Invoice Inbox & Coding

Overview

The Invoice Inbox is where all incoming vendor invoices land and are processed in Spendflo. Every invoice — whether it arrived by email, was uploaded directly, or came from cloud storage — passes through a structured three-stage pipeline: triage, extraction, and vendor matching. Once processed, each invoice is routed to one of three statuses: Confirmed, Needs Review, or Rejected.

Finance Executives manage invoices from the Invoice Inbox — reviewing flagged items, resolving vendor mismatches, and confirming or rejecting invoices before they become bills.

Who Is This For?

Audience	What they do here
Finance Executives	Review Needs Review invoices, correct vendor matches, resolve duplicates, confirm or reject invoices
Admins	Configure invoice inboxes, manage connected integrations, review confidence threshold calibration

Key Concepts

Term	Definition
Invoice	A document received from a vendor requesting payment for goods or services delivered
Confirmed	An invoice where all required fields were extracted with high confidence and no issues were detected — auto-processed or manually confirmed
Needs Review	An invoice where one or more required fields are below confidence threshold, a potential duplicate was detected, or vendor matching was ambiguous
Rejected	An invoice that is a confirmed duplicate, has confidence below 50%, or contains no recognisable invoice data
Confidence Score	A 0–100% rating for how certain the AI is about the value extracted for each field
Extraction	The AI process of reading invoice documents and pulling out structured data fields
Vendor Matching	The process of identifying which vendor in Spendflo sent this invoice
Duplicate Detection	Identifying whether the same invoice has been received before

How Invoices Enter the Inbox

Invoices arrive through four channels:

Channel	How it works
Email Inbox	Vendors send invoices to your dedicated Spendflo inbox address (e.g. invoice-uswest@accessbe.spendflo.com). Spendflo monitors the inbox automatically.
Direct Upload	A Finance Executive uploads a PDF, DOCX, XLSX, or image file directly from the Invoice page.
Cloud Storage	Invoices are dropped into a connected folder (Google Drive, Box, Dropbox). Spendflo picks them up automatically.
Vendor Portal	A vendor logs into Spendflo and uploads invoices directly. Vendor identity is already known — matching is skipped.

Note: For email and cloud storage channels, invoices are processed automatically in the background. You do not need to trigger anything — invoices appear in the inbox once processing is complete.

The AI Processing Pipeline

Every invoice passes through three sequential stages before appearing in the inbox:

Stage 1 — Triage (Email only)

Spendflo evaluates each email before processing its contents. This prevents spam, marketing emails, payment reminders, and non-invoice documents from clogging the inbox.

Clear non-invoices → discarded (not shown in inbox)
Possible invoices → proceed to extraction
Ambiguous emails → proceed to extraction conservatively

Stage 2 — Extraction

Spendflo reads the invoice document and extracts all structured fields. Supported formats: native PDF, scanned PDF (via OCR), Word, Excel, CSV, and plain-text email body.

Extracted fields include:

Vendor Information: Vendor name, TIN/EIN, address, email, phone
Invoice Header: Invoice number, invoice date, due date, PO number, payment terms, total, currency
Line Items: Item name, description, quantity, unit price, discount
Payment Information: Bank account, routing number, IFSC/ACH
Bill-to Information: Company name, contact, address

Each field receives a confidence score. Fields with high confidence are auto-confirmed; those below the threshold are flagged in amber or red for review.

Stage 3 — Vendor Matching & Routing

Spendflo identifies which vendor sent the invoice using a layered strategy:

Layer	Method
Exact Identifier	Tax ID, bank account, vendor portal ID
Name Matching	Fuzzy match against all vendor names including legal variants and abbreviations
Domain Matching	Sender email domain matched against known vendor domains (billing platforms like Bill.com excluded)
Vendor Identity Graph	A structured lookup built from past confirmed human corrections
AI Fallback	LLM reasoning over current signals and past correction history when all deterministic layers fail

After matching, every invoice is routed to: Confirmed · Needs Review · Rejected

Invoice Statuses

Status	What it means	What triggers it
Confirmed	All required fields extracted at ≥80% confidence, vendor matched, no duplicates detected	Auto-confirmed by pipeline, or manually confirmed by Finance Executive
Needs Review	One or more required fields below threshold, OR potential duplicate detected, OR vendor match is ambiguous	AI routing or pipeline override condition
Rejected	Confirmed duplicate, confidence <50%, or file contains no recognisable invoice data	Pipeline auto-rejection or Finance Executive manual rejection

Invoice List — Tabs and Filters

Tabs

The invoice list has status tabs for fast filtering:

All — every invoice regardless of status
Needs Review — invoices requiring Finance Executive action
Confirmed — successfully processed invoices
Rejected — rejected invoices with rejection reasons

Search

Search by vendor name (partial match) or invoice number (partial match).

Filters

Filter	Type
Status	Multi-select
Rejection reason	Multi-select (Duplicate · Low confidence · Unrecognisable content · Manually rejected)
Vendor	Multi-select
Invoice number	Text
Invoice date	Date range
Due date	Date range
Currency	Multi-select
Amount	Numeric range

Reviewing a Needs Review Invoice

When an invoice is routed to Needs Review, a Finance Executive must take action before it can proceed to a bill.

Click on the invoice from the Needs Review tab to open the Invoice Detail page
The detail page shows the document on the left and extracted fields on the right
Fields below confidence threshold are highlighted — review and correct each one
The vendor match section shows the matched vendor (or a list of candidates if ambiguous)
If a potential duplicate flag is shown, review the conflicting field against the existing invoice
Once all fields are correct and the vendor is confirmed, click Confirm Invoice
A bill is created automatically from the confirmed invoice
You are offered the option to navigate directly to the new Bill Details page

Fixing a Vendor Mismatch

If the vendor was matched incorrectly or could not be matched:

A vendor selection panel appears showing candidate matches with confidence scores
Select the correct vendor from the list
If the vendor does not exist in Spendflo, click Create New Vendor to add them
Confirm the invoice after resolving the vendor

Corrections are fed back into the matching system — the more corrections your Finance team makes, the more accurate future auto-matching becomes.

Rejecting an Invoice

To reject an invoice from the Needs Review state:

Open the invoice detail page
Click Reject
Select a rejection reason
Confirm

The invoice moves to Rejected status. It remains visible in the inbox (filtered by Rejected tab) for audit purposes. Rejected invoices do not create bills.

How GL Coding Works (Invoice → Bill)

When an invoice is confirmed, all extracted fields are automatically mapped to the corresponding bill fields:

Invoice Field	Bill Field
Vendor ID	Vendor ID
Invoice Number	Invoice Number
Invoice Date	Invoice Date
Due Date	Due Date
Payment Terms	Payment Terms
Total Amount	Total Amount
Currency	Currency
Line Descriptions	Line Descriptions
Quantities	Quantities
Unit Prices	Unit Prices
Bank / Payment Details	Bank / Payment Details

After field mapping, the P2P Agent runs GL enrichment:

GL Account is suggested based on the vendor, spend owner, and historical coding patterns
Department, Class, and Location are suggested from the matched PO or identity graphs
All suggestions carry confidence indicators and are fully editable before the bill is submitted

Duplicate Detection

Spendflo automatically checks every invoice against the existing invoice history to detect duplicates:

Type	How it's detected	What happens
Confirmed duplicate	Exact match on invoice number, amount, date, AND file fingerprint — or match on invoice number + file fingerprint alone	Invoice is auto-Rejected with reason "Duplicate"
Potential duplicate	Same vendor and amount but different invoice number, or same vendor and invoice number but different date	Invoice is routed to Needs Review with a "Potential duplicate" flag and the conflicting field highlighted

Finance Executives can investigate potential duplicates and either confirm them as genuine new invoices or reject them as duplicates.

Learning Over Time

Spendflo improves its extraction accuracy through human corrections. Every time a Finance Executive corrects a vendor match or overrides an extracted field:

The correction is stored and used in future AI fallback reasoning
If the same correction is confirmed 5+ times, it is promoted into the Vendor Identity Graph — a permanent, deterministic lookup that runs before any AI call

This means the volume of "Needs Review" invoices should decrease over time as the system learns your organisation's vendor patterns.

FAQs

Q: A vendor sent an invoice to the wrong inbox. What happens? The invoice is processed normally but will be associated with the subsidiary of the inbox it was received on. If the subsidiary is wrong, a Finance Executive can correct it during invoice review.

Q: What file types does Spendflo support for invoice extraction? Native PDF, scanned/image PDF (via OCR), Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx, .xls), CSV, and plain-text email body. Image files and scanned PDFs are processed using OCR.

Q: I uploaded a file and Spendflo says "This file does not appear to be an invoice." What does this mean? Spendflo identified the file as not being an invoice — it may be a contract, statement of account, or another document type. The file is not added to the invoice list. Upload a valid invoice file.

Q: Why was an invoice auto-confirmed without my review? Invoices where all required fields are extracted with ≥80% confidence and no duplicate or override conditions are triggered are auto-confirmed. If you want stricter review, an Admin can raise the confidence threshold under Settings → P2P Settings → Invoice Processing.

Q: An auto-confirmed invoice has a wrong vendor. Can I fix it? Yes. Open the invoice from the Confirmed tab. Finance Executives can override the status and correct the vendor match even after auto-confirmation.

Troubleshooting & Common Issues

Issue	What to do
Invoices not appearing after emailing the inbox	Check the inbox email address is correct. Verify the inbox is active in Settings → P2P Settings → Invoice Inboxes.
Invoice stuck in Needs Review with unclear flags	Open the invoice detail page — each flagged field explains the confidence issue. Correct the field value and re-confirm.
Vendor matching is consistently wrong for one vendor	Correct the vendor match on the invoice detail page. After 5 confirmed corrections, the vendor identity graph is updated and future invoices from this vendor will match correctly.
Invoice is showing as a duplicate but it is not	Open the invoice in the Needs Review tab, review the conflicting field, and confirm the invoice if it is genuinely different from the flagged original.
Invoice extraction is poor quality (missing fields, wrong values)	The source document may be a scanned or image-based PDF with low OCR quality. Try uploading a higher-resolution version or a text-based PDF from the vendor.