Set up AP inboxes and email ingestion

Connect AP inboxes, verify forwarding and sending, and choose which senders and attachments Clerked accepts.

Connect an AP inbox

Open Settings > Company > Email and select AP inboxes. Each row is one AP inbox: the mailbox your suppliers already write to. The row shows its Clerked forwarding address and its connection health.

1. Add the inbox. Select Add AP inbox, enter a name your team will recognize and the AP inbox email address, then select Continue. Clerked creates a private forwarding address for the inbox, beginning with mail+, and a sending address.

2. Copy the forwarding address. Hover over the address in Clerked forwarding address and select the copy button. Keep it private: only people who can manage company settings see forwarding addresses or change AP inboxes. Everyone else with access sees each inbox’s name, AP address, and connection health.

3. Create the forwarding rule. Open the inbox’s actions menu and choose Set up forwarding. On Incoming mail, choose Google, Microsoft 365, or Other and follow the steps for your email administrator. Keep delivery to your own mailbox turned on. In Google, use an Admin console routing rule (Apps > Google Workspace > Gmail > Routing) that adds the forwarding address with Add more recipients. Don’t use Change envelope recipient, which stops delivery to your own mailbox. Forwarding set up in Gmail’s own settings asks the forwarding address to confirm, and Clerked can’t confirm it. Microsoft 365 blocks automatic forwarding to outside addresses until your IT admin allows it for the mailbox.

4. Verify the connection. Select Verify connection. Clerked emails a test message to your AP address, and your forwarding rule should bring it back within a few minutes. Don’t forward the test by hand; a manual forward can pass even when the rule doesn’t work.

Once incoming mail is connected, the actions menu shows Review setup instead of Set up forwarding. Both open the same inbox setup.

Mail your rule forwards arrives in Clerked even before the test passes. The test and sending from Clerked are available when vendor email is turned on for your company. If the setup dialog shows Vendor email isn’t turned on, contact support.

Understand the connection status

Connection health shows an Incoming status for forwarded mail and an Outbound status for the optional outbound copies described below. Each can show:

• Not verified: no test has passed yet. Select Verify connection.
• Sending test or Test sent: Clerked is sending the test, or waiting for your rule to deliver it. A test expires after 24 hours. If a forwarded test hasn’t arrived after five minutes, the setup asks you to check that your rule copies mail sent to the AP address to the forwarding address, then run the test again.
• Connected: the test arrived. The row shows when the last email arrived.
• Test rejected: the mail server for your AP address refused or bounced the test. Check the AP address, then send another test.
• Test not confirmed: Clerked couldn’t confirm the test was sent. Send another test.
• Test expired: the test didn’t come back in time. Check the rule, then send another test.
• Forwarding to old address: your mailbox still forwards to the inbox’s old address, which keeps working. Select Verify connection: the test passes through your current rule, so you don’t need to change it. See Retire an old forwarding address.
• AP address required: add the inbox’s AP address before testing.
• Disabled: reactivate the inbox before testing it.

Send test again replaces the earlier test, and Run test checks a connected inbox again. After a test starts, its button counts down (Send again in a number of seconds) for a minute before you can start another. Each inbox allows up to 10 tests a day. If another company has already verified the same AP address, starting a test reports AP address can’t be verified; contact support if the address is yours.

Copy replies your team sends from the mailbox

This step is optional. It adds replies your team sends from the AP mailbox itself to the matching Clerked conversation.

1. Create the outbound rule. In the inbox setup, open Outbound copies and follow the steps for your provider. The rule copies mail sent from your AP address to the Clerked sent-mail address shown there, which is different from the forwarding address. In Google Workspace it’s a routing rule that adds a recipient; in Microsoft 365 it’s a mail flow rule that Bccs the address. Don’t use journaling, and don’t forward incoming mail to the sent-mail address.

2. Reply to the test. Select Verify connection, then reply to the test email from your AP address or from an AP team member’s address that your rule covers. Only the copied reply verifies outbound mail.

People who reply from their own address must be active employees of this company in Clerked, and they must reply in an existing AP conversation. New conversations started from a personal address aren’t copied.

Send replies from Clerked

Open Sending in the inbox setup to see how email sent from Clerked leaves this inbox. Sending needs a verified incoming connection and vendor email turned on for your company.

• Send replies from shows the Clerked sending address for this inbox. Suppliers see the sender as your company name followed by “Accounts Payable via Clerked”. The email’s reply address is your AP address, so supplier answers reach your AP mailbox and return to Clerked through your forwarding rule. Email sent straight to the Clerked sending address, for example by a mail app that ignores the reply address or by an automatic reply, still arrives in Clerked. It’s labelled Sent to Clerked’s sending address because your AP mailbox doesn’t have a copy.
• Your sending domain shows your organization’s domain for this AP address and its status. When the domain and the inbox are both verified, select Use AP address to send from the AP address itself. Suppliers then see your company name followed by “Accounts Payable”, without “via Clerked”. Use Clerked address switches back. If the domain loses verification, sending from this inbox stops until the domain is verified again or you switch back. If your organization hasn’t added the domain yet, ask an organization admin to add it; organization admins see a link to Sending domains.
• Send a copy to my AP inbox is on for a new inbox. It sends your AP mailbox a copy of each email sent from Clerked. Copies arrive in the mailbox’s inbox, not its Sent folder. Clerked recognizes the copy when your forwarding rule brings it back, so it doesn’t appear as new supplier mail. When the option is off, the sent email is kept only in Clerked.

Send from your own domain

A sending domain belongs to your organization, not to one company. An organization admin sets it up once, and every company’s AP inbox with an address on that domain can then send from it.

1. Open Settings > Organization > Sending domains. Enter the domain of your AP address, such as example.com, and select Add domain. Public email providers such as gmail.com can’t be added.
2. Add the DNS records. Ask your IT team to add the three records shown, keeping your existing email records. Use the copy buttons to copy each name and value.
3. Check the domain. Select Check status until the domain shows Verified. Then each company chooses Use AP address for its inbox under Settings > Company > Email > AP inboxes.

People who can view the organization see the domains and how many AP inboxes send from each. Only organization admins can add, check, or remove a domain. Remove is unavailable while an AP inbox sends from the domain; switch that inbox to the Clerked address first. A domain another organization already uses can’t be added here; contact support.

Change, disable, or reactivate an inbox

Use the inbox’s actions menu:

• Rename changes the name your team sees in Email settings and Inbox filters.
• Change AP address corrects the address until a test passes for incoming mail or outbound copies. A test already sent to the old address stops counting, so send a new one. Once the address is verified, disable the inbox and add a new one for a different address.
• Disable keeps past conversations visible. Email that still arrives at a disabled inbox isn’t processed, and Clerked can’t send from it or test it.
• Reactivate processes email that arrives at the inbox again. Email that arrived while it was disabled isn’t processed afterward. The inbox returns to setup: test incoming mail and outbound copies again before sending from it.

Retire an old forwarding address

An inbox connected before AP addresses were required shows AP address required. Choose Add AP address and enter the inbox’s AP address. Clerked gives the inbox a new forwarding address, and the old one keeps working as an alias, so no mail is lost and your current rule keeps working. A test that comes back through the old address connects the inbox; you don’t need to change your rule to send from Clerked. An inbox still named Existing AP route with a number takes its AP address as its name.

The row shows the Old address and how many emails reached it in the last 30 days. Retiring the old address is optional. To do it, first point your forwarding rule at the new address so that email arrives there.

Once email has arrived at the new address and the count shows that no recent email reaches the old one, choose Retire old address. If email still arrives there, the confirmation names up to five of the recent senders so you can ask them to use your AP address. Mail sent to the old address afterward is dropped, including mail from suppliers who still write to it directly. Retiring can’t be undone.

Choose what happens to new senders

Open Settings > Company > Email and select Incoming email, then choose what should happen when an email comes from an unknown sender:

• Wait for review holds the first email from a sender Clerked does not know yet until someone trusts or blocks the sender. This is the default.
• Continue processes email from new senders automatically when there is no sender rule or vendor master match, including requests to change bank details. Email that the receiving mail server flags as spam still waits for a sender decision. You can still block a sender later.

Saving Continue processes the emails already waiting for a sender decision, except mail flagged as spam, so Clerked first asks you to confirm and says how many it will process. A delivery-failure notice or an automatic reply (such as an out-of-office message) without attachments, and an authenticated reply from someone your team emailed in the same conversation, go ahead without a sender decision unless you blocked the sender.

Use the Blocklist to stop an exact sender or domain. Use the Allowlist when a trusted sender should skip sender review. A whole public email domain, such as gmail.com, can’t be allowed. A rule for an exact sender takes priority over a rule for its domain, so you can allow one sender from a blocked domain. Between two rules for the same sender or domain, the block wins. An allow rule does not bypass checks that confirm how the message reached Clerked. Removing a rule, or moving it to the other list, asks you to confirm and says what will happen to future mail from that sender.

Use vendor master contacts

Turn on Use [vendor] master email addresses and company domains to trust senders automatically, which shows your vendor label in place of [vendor], when current contact details on active vendor records should count as trusted senders. If a company does not have vendor email data, the setting creates no match and the unknown-sender choice still applies. If the contact settings cannot load, this control stays unavailable and shows a message asking you to reload.

Clerked checks every incoming message’s sender automatically; there is nothing to configure. A message that claims one of your company’s own domains but fails that check, or that contains malware, is blocked before anything is processed and appears only under Blocked in the inbox. A message that fails that check for another domain, or that Clerked cannot verify, is still processed, with a warning on the conversation in the Inbox. The warning says whether the message failed its authentication checks or could not be verified.

Choose which attachments Clerked handles

Each supported file group has two choices:

• Keep in Clerked imports attachments in that group. Turn it off only when your team does not want those files in the attachment workspace. Files in a group that isn’t kept still show in the conversation as received, with a note that they’re in your AP inbox.
• Analyze automatically asks Clark to classify imported files. When it is off, the attachment stays available in the conversation without creating a review task. A person can open it later and choose Not an invoice, This is an invoice, or These are multiple invoices when the file supports splitting.

The automatic-analysis option appears only while Keep in Clerked is on.

Choose how multiple invoices are split

For When one PDF contains multiple invoices, Review first is the default. Choose Auto-split only when high-confidence splits should apply without a person’s review. Lower-confidence results still need a person.

Verify the change

1. Save sender settings. If the change can release held mail, look for Sender settings saved and held emails are being re-checked. If Clerked shows Saved, but held emails will be re-checked only after the next sender rule change instead, the change is saved; select Save again to retry the re-check.

2. Send a controlled message. Confirm it follows the selected new-sender behavior and appears under the intended company.

3. Test attachment choices. Use one file that should be analyzed and one that should stay available for a manual decision. Attachment changes apply to new mail.

4. Check a split. Keep automatic splits off when your team wants to confirm every multi-invoice proposal. If you turn it on, verify a high-confidence example and a lower-confidence example.

Review a sender decision

After you make a sender decision in the inbox, look for Decision saved, re-checking this email. Clerked checks the message again with the new rule. If the check cannot start yet, Clerked shows Decision saved, but we couldn’t re-check this email yet.

Announced in Email ingestion in one place.