How to handle the documents received from the accounting firm's clients

What is it for?

The accounting firm's clients send their invoices by e-mail or through the portal. Each document arrives as a draft supplier invoice in the right company, with the file attached, and waits for someone to check and post it. The What arrived and what is missing screen shows, per client and per month, how many documents came in.

When to use it?

• To handle what clients have sent since last time.
• To find out which clients have not sent anything yet this month.
• It does not count drafts as posted: a document only reaches the accounts when the invoice is confirmed.

Where to find it?

• Accounting › Record › Purchases › Documents received from the firm clients (Accountant).
• Accounting › Review › Third parties › What arrived and what is missing (Accountant).
• Accounting › Configure › System › Office inbox (e-mails with files that arrive at the firm's address; the client company is decided by written rules, not by AI; see step 7).

All three only exist with Accounting firm mode turned on.

Before you start

• Profile: Accountant. The example is Empresa Demonstração, on 01/11/2026.
• Each client company has its own e-mail address (that of the purchase journal) and a page on the portal for the client.

How to use it

1. Open Record › Purchases › Documents received from the firm clients. The list opens filtered on To handle and shows Received on, Received by (Email or Portal), Sent by, Partner and State. In the example there are, on 01/11/2026, three drafts: two by e-mail (geral@demonstracao.example.invalid and geral@papelaria-exemplo.example) and one through the Portal.
2. Remove the To handle filter to also see what has already been handled: in the demo, two more documents appear already Posted (one from e-mail and one from the portal).
3. Open the draft. It is a supplier invoice with the file attached. If a file was not accepted, the history says so: “Files not accepted: 'programa.exe': only PDF, images (PNG, JPG), XML, CSV and OFX files are accepted.” The PDF in the example was accepted.
4. Fill in or check the supplier, the date, the lines and the taxes and click Confirm; posting follows the normal procedure for a supplier invoice. To read the PDF with the Copilot's help, see How to read documents.
5. Open Review › Third parties › What arrived and what is missing. It opens filtered on Nothing received and on the current month: if every client sent something, it shows “Every client sent something this month”. Remove the filters to see the last 12 months: Empresa Demonstração has, on 01/11/2026, 2 by e-mail, 1 through the portal, 3 received; on 01/10/2026, 1 and 1, 2 received.
6. When the client sends through the portal. The client logs in with their portal user (the first time, the screen says “The password you received is temporary. Choose a new one to continue.”) and opens /my/documentos, Send documents to your accountant. They choose the file and click Send. A valid PDF is accepted (“Received: fatura-exemplo.pdf. Your accountant will handle them.”) and shows as Received under What we received from you. A rejected file shows the reason and does not go in: programa.exe gives “only PDF, images (PNG, JPG), XML, CSV and OFX files are accepted.”, an empty PDF gives “the file is empty.” and a text file with the .pdf extension gives “the content is not a valid PDF file.”. The document sent appears in the list from step 1 with Received by Portal, in Draft, and counts under By portal on the screen from step 5.
7. The office inbox. Open Configure › System › Office inbox. The list opens filtered on To assign; remove the filter to see everything. Each line is an e-mail with files, with the Sender, the Client company, the Confidence and the State (To assign, To process or Processed). Open an e-mail: the Why this company field says how the company was chosen. In the example, an e-mail from geral@demonstracao.example.invalid with a PDF containing Empresa Demonstração's tax number (NIF) was assigned to that company, with 95 % and To process; an e-mail from the same sender linked to two companies, with no NIF, stayed To assign with 0 % (it says the sender is linked to several companies and no NIF tells them apart). On an e-mail To assign, choose the Client company and click Assign to the chosen company; it changes to To process. It only accepts Portuguese companies the person works in: with another one, the screen says “You may only assign the e-mail to a Portuguese company that you work in. Nothing was changed.” On an e-mail To process, click Create the drafts and confirm (“The drafts are made with your permissions and nothing is validated”). An invoice with the AT QR code is read without AI and shows Draft created. Nothing was validated: check it against the document before posting.; that draft appears in the list from step 1 as Email.

Expected result

• Each document appears once, with the channel and who sent it.
• A month with 0 under Received is a client you need to ask for documents.

Important notes

• The count is by date of entry into the product (the date the draft was created), not by invoice date.
• PDF, images (PNG and JPG), XML, CSV and OFX are accepted; a file is rejected if it is empty, larger than 10 MB, or if its content does not match its type. Each message accepts at most 10 files.
• The Office inbox is another channel and has two conditions, which only the Fiscal administration profile can meet:
  1. In Copilot › Connections to the AIs › AI settings, tick Office company? on the accounting firm's company (only one). Without it, the e-mail is refused: “No company was chosen as the office of the inbox. Nothing was stored.”
  2. In Copilot › Control › Switches, turn on, for that company, Copilot (master switch of the company), AI connection (calls to the AI provider) and AI - Office inbox. These switches are marked “Outside” on the screen: they are turned on by the company's decision. Anyone who is not Fiscal administration sees “Ask the Fiscal administration profile to turn on the AI”. With everything off, the list is empty and the screen explains why.
• The client company is never decided by AI. The decision is made by the sender (who must be known: the address of the company, of a contact or of a user of the company) and by the NIFs written in the e-mail and in the documents: when the sender is known and the NIF of one of their companies appears, that is the choice (95 %); with no NIF and a single company, 80 %; with several companies or an unknown sender, the e-mail stays To assign. Only reading a file that has no QR code can use AI, and the text of the e-mail is never sent to it. AI remains off in the demo database (“Test database: the AI is not called”), so reading documents without a QR code was not tested.
• In the demo there is no mail server connected (the network is blocked): the arrival of the example e-mails (and of the inbox) was simulated with the same method the mail server calls. Real sending depends on the e-mail domain being configured in Odoo.

Common problems

The client says they sent it and I see nothing

• Cause: the list opens on To handle; or the file was rejected; or the e-mail was not sent to the address of the right company's purchase journal.
• What to do: remove the filter, look for the draft and read the history. Ask the client to send it again as a PDF.

“You may only assign the e-mail to a Portuguese company that you work in”

• Cause: the company chosen in Client company is not one of the companies the person works in (the field offers it anyway).
• What to do: choose one of your companies or ask a fiscal administrator to give you access to the client's company.

Files not accepted

• Cause: the file's type, size or content.
• What to do: ask the client for a PDF or a photo (PNG or JPG).