Automatic email attachment filing: without manual work

Automatic email attachment filing means this: you connect your mailbox once with your document storage – from that point on, incoming attachments such as invoices, delivery notes, and contracts are automatically imported and made available for further processing. This eliminates the repetitive manual saving and filing work as a shared responsibility. What matters is not the individual import function, but the result: receipts move from your transient mailbox into a shared document inventory that your team can find again through archive search.

Why manual filing fails

Many business documents today arrive as email attachments – especially invoices. The manual process behind this is long and full of gaps: open email, save attachment, name it sensibly, place it in the right folder, mark email as done. Any step can be skipped, and one is enough: the invoice stays in a colleague’s mailbox and is missing at the next accounting run. As document volume grows, so does filing effort.

How automatic import works

With email import in webRichtung documents, setup runs in three steps:

1. Connect your mailbox through which the relevant documents arrive.
2. Set up ongoing receipt: clearly define which receipts belong in documents.
3. Check results – new attachments then land automatically in storage and are processed further from there.

The most important effect lies in the result: repetitive saving and filing becomes a shared workspace. Email import transfers document attachments from the ongoing incoming flow, while you find the archive inventory through search. Alongside email import, browser upload and batch processing remain as additional documented entry paths. This way you can feed both ongoing receipts and existing inventory into the same knowledge repository without creating separate storages for them.

Which mailboxes work best

The effect is clearest with mailboxes that have high document volume:

• accounting@ / invoice@ – the classic: supplier invoices run fully automatically into the archive
• info@ – the collection point where receipts otherwise get lost among inquiries
• Incoming mailboxes for individual departments – for example, purchase confirmations in procurement

You connect your organization’s mailboxes centrally through integrations in core. You can reach these same mailboxes in webRichtung inbox together with your connected messaging channels. core provides the shared data foundation, inbox handles work with email and messaging, and documents handles the imported document incoming flow. The modules remain separate entry points but work toward the same operational context.

From attachment to archived document

After import, documents land first in the workspace and are processed. The platform makes them discoverable for your document inventory and keeps completed items findable through archive search. This way, a scattered email attachment becomes reliably available company knowledge instead of a file sitting in a mailbox. The statistics in documents complement your overview of this workspace. For accounting receipts, documented DATEV support and batch assignment are also available.

For retention, documents offers an archive inventory with archive search. The account is free with no base fee; after self-registration you have 7.5 Credits of test budget available, then you pay for completed work. One Credit equals one euro net. You’ll find setup details in the documentation, and the full picture in the article Connect your mailbox, file attachments automatically.

This article provides general information and does not replace legal or tax advice.