Automating incoming invoices and documents in your business: three approaches, from the simplest to the most complete

Automating incoming invoices and documents is one of the first things we look at when we go into a business in Mallorca, because almost all of them have the same bottleneck: an email inbox where supplier invoices, delivery notes, signed contracts and customer documents land, and one person who opens them one by one, renames them, files them in a folder and notes the details somewhere else. In high season that inbox multiplies and the work piles up. Here we explain three ways of solving it, from the simplest to the most complete, with what each one solves and what it leaves unsolved.

What happens today in most businesses

Before choosing a solution it is worth describing the problem precisely. In a 30-room hotel, a restaurant with two premises or a marine workshop, incoming documents usually work like this:

• Suppliers send invoices as PDFs by email, each with their own format and subject line.
• Delivery notes arrive on paper with the goods and someone photographs or scans them later.
• Contracts (seasonal rental, charter, maintenance) come back signed by email or WhatsApp.
• Someone in administration opens each email, downloads the attachment, saves it in a Google Drive or SharePoint folder with a name that sometimes follows the convention and sometimes does not, and copies the amount, date and supplier into a spreadsheet or into Holded.

That circuit consumes between one and three hours a day depending on volume, and the errors appear precisely when the load is heaviest: a document saved in the wrong folder, a duplicated invoice, an amount mistyped.

Approach 1: mailbox rules and a shared folder

This is the option that requires hiring nobody and installing nothing. It consists of configuring rules in Gmail (Google Workspace) or Outlook (Microsoft 365) so that emails with attachments from certain senders are labelled and archived, and agreeing on a shared folder with a fixed structure by year, month and document type.

What it solves:

• Supplier emails stop getting mixed in with the rest of the inbox.
• The whole team knows where to look for a document.
• It takes an afternoon to configure and costs nothing.

What it does not solve:

• Attachments still do not download or rename themselves.
• Nobody extracts the data; the spreadsheet or the management software still gets filled in by hand.
• A new supplier or a change of sending address breaks the rule without warning.

For a business of 3 to 5 people with twenty invoices a month it is probably enough. Beyond that, it falls short.

Approach 2: an automation that extracts the data and files it

This is where bespoke automation comes in, installed on a server within the EU and connected to your mailbox and your storage. The typical workflow we set up works like this:

1. The automation watches the mailbox (or a specific address such as invoices@yourcompany.com).
2. When an attachment arrives, it downloads it and runs it through a document-reading model that returns supplier, number, date, net amount, VAT and total.
3. It renames the file with a fixed pattern (2026-09-08_Supplier_F12345.pdf) and saves it in the correct folder in Google Drive, SharePoint or the company server.
4. It records the line in Holded, in your ERP or in a spreadsheet, depending on what you use today.
5. It sends a daily summary to the person in administration with what has come in.

What it solves: the mechanical work disappears, the filing stays tidy and the data goes into the system without typing. What it does not solve: the automation does exactly what it was programmed to do. If a delivery note arrives without a price, if an invoice corresponds to an order that was never placed, or if the total does not match the line items, the automation files it anyway, because nobody has asked it to judge.

A project of this kind falls within our usual range for an automation, between €3,000 and €6,000, and is typically up and running in three or four weeks. We work with the tools you already have (your email, your Drive, your Holded) and processing takes place on servers within the European Union.

Approach 3: an agent that also checks and asks when in doubt

The third approach adds judgement. An AI agent does everything in the previous approach and, in addition, compares each document against the company's context:

• It cross-checks the invoice against the order or the accepted quote and flags it if the amount does not match.
• It detects duplicates even when the supplier has changed the number or resent the same PDF.
• It recognises that a charter contract has a clause that differs from the usual template and marks it for review.
• When it is not sure (an illegible delivery note, a new supplier, a different currency) it asks the person responsible by WhatsApp or email, with the image of the document and a proposed answer, instead of guessing.

That last part is what makes the difference in practice. The person in administration goes from processing a hundred documents to answering five questions a day, and the rest comes in on its own.

We offer an agent like this as a managed service from €500 per month: we maintain it, adjust the criteria when a supplier or a format changes, and review the logs of what it has done. The agent runs on European infrastructure and your documents never leave the EU.

How to choose between the three

A simple rule we use in the assessment:

• Fewer than 30 documents a month and a single person handling them: approach 1.
• Between 30 and 300 documents a month, with fairly stable formats: approach 2.
• More than 300 a month, or fewer but with contracts, delivery notes with discrepancies and several suppliers that change: approach 3.

In family businesses in Mallorca that grow with the season, it is common to start with approach 2 in winter and add the agent before May, when volume rises and seasonal staff do not yet know the suppliers.

Frequently asked questions

Does it work with paper invoices or photos taken on a phone?

Yes. Approaches 2 and 3 accept photos and scans, not only native PDFs. Reading quality depends on the photo, so we agree a minimum standard with the team (whole document, no heavy shadows) and the agent asks for the photo to be retaken when it cannot read a field.

Where are my documents stored and who can see them?

The documents stay in your storage (Google Drive, SharePoint or your server) and processing runs on servers within the European Union. Access belongs to your business, through accounts you own, and is recorded in a log you can consult.

What happens if a supplier changes its invoice format?

In approach 2, the workflow usually keeps working because the reading model understands the document and does not depend on a fixed template; if it fails, it appears in the daily summary as "not processed". In approach 3, the agent detects the change, processes what it can and asks about what it cannot.

If you want to know which of the three approaches makes sense in your business and how many hours a month it would save you, we measure it in our initial assessment (€1,500), which is deducted from the first project. Request an assessment