Email inbox

Every project has its own email inbox. Forward documents to that address — directly or through a mail rule — and Recognito creates a document per attachment. The fastest path for teams whose suppliers already email PDFs.

This page covers how the email path works, what gets classified vs attached, and the limits and edge cases.

The project mailbox address

Every project has an inbox of the form {project-type}-{random}@mail.recognito.io:

• invoice-randomstring@mail.recognito.io for Invoice projects.
• receipt-randomstring@mail.recognito.io for Receipt projects.
• handover-randomstring@mail.recognito.io for Handover projects.

The random suffix stays stable across project renames. You can rename the project freely and the mailbox keeps working.

Find your project's address in Settings → General, or click Upload new files in the Documents view — the modal shows the address alongside the drag-and-drop area.

What happens when an email arrives

The system processes the email roughly like this:

1. Attachment extraction. Recognito pulls out every file attachment.
2. Optional classification. If Classify uploaded files is on (Settings → General) and the email has multiple attachments, Recognito sorts them by document type.
3. Document creation. Files matching one of the project's Accepted document types become standalone documents. Other files become attachments on the nearest matched document.
4. Single-file path. If the email has only one attachment, that file becomes a document directly — classification is skipped.

The body of the email — the message text — is captured alongside the document(s) and accessible from Studio's Mail tab. For body-only emails (no attachments), behavior is currently undocumented; the practical recommendation is to always send documents as attachments.

The classifier

The classifier solves a real problem: an email arrives with an invoice PDF, a delivery note PDF, and the supplier's body-text message. You want one document (the invoice) with the delivery note as an attachment, not two unrelated documents.

When Classify uploaded files is on:

• The system looks at each attachment and tries to identify its document type.
• Files that match one of the project's Accepted document types become standalone documents.
• Other files (non-matching types, supporting documents) become attachments on the nearest matched document.

The Accepted document types list is configured in Settings → General. By default it includes the project's primary type. You can add more — say a project that processes both Invoices and Purchase Orders.

When Classify uploaded files is off, each attachment becomes its own document with no grouping. Useful when you know all attachments are independent.

Classification only runs on email uploads

Manual uploads (drag-and-drop, Studio's left rail) bypass the classifier — they trust the user to know what each file is. API uploads also bypass it. The classifier only runs on the email path.

Accepted file formats

Recognito accepts:

• PDF
• PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WEBP, SVG (image formats)

Other formats (Word, Excel, plain text, HTML) aren't accepted. Documents in those formats get rejected at intake.

If your suppliers send documents in unsupported formats, the practical workaround is converting them to PDF before forwarding (most modern email tools can save attachments as PDF, or you can use any PDF print driver).

Hash-duplicate rejection from email

If Reject duplicate files is on in Settings → General, and an emailed file's hash matches a document already in the project, the system rejects the file silently. No document is created. The sender doesn't get notified by default.

If you're tracking what suppliers send, build that habit into your supplier comms — Recognito's silent rejection means you won't have an in-product trail for duplicates that never made it in.

Setting up forwarding

The two common patterns:

• Direct forwarding from suppliers. Give the project mailbox to suppliers as the address they should send invoices to. They send directly; the document appears in your queue.
• Mail rule from a shared inbox. Most AP teams have a invoices@yourcompany.com shared inbox. Set up a rule that forwards every invoice from there to Recognito's project mailbox. Suppliers keep using your normal address; Recognito gets a copy.

The forwarding approach is more common because it preserves your existing supplier contacts. The rule needs to forward attachments — some mail clients strip attachments on forward, which breaks the flow.

Test forwarding before pointing suppliers at it

Send a test invoice through your forwarding setup before changing supplier instructions. Some mail systems mangle attachments, drop attachments above a size threshold, or strip metadata that Recognito needs. Catching this early saves a lot of "where did my invoice go" support.

Attachment size limits

The per-email attachment size limit is not published. If you're sending large PDFs, splitting multi-document emails into several smaller emails is the safest approach. For high-volume or large-file cases, the API upload path is the more reliable route.

What the sender sees

Whether the sender receives any reply or bounce notification when their email arrives is not documented. If confirmation behavior matters for your suppliers, talk to Recognito support about your specific need.

What's next

• Upload — the drag-and-drop manual path.
• API ingest — programmatic uploads for high-volume or integration cases.
• General settings — where you configure Accepted document types, classify-on/off, and duplicate rejection.