Import Documents via Email: Attachments Automatically

Importing documents via email means: You connect the appropriate mailboxes of your company once – and incoming attachments such as invoices, delivery notes or contracts are then automatically transferred to your document storage. Manual “save attachment, rename, file away” is eliminated; ongoing document receipt becomes a supported workflow. documents serves as the gateway to your shared knowledge base: new documents follow a reliable intake process instead of ending up as individual files scattered across different mailboxes.

Why the inbox is often a documentation gap

Many business documents arrive by email today – and that is often where they stay. But an inbox is not a document repository: attachments are not part of your shared archive and must be searched for across long message threads. Emails can be deleted or mailboxes closed during personnel changes. If you want to automate your document storage, the ongoing mailbox intake represents a clearly defined starting point.

How to set up the import

In webRichtung documents you configure email import in three steps:

1. Connect the mailbox through which relevant documents arrive.
2. Define ongoing intake: Clearly determine which documents belong in storage.
3. Verify the result: New attachments then land in documents and are processed there.

You can add existing inventories later via upload or batch processing. What matters first is the ongoing intake: once the rule is set, documents handles this recurring task and keeps the result ready in storage. This keeps the initial step narrowly focused. You don’t need to clean up your entire legacy inventory beforehand or switch multiple intake paths simultaneously before the new workflow becomes effective in daily use.

What gets imported – and what doesn’t

• The focus is on document attachments transferred from the mailbox to storage.
• Ongoing intake follows the rule you set once rather than daily manual filing.
• Imported documents go into the workspace and are processed there.

Documents then remain findable through archive search, and you can move completed items into archive inventory. Upload, email import and batch processing all feed into the same document area. Statistics help you keep track of your inventory; for accounting documents, DATEV support continues the workflow.

Which mailboxes you should connect

Start with the functional mailboxes through which documents flow: invoicing@, accounting@, incoming@ or info@. Personal mailboxes can follow as needed – more important is your team rule that vendors send invoices to the functional address. This way documents handles the recurring intake without anyone having to file each attachment individually.

Tips for a clean start

• Start small: Connect just the invoicing mailbox first, observe the results for a week, then add further mailboxes.
• Handle legacy inventory separately: You pull older documents in later via upload or batch processing.
• Clearly define intake: If a mailbox also contains newsletters and internal mail, formulate a clear rule for relevant documents.
• Spot-check processing: Especially at the beginning, it’s worth checking whether needed documents arrive in storage.

The legal perspective

Email attachments such as invoices are documents subject to retention requirements; the mailbox itself typically does not meet the requirements for orderly, unchangeable retention. Automatic import closes exactly this gap. The article Archive emails in compliance with GoBD explains which emails should otherwise be retained.

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