What happens to a new document
First, Billpal recognizes the type: invoice, receipt, credit note, reminder or other. Then Billpal picks up the supplier or customer, date, amounts, tax and every single line item. Billpal assigns each line item an account from your chart of accounts. Finally, Billpal checks the math: do the line items add up to the total, and do net plus tax add up to the gross amount? If something doesn’t fit, the document goes to Review. See Review documents.- Other: Documents that are not an invoice, receipt, credit note or reminder. Billpal doesn’t read them any further, and they don’t count toward your allowance.
- Duplicate files: If the same file arrives again, Billpal keeps the original and doesn’t create a second document.
- E-invoices: Billpal recognizes ZUGFeRD and Factur-X PDFs. The General tab then shows “E-invoice”. A standalone XML file, such as an XRechnung without a PDF, isn’t accepted yet.
Find documents
The tabs at the top split your documents by status: Processed, Review, Exported, Excluded and Other. Search docs searches by text, and the filter narrows down by supplier, customer, date, status, type, source, tags, payment and direction. If you need a combination often, for example “Q1 unclear expenses”, save it with Save view. The view then shows up in the list and loads those filters in one click.Open a document
Click a document to open it next to the original file. The details are spread across tabs:- General: Type, document number, issue date, due date, service date or period, and payment.
- Line items: Every line with quantity, price, tax rate and account.
- Transaction: The posting lines that go into the export, with account and posting text.
- Contacts: Supplier and customer.
- Linked docs: Related documents and references, see below.
- Notes: Review notes and notes from your team.
- Exports and Activity: Which exports the document was in, and who changed what.
Linked documents
Billpal links receipts, credit notes and reminders to the original invoice automatically. For that they need to cite the same invoice or receipt number or a unique payment reference, belong to the same supplier or customer, and the amount has to fit. If Billpal doesn’t find the link, click Link document in the Linked docs tab and pick the right document. Unlink removes a wrong link again.References and cost center
In the same tab, References lists the numbers printed on the document: purchase order, order, delivery note, original invoice, contract or other. Billpal fills them in when it reads the document. Add reference lets you add more. A document can also have exactly one cost center. Cost centers aren’t in the DATEV, BMD and DVO files yet.Notes and mentions
In the Notes tab you write notes on the document. Type@ and a name to mention someone in the workspace. They get a notification. It doesn’t assign the document to them.
Reprocess
If Billpal read something wrong, click Reprocess. Billpal reads totals, tax, line items and dates again and replaces the current values.- You can do this up to three times per document. The first reading doesn’t count.
- Exported documents and documents still being processed can’t be reprocessed.
- After the trial ends, this needs a subscription.
Edit several documents at once
Select documents in the list. The bar that appears offers these actions:- Edit: Set account, tags, supplier, customer, payment and export status for all selected documents. What you enter here overwrites existing values. This only works if all documents are incoming or all are outgoing.
- Add tags: Add tags without removing existing ones.
- Create a note: Put the same note on every selected document.
- Mark as paid: Set payment method and payment date for all selected documents.
- Mark review done: Close several reviews at once.
- Download (.zip): Download the original files.
- Delete: Delete the documents for good. This can’t be undone. Documents already counted stay counted.