# Email Inbox Automation Checklist > Source: https://netray.co/tools/email-inbox-automation-checklist > Publisher: Netray (netray.co), AI and integration engineering for ERP and manufacturing systems. > Section: Free Tools ## Short answer A 30-item checklist to prepare a shared invoice, order or certificate inbox for automated capture without losing documents or control. ## Category ai-automation ## Audience - AP manager - IT manager - Quality manager ## Tool **Kind:** checklist **Groups:** #### Intake and mailbox design **Items:** **Text:** Dedicated mailbox per process (invoices, order acknowledgments, certificates), not one catch-all **Critical:** true Suppliers told the correct address and asked to send one document per PDF where possible Allowed file types defined (PDF, TIFF, JPG) and others rejected with a reply Attachment size limit set and communicated Inline images and signature logos filtered so they are not processed as documents Body-only emails with no attachment handled by a defined rule **Text:** Original email and attachment stored unchanged for audit **Critical:** true #### Classification and extraction **Items:** **Text:** Document type list agreed and owned (see taxonomy worksheet) **Critical:** true Unknown-document bucket defined with a named reviewer Multi-document PDFs split into separate documents before extraction **Text:** Duplicate detection on vendor, invoice number and amount **Critical:** true Confidence thresholds set per field class and reviewed with real samples Statements, reminders and remittance advices recognised and kept out of the invoice flow Credit notes distinguished from invoices Multi-language and multi-currency documents tested #### Security and compliance **Items:** **Text:** Mailbox access limited to named roles, with multi-factor authentication **Critical:** true **Text:** Attachments scanned for malware before processing **Critical:** true **Text:** Sender checks in place for bank detail changes and payment instructions **Critical:** true **Text:** Processing runs in an approved environment; sensitive documents do not leave your network if policy forbids it **Critical:** true Retention and deletion rules applied to the mailbox and archive Access to extracted data follows ERP roles Export-controlled or customer-restricted documents identified and handled separately #### Exceptions and ERP handoff **Items:** **Text:** Every failed document produces a visible exception, never a silent drop **Critical:** true Review queue with owner, aging and escalation rules Vendor not found and PO not found cases have defined handling **Text:** Writes to the ERP are validated and require approval where the value is material **Critical:** true Corrections made by reviewers are fed back to improve extraction Reply templates ready for rejected or incomplete supplier submissions #### Monitoring and ownership **Items:** **Text:** Daily reconciliation: emails received equals documents processed plus exceptions **Critical:** true Touchless rate, review volume and error rate reported weekly Fallback manual procedure documented for outages Named business owner and technical owner Change log for rules, templates and models **Scoring Note:** Aim to complete every critical item before go live. Unchecked critical items are the usual cause of lost documents, duplicate payments and security incidents. ## Content **Intro:** Automating a shared inbox sounds simple: read email, extract data, post to the ERP. In practice the failures are in the edges, such as signature images read as invoices, duplicate resends, and documents that quietly vanish. This checklist covers the 30 things to settle before you switch it on. **Sections:** #### How to use the checklist **Body:** Work through the groups with AP, purchasing or quality, and IT in the same room. Tick items that are true today, and turn every unchecked critical item into an action with an owner and date. Use it before a pilot to scope the work, and again before go live as a readiness gate. Print it or export it to PDF to attach to your project record. **Bullets:** - Run it separately for each inbox, since risks differ - Include IT security from the start, not at go live - Re-run it after any major change in rules or models #### Why the critical items matter **Body:** Keeping the original email and attachment gives you an audit trail and a way to reprocess when a model improves. Duplicate detection prevents paying the same invoice twice when a supplier resends. Sender checks on bank detail changes protect against payment fraud, which commonly arrives by email. Reconciling received against processed each day is the control that proves nothing was dropped. None of these depend on how good your extraction is, which is why they come first. #### Where teams go wrong **Body:** The most common failure is treating the inbox as a pure OCR problem. Teams skip the unknown bucket, so anything unrecognised disappears. They forget statements and remittances, which then enter the invoice flow. They write to the ERP without validation. Another trap is relying on a cloud tool for documents that policy says must stay on site. Settle these early, and the extraction work becomes the easy part. **Bullets:** - No exception queue means silent failure - Unvalidated ERP writes spread errors quickly - Unclear data residency blocks go live late in the project **Cta:** If you want an inbox pipeline that runs on your own infrastructure, keeps originals, and sends every uncertain document to a person before anything writes to your ERP, we can scope it with you. **Faq:** #### Should automation read the shared mailbox directly? **Answer:** Usually it reads through a service account with only the permissions it needs, ideally via a supported API or a forwarding rule into a processing mailbox. Avoid using a personal account, and log all access for audit. #### How do I stop duplicate invoices being paid? **Answer:** Check vendor, invoice number and amount against existing records at capture, and keep your ERP's own duplicate invoice check enabled. Treat near matches, such as a changed date or trailing character, as exceptions for review. #### What about bank detail changes sent by email? **Answer:** Never apply them from an email alone. Verify through a known contact by a separate channel, and keep vendor master changes under their own approval workflow, separate from invoice processing. #### Is an LLM safe to read supplier emails? **Answer:** Emails can contain instructions aimed at the model, so keep the model's role to extraction and classification, give it no authority to act, and validate its output with rules and human approval before any ERP write. ## Search terms email inbox automation checklist, accounts payable inbox automation, shared mailbox invoice processing, email to erp automation checklist, automated email attachment processing, invoice email intake best practices, supplier email automation readiness, inbox document capture checklist --- Talk to an engineer: https://netray.co/contact?intent=erp_ai | Machine catalog: https://netray.co/agent/catalog.json