail can be up to 35 MB, attachments included, and a firm takes up to
1,000 documents by mail a day.

### If the address gets out

The address is not a password, but it does let whoever has it put documents
in your inbox. If it ends up somewhere it should not be and junk starts
arriving, an owner or operator can press **Replace** beside it on the
**Inbox** page. The old address stops working at once, and mail sent to it
afterwards is not delivered. Send the new address to every client
and forwarding rule that used the old one.

## Upload them

The **Add documents** button on the **Inbox** page takes files directly: the
statement you just downloaded, or the scan somebody handed you. You can pick
several at once, up to 15 MB each. A file whose bytes are already in the inbox still uploads,
with a note that it may be the same document twice.

If the malware scanner is briefly unreachable when a file arrives, the file
is kept rather than refused, and its row on the **Inbox** page says it was
not scanned. Open it with the same care you would give any attachment.

<Note>
  Every file is checked twice before it is kept: it has to be one of the
  document types above, and it is scanned for malware. A file that fails
  either check is never stored, however it arrived: forwarded, uploaded, or
  sent by a client. Everything the console shows in place is drawn from a short
  list of known-safe types — images, PDFs, plain text — and only when the
  file's contents really are that type; everything else is handed back as a
  download.
</Note>

<img src="https://mintcdn.com/zenofirm/VfRuieValpxF_E2q/images/illustrations/cloud/safe-type-gate.svg?fit=max&auto=format&n=VfRuieValpxF_E2q&q=85&s=b2419d1ddd4c22362c1afb10774559ee" alt="Safe MIME Type Gate" width="600" height="420" data-path="images/illustrations/cloud/safe-type-gate.svg" />

## Working the inbox

A document arriving knows nothing about itself. Two facts make it useful:

* **Whose books.** Which client company it belongs to. A document that has not
  been assigned shows under *Inbox — unassigned* on **Today**.
* **What kind of evidence.** A bill, a receipt, a statement, an invoice, or
  other.

Assigning is not resolving. The document stays in the inbox until somebody
says the work is done.

## Reading one

Images and PDF pages come back to look at; text files come back as text. That
is what lets an agent read a bill and propose the posting for it, and what lets
a reviewer check the proposal against the document without leaving the page.

## Resolving

A document leaves the inbox one of two ways:

* **Against the plan that carries its work.** This is the audit path: from a
  posting, to the run that made it, to the plan it came from, to the document
  it came from. Six weeks later that path is the answer to "why is this here?"
* **As needing none.** A duplicate, a statement already imported, a message
  that turned out to be a question.

<img src="https://mintcdn.com/zenofirm/VfRuieValpxF_E2q/images/illustrations/cloud/document-evidence-path.svg?fit=max&auto=format&n=VfRuieValpxF_E2q&q=85&s=10c98bd1b3fbfb6622704744de0adc3a" alt="Document Evidence Path" width="600" height="420" data-path="images/illustrations/cloud/document-evidence-path.svg" />

Both are decisions and both leave a trace. Nothing is deleted to tidy the
queue.

### How long files are kept

A document dismissed as needing no work keeps its file for **90 days** after
it was dismissed, so a dismissal made by mistake can still be undone. After
that the file itself is deleted, and the record stays: the name, who sent it,
when, and why it was dismissed. The **Dismissed** list shows when the file
went.

The same happens to a client's documents 90 days after you remove the client
from Zeno, unless you add the client back first. A document that was used for
a posting is never deleted: it is the evidence the posting points to.

## Receipts

A receipt is a document with a specific job: proving a card charge. Rather than
filing it by hand, have the assistant score it against the unlinked charges on
the firm's expense cards — see [expense claims](/docs/cloud/expenses#receipts).

After a claim posts, the same document is what Zeno attaches to the
QuickBooks transaction, so the evidence rides with the posting in the client's
own ledger as well as in yours.

## Statements

A bank or card statement in the inbox does not have to be re-uploaded to be
imported. Point [the queue](/docs/cloud/bank-feeds) at the document already
sitting there.

The tools behind this page are listed under [the firm
inbox](/docs/cloud/tools#the-firm-inbox).


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