Shared inbox for accounting firms

Accounting firms often receive documents for many clients in one mailbox. With the shared inbox, the firm connects that mailbox once in its firm dashboard. Tailride reads every document in it, works out which client it belongs to and moves it to that client. There it is processed like any document from the client's own mailbox: with the client's rules, duplicate checks, coding and exports.

Connecting a shared mailbox

Only the firm owner can connect mailboxes and change how documents are matched to clients. Team members see the mailboxes and sort the documents that need a decision.

The firm setup wizard offers this as its Shared mailboxes step, right before Finish: it explains the idea in three lines and shows the same mailboxes card as the dashboard. You can skip it there and come back later from the Shared mailboxes card on your dashboard or from the setup checklist.

Tailride checks the mailbox every hour and picks up the emails that arrived since the last check. Removing a mailbox stops new scans; documents already sent to clients stay with them.

Mailbox status

The Shared mailboxes card shows each mailbox with its status. Connected means Tailride can read it. Disconnected means the mail provider no longer accepts Tailride's access, usually after a password change or an expired authorization: select Reconnect and sign in to the mailbox again (for an IMAP mailbox Tailride re-checks the stored credentials; if they no longer work, remove the mailbox and add it again). The Documents column shows how many documents of that mailbox wait for a decision; select the button to open them.

Scanning past emails

To import invoices that were already in the mailbox, select Scan past emails in the Shared mailboxes card. Choose a period (the last 30 days, the last 3 months, this year, last year, or your own dates) and the mailboxes to scan, then select Start scan. The scan runs in the background: found documents go to your clients by the same rules as new ones, or wait under the Shared mailboxes tab. Emails Tailride already imported are skipped, whichever client they went to. A mailbox that needs to be reconnected cannot be selected until you reconnect it.

How Tailride picks the client

Client assignment rules lists every client of your firm. Search by client name, email or VAT ID, or show only the clients that have no rules yet; select Edit next to a client to add:

• VAT IDs of the client, for example DE123456789. Spaces, dots and the country prefix do not matter, but two different country prefixes never match.
• Email addresses or domains, for example anna@client.com or @client.com. A domain also covers its subdomains.
• Company names on invoices, for example Müller GmbH. Upper and lower case do not matter. Exact name matches only that name; Name contains matches any name in which a word starts with the text, so 3F finds 3F Venture S.A. and AG finds Müller AG but not Magnus GmbH.

Tailride checks the buyer on each document in this order:

1. The buyer's VAT ID.
2. The sender, reply-to and recipient addresses of the email.
3. The buyer's name on the document.

The first step that finds exactly one client decides. If a step matches two clients, or no step matches, the document is not sent anywhere and waits for your team. A file that contains documents for different buyers also waits, so nothing ends up with the wrong client.

Documents to sort

When Tailride could not send a document on its own, a Shared mailboxes tab appears on the firm dashboard, with the number of documents waiting. Everyone in the firm sees it, and it disappears again once nothing is left to sort. It lists invoices that matched no client, or more than one. Not listed: duplicates of documents a client already has, newsletters, notifications and files Tailride could not read, and documents that are not invoices (receipts, failed-payment notices and the like). A document that is not an invoice still goes to its client when one matches, and shows up on that client's Excluded tab as usual.

For each document you can:

• Assign to a client: choose the client and select Assign. The document is processed again in that client's workspace, with that client's rules. If the client already has the same invoice, it is marked as a duplicate there, as usual.
• View the file (or click its name).
• Remove it (confirm with a second click): the document leaves the list and its file is deleted. Tailride still remembers the email, so a later scan of the mailbox does not bring it back.

Assigned documents

The Assigned view on the same tab lists every document Tailride assigned to a client from the shared mailboxes, with the client, how it was matched (VAT ID, email, name, or manually) and when. Search by vendor, invoice number, client name, sender or file name, or narrow the list to one mailbox with the Mailbox selector (the Sort button on the mailboxes card opens the list already narrowed).

A document that landed with the wrong client can be assigned to another one once its processing there has finished: it is processed again in the new client's workspace, and the first client's coding and supplier link are dropped. Files already uploaded to the first client's Drive, OneDrive or Google Sheets stay there, and so does a bill the first client already booked in its accounting system: remove it there if it should not stay. If the new client already has the same invoice, nothing is moved and Tailride tells you so.

Each document's own history in the client workspace shows when it arrived from the firm's shared mailbox.

Credits

The firm pays for the documents its shared inbox takes in: one credit per invoice, from the firm's credit pool, whether Tailride sent it to a client automatically or it waits under the Shared mailboxes tab. Scanning past emails costs the same: one credit per invoice found. A document sent to a client later by hand is not charged again. Non-financial files and duplicates cost nothing.

Once a document is with a client, it belongs to that client. If someone reprocesses it later, the usual rule applies: a client billed from the firm pool uses pool credits, a client on its own plan uses its own credits.

In Clients → Credit usage, the credits for documents sent to a client are shown on that client.

Limits

• Invoices behind a sign-in link (see Invoice links) are not collected from a shared firm mailbox.
• A client's team members who can see only their own invoices do not see documents that came from the firm's shared inbox.
• If a client's Google Drive or OneDrive folders are organized by mailbox, files from the shared inbox go to a folder named after the shared mailbox's address.