Before you start
Check that the company is connected and that you can identify which client the document belongs to. Use a readable file with the full date, amount, and supplier details. Keep uncertain documents unassigned until you know whose books they belong to.Getting documents in
Two ways: forward the mail, or upload the file. Either way the document lands on the Inbox page, waiting for somebody to say whose books it belongs to.Forward by email
Every client has its own documents address, and so does the firm. The top of the console’s Inbox page shows one of them with a Copy button beside it: the client’s own when you have a client picked, the firm’s when you do not. Each is a name followed by a short code:1
Forward the mail
Forward a bill, receipt or statement to the client’s address, with the
attachment on it. Several attachments on one mail are fine: each one
becomes a document.
2
Open the Inbox page
The mail shows under Waiting, already filed to that client. Open it
to read its words and see its files.
3
Say what kind of evidence it is
Pick the kind in Kind, or ask your assistant to sort the inbox for
you. Mail that came to the firm’s address needs its client picked too,
for the whole mail at once or file by file.
Clients can send to it directly
Give each client their own address and they can send their bills straight in, with no forward through you, and every bill lands on their books. They should save it as a contact, because nobody types it twice. The address only lets someone put a document in your inbox, where a person reads it before anything is done with it. It cannot read your inbox, sign in, or reach anybody’s books.A forwarding rule
To send a whole mailbox’s bills without forwarding them by hand, set up a forwarding rule to the client’s address, in Gmail, Outlook or anywhere else. Any number of mailboxes can forward to the same address. Rules that match only the mail you want (from a vendor, or with invoice in the subject) keep the inbox from filling with newsletters. Gmail checks that you own an address before it will forward to it, by mailing a confirmation code to it. The code appears at the top of the Inbox page with a Copy button and a Confirm in Gmail link. Give the client the code, or confirm it yourself, then dismiss the card. Outlook asks for no code.What is kept
- Attachments. Each becomes a document. PDFs and images open right on the page.
- The mail itself, when there is nothing attached. An order confirmation or a client’s instructions are evidence too, so a mail with no attachment is kept as a PDF of the mail, named after its subject: who sent it, when, its words and its pictures. That PDF is what goes on the QuickBooks transaction as the receipt.
- Photos pasted into the mail. A photo a phone puts in the body of a mail is kept as its own document. Small pictures such as logos and signatures are not, but every picture still shows when you open the mail.
- Only document files. Zeno keeps PDFs, photos and scans (JPEG, PNG,
HEIC, TIFF and the like), CSV and OFX statement exports, IIF files,
.xlsxand.docx, plain text, and emails saved as.eml. Anything else is refused: programs, scripts,.zipand other archives, and the Office formats that can carry macros (.xls,.xlsm,.doc,.docm). The mail’s words are still kept, as a text document that names each file it refused and why, so nothing arrives and vanishes. Send the PDFs themselves instead of a zip, so each one can be read and coded on its own, and save an old spreadsheet as.xlsxor PDF. - Nothing the malware scanner flags. Every file, and the words of every mail, is scanned before it is kept. A flagged file is never stored, and a text document names it instead.
If the address gets out
An address is not a password, but it does let whoever has it put documents in your inbox. If one ends up somewhere it should not be and junk starts arriving, an owner or operator can press Replace beside it on the Inbox page, for the firm’s address or a client’s. The old address stops working at once, and mail sent to it afterwards is not delivered. Anyone who forwards to the old address, including a client’s forwarding rules, needs the new one. Replacing one client’s address leaves every other address alone.Upload them
The Add documents button on the Inbox page takes files directly: the statement you just downloaded, or the scan somebody handed you. You can pick several at once, up to 15 MB each. A file whose bytes are already in the inbox still uploads, with a note that it may be the same document twice. If the malware scanner is briefly unreachable when a file arrives, the file is kept rather than refused, and its row on the Inbox page says it was not scanned. Open it with the same care you would give any attachment.Every file is checked twice before it is kept: it has to be one of the
document types above, and it is scanned for malware. A file that fails
either check is never stored, however it arrived: forwarded, uploaded, or
sent by a client. Everything the console shows in place is drawn from a short
list of known-safe types — images, PDFs, plain text — and only when the
file’s contents really are that type; everything else is handed back as a
download.
Working the inbox
A document arriving knows nothing about itself. Two facts make it useful:- Whose books. Which client company it belongs to. A document that has not been assigned shows under Inbox — unassigned on Today.
- What kind of evidence. A bill, a receipt, a statement, an invoice, or other.
Zeno reads each document
Within a minute of a document arriving, Zeno reads it on its own server. No AI model is involved:- Where the text comes from. A mail’s words are used as they are. A PDF made by a computer stores its text, and that text is read directly. A photo or a scan is read with optical character recognition (Tesseract). HEIC photos from an iPhone cannot be read this way yet.
- What it looks for. Only values a document labels: the total it calls Total, Grand Total or Amount Due (never a subtotal, tax or tip), the date it calls the order, invoice or purchase date (never a due date), the seller from the client’s QuickBooks vendor list or the sender’s address, the order or invoice number, and the last four digits of the card. When a document gives two different totals, Zeno leaves the total blank rather than guess.
- How it is marked. What Zeno reads appears on the row as read by Zeno, and on the document’s page as Read by Zeno’s rules, until you or your assistant check it. Zeno never overwrites a reading your assistant has recorded.
Reading one
Images and PDF pages come back to look at; text files come back as text, and whatever Zeno read comes back beside them. That is what lets an agent read a bill and propose the posting for it, and what lets a reviewer check the proposal against the document without leaving the page.Resolving
A document leaves the inbox one of two ways:- Against the plan that carries its work. This is the audit path: from a posting, to the run that made it, to the plan it came from, to the document it came from. Six weeks later that path is the answer to “why is this here?”
- As needing none. A duplicate, a statement already imported, a message that turned out to be a question.
