Email Mailboxes & Ingestion

With DocsToSheets, you don’t need to manually upload documents every time. You can set up custom email mailboxes that automatically extract attachments from incoming emails, run AI parsing, and sync the results to your spreadsheets.

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Inbound Ingestion Pipeline

When an email arrives at your custom mailbox, it goes through the following automated steps:

graph TD
    A[Sender Emails Document] -->|To: [email protected]| B(DocsToSheets Gateway)
    B --> C{Is Sender Authorized?}
    C -->|No| D[Send Rejection Email]
    C -->|Yes| E[Extract Attachments]
    E --> F[AI Processing & Mapping]
    F --> G[Sync Rows to Spreadsheet]

1. Email Interception
   • Trigger: A sender emails a document to your custom address (e.g. [email protected]).
   • Action: The DocsToSheets email gateway receives the incoming email and extracts the message payload.
2. Authorized Sender Verification
   • Security: The system validates the mailbox details and checks if the sender’s address matches your Authorized Senders Allowlist.
   • Rejection: If unauthorized, the email is rejected, and an automated bounce notification is returned to the sender.
   • Extraction: If authorized, the system extracts up to 10 document attachments (PDFs, images) from the email payload.
3. AI Field Mapping
   • Action: DocsToSheets processes the documents, extracts your per-document fields and repeating-section entries, and maps them to your spreadsheet columns.
4. Spreadsheet Sync
   • Result: Your linked Google Sheet or Excel Workbook is automatically synchronized — one row per document on the Header sheet, plus one row per entry on each repeating section’s sheet.

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One Email = One Record

All attachments in a single email are treated as one document and produce one row on the Header sheet. The AI reads every attachment together as parts of the same record.

This is exactly what you want when one real-world record spans multiple files — for example:

• A multi-part receipt photographed as two or three images
• The front and back of a form, scanned separately
• A report whose pages were scanned as individual files

All of those attachments merge into a single extracted record: one set of per-document fields, with repeating-section entries collected across all the attachments.

If the files are separate records (e.g. five different invoices), send them in separate emails so each gets its own row — or use direct upload, where you control the behavior explicitly:

• Split files (default): each uploaded file becomes its own document and row.
• Combine files: all uploaded files are packaged into a single document and produce one row — the upload equivalent of attaching them to one email.

You’ll find the Split/Combine choice on the mailbox’s Documents tab when uploading.

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Mailbox Address Format

Every mailbox you create has a unique address of the format:

[mailbox-slug]+[account-slug]@in.docmail.app

For example, if your mailbox name is billing and your account slug is acme-corp, your custom email address will be: [email protected]

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Authorized Senders (Security Allowlist)

To protect your spreadsheets from spam and unauthorized entries, DocsToSheets enforces a strict Authorized Sender policy.

• Allowlist Enforcement: Only emails originating from addresses explicitly added to your mailbox’s allowlist will be processed.
• Rejection Notifications: If an unauthorized sender attempts to email your mailbox, the system rejects the email and sends an automated bounce-back notification explaining why the document was not processed.
• Managing Senders: You can add, edit, or remove authorized email addresses or wildcard domains (e.g. *@vendor.com) directly from the mailbox settings in the dashboard.

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Processing Constraints

When sending files via email, keep the following limits in mind:

• Max Attachments: The system will process up to 10 attachments per email.
• Max Size: The total size of the email (including attachments) must not exceed 50MB.
• Supported Formats: The system extracts PDFs (application/pdf) and common images (JPEG, PNG). Text bodies or HTML formatting in the email are ignored; only file attachments are processed.

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Active vs. Inactive Mailboxes

You can temporarily disable processing for any mailbox by toggling its status:

• Active: Accepting emails and processing files.
• Inactive: Bounces incoming emails with an “inactive mailbox” notification. No files will be processed.