How the Document Inbox works
The Document Inbox is a single queue for the business documents that arrive as files instead of orders you type in. SKU.io scans each one, pulls out the header and line data, matches it to your records, and holds it for review. You confirm what SKU.io read, and it becomes a real record.
Four document types, four records
Every row in the inbox is one of four types, and each becomes a different record when you approve it:
| Document type | Becomes |
|---|---|
| Customer PO | A sales order |
| Supplier Invoice | A purchase invoice (optionally linked to a purchase order) |
| Vendor Credit | A vendor credit |
| Landed Cost Invoice | One or more Landed Cost Bills — freight and duty added to your inventory cost |
Because they all share one inbox, you review everything from a single list rather than hunting through separate screens.
How documents arrive
Documents reach the inbox two ways, shown in the Channel column:
- Email intake. Each account gets its own addresses —
orders+<your-slug>@inbound.sku.iofor customer POs andinvoices+<your-slug>@inbound.sku.iofor supplier documents. When a customer or supplier emails a PDF (or types the order into the email body), SKU.io scans it and queues it. You'll see the channel as Email or Email body. - Manual upload. When you create a purchase invoice or sales order, you can scan a PDF instead of keying it in. Uploaded documents show the Upload channel.
You turn email intake and scanning on under Settings → Purchasing → Document OCR.
Scanning and matching
Once a document arrives, SKU.io reads it and does the matching for you:
- The customer or supplier is matched to a contact in your records, shown as a Matched chip on the review screen.
- Each line is matched to a product in your catalog, with an exact badge where SKU.io is confident and a flag where it isn't.
- A confidence score rides along with the extraction; low-confidence fields are de-emphasized so you know where to look.
Nothing posts automatically — SKU.io does the reading, and you make the call.
The review-to-record flow
A document moves through the inbox in a predictable order:
- It arrives and shows Processing while SKU.io scans it.
- It settles into Pending Review. You open it, check the extracted header and line items against the original, and fix any mismatch.
- You approve it — for example, Create Sales Order — and SKU.io creates the record with the matched customer, products, quantities, and prices. The row flips to Confirmed and links to the record it created.
If a scan can't be read, the row shows Failed with a Retry action. If a document was routed to the wrong type, Reclassify moves it to the right one.