Invoices and documents

Inbox – expenses inbox

Last updated: 2026-01-05

Inbox is the inbox on your InvoiceOcean account, where you can conveniently send expense documents. Each account owner can create a unique email address. Simply send a message with the invoice attached to this address, and the document will enter the system as an expense awaiting approval. You can fill the invoice data manually. This is an ideal solution for companies that want to quickly and securely collect expense documents in one place.

Table of Contents of the Article:

How Inbox – the expense document inbox – works
How to enable Inbox – the expense inbox
Active Inbox feature
Search filter – Inbox
Activities related to a document – sender’s email
Limits and restrictions
FAQ – questions and answers

How does Inbox – the expense document inbox – work?

Designated email address – Each account in the InvoiceOcean system can create its own individual email address, e.g., expenses@testaccount.invoiceocean.com.
Sending invoices – Simply send an expense invoice (supported formats: PDF, JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF) to this address.
Receiving and processing documents – Sent invoices go directly to InvoiceOcean, where they appear as pending documents. You can enter the document manually to fill in the data yourself.

With the Inbox expense inbox, you can:

Send received invoices by email to InvoiceOcean with a single click (using the “Forward” function, etc.).
Share your expense email address with your contractors so they can send invoices directly to your InvoiceOcean account.
Quickly pay invoices from the expense list (via Quick Transfer, or traditional bank transfer after scanning the QR code).

IMPORTANT! Invoices sent to the Inbox must be sent individually. If a single email contains multiple attachments. When adding using the “Fill in manually” option, all attachments will be available for preview, but it will only be possible to fill in the data within a single form.
In order to use the Expenses inbox, you must fill in the filed Name in the Company/department window. Otherwise, you will receive an error message while sending your expenses through email.

How to enable Inbox – the expense inbox?

To activate the feature:

1. Go to Settings > Account Settings > Configuration > Expenses > Inbox – expense inbox

2. Click the Define Email button.

3. Set your designated email address to which expense invoices will be sent – an example email is expenses@testaccount.invoiceocean.com, where:
4. expenses – this can be any text you choose, e.g., costs, invoice, purchase, etc. You can use 3 to 30 characters, including lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters “.”, “-”, and “_”.
5. testaccount – this is the prefix of your account, which you can change in Settings > Account Settings > Account Address.
6. invoiceocean.com – this is the domain of our InvoiceOcean service, which cannot be changed, even if you have the feature Sending e-mails via your own server enabled.

7. Confirm the entered address for your expense invoices by clicking the Save button.

8. After saving the address, the entered email will be visible in Settings > Account Settings > Configuration > Expenses > Inbox – expense inbox. On the right side of this field, there is an icon for quickly copying the address, which you can share with your contractor for sending invoices. You can disable the set email address for sending expense invoices at any time and change it to a different email using the Change Email button.

Active Inbox Feature

After activating the feature, in the Expenses tab, your inbox address will appear on the right side of the screen along with an option for quick copying.

You will simultaneously receive a confirmation of the service activation at the Account Owner’s email address.

After sending an expense invoice to the designated email address of your InvoiceOcean account, the invoice will appear on the list of pending expenses to be added in the system.

By clicking on the preview of the expense invoice, you can see the attachment sent from the Inbox – now you can add:

By selecting the Fill in manually option, an expense form will appear, which you need to complete yourself based on the sent attachment.

After adding the expense, it will be included in the system reports and in the company statistics.

On the list of expense invoices sent from the Inbox, an envelope appears next to each of them:

Black envelope – indicates that the expense was added via the Inbox, so you can distinguish which expenses were entered manually in the system by you or your employees, and which were sent through the dedicated inbox for your expense invoices.
Yellow envelope – indicates that the expense requires completion.
Red envelope – appears only on the Free and Basic plans when you reach the limit of 20 documents sent via the Inbox – the expense inbox

If you are using the Free or Basic subscription, when adding an expense from the Inbox, the system, in addition to the option to add the document, will also display information about the available limits. If the limit has not yet been reached, a yellow envelope icon will appear on the invoice list, and in the expense view, you will see a message indicating how many documents you can still add. Once the limit is exceeded, a red envelope icon will appear on the invoice list, and a message will be displayed in the document preview informing you that the available limit has been exceeded. The buttons allowing you to add the expense will be disabled.

Search Filter – Inbox

On the expense list, on the left side in the filter panel, there is an Inbox parameter. By clicking on this field, you can choose one of three options:

All – shows all expenses that were sent to the Inbox.
Not approved – shows only unapproved expenses sent to the Inbox.
Approved – shows only approved expenses sent to the Inbox.

Document-related Activities – Sender’s Email

After approving an expense document, you can verify which email address it was sent from to your Inbox.

Go to the document preview, then navigate to the Document activity section, located below the invoice preview. In the Document generation row, you will find the sender’s email address from which the expense was sent to you.

Limits and Restrictions

1. The ability to send expenses via Inbox is limited to 20 documents on the Free and Basic plans. This limit does not reset after it is reached. If you want an unlimited number of expense invoices to be sent, upgrade to the Professional plan or higher – check InvoiceOcean's pricing.

2. The maximum size of incoming and outgoing messages is 20 MB. This limit applies to the entire message, including the content and attachments.

FAQ – Questions and Answers

1. Can I issue a corrective invoice in Inbox?
No, for documents added through Inbox it is not possible to change their type to a corrective invoice. Corrections must be issued directly in the system using the document creation form.

2. Can I issue other types of documents in Inbox (e.g., final invoice, prepayment invoice)?
Yes, but in the first step the Inbox form is limited to the basic document types: invoice, pro forma, and receipt. In that case, you should save the document as an invoice, and then in edit mode – using the full document form – you can change its type to another one (e.g., a final invoice or a prepayment invoice).

3. I sent a PDF file containing several invoices – why is only one being saved?
The system analyzes and processes only one invoice per document. This means that if you send a file containing multiple invoices (separate invoices or a combined file), only the first one will be entered.
The remaining invoices need to be saved locally and entered manually (or resent individually to the Inbox). Currently, there is no bulk processing function for multiple invoices from a single PDF file within the Inbox. Alternatively, you can use the document import feature.

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