Sources overview
Compare every way Inbox Ledger captures documents, from Gmail and Outlook to IMAP, forwarding, and manual upload.
Sources overview
A source is any way Inbox Ledger pulls documents into your organization. You can run as many sources as you need side by side, and every one of them feeds the same processing pipeline once a document is captured.
The source types
- Gmail. Connect with OAuth in about a minute. Inbox Ledger syncs new mail in the background.
- Outlook. Same OAuth flow as Gmail. Works with Microsoft 365, Outlook.com, and Exchange Online.
- IMAP. Connect any other provider with a username and password (or an app password). Good for Fastmail, Zoho, iCloud, and hosted mail servers.
- Forwarding addresses. Generate a
@fw.inboxledger.appaddress and forward invoices to it. No inbox access required. - Manual upload. Drag PDFs or images straight into the dashboard for one-off documents.
- Messenger bots. Forward an invoice to the Inbox Ledger Telegram or WhatsApp bot from your phone. See Telegram and WhatsApp.
Comparison
| Source | How you connect | When it captures | Setup time | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gmail | OAuth | Auto, every 60 min | 1 min | Personal and Google Workspace inboxes |
| Outlook | OAuth | Auto, every 60 min | 1 min | Microsoft 365, Outlook.com, Exchange Online |
| IMAP | Username + password | Auto, every 60 min | 3 to 5 min | Fastmail, Zoho, iCloud, Yandex, hosted Exchange |
| Forwarding | None (email-driven) | On receive | 30 sec | Capturing one sender without granting inbox-wide access |
| Manual | None (in-app) | On upload | Instant | One-off PDFs, scanned receipts, portal downloads |
The Telegram and WhatsApp bots are also available. They capture an invoice the moment you send it to the bot, and you set them up from the Sources page.
How sync works
Connecting an inbox does not scan your old mail. When you connect Gmail, Outlook, or IMAP, Inbox Ledger marks the moment you connected as the starting point and watches for new mail from then on. Auto-sync runs every 60 minutes in the background, so invoices that arrive after you connect show up on their own.
To pull in invoices that arrived before you connected, open the Retroactive Scan page and run Find Past Invoices. You pick a period and the inboxes to scan, and Inbox Ledger reads the mail delivered in that window. See Retroactive scan for the full walkthrough.
Forwarded emails are captured the moment they arrive, with no polling delay. Manual uploads start processing the second you drop the file.
OAuth tokens and IMAP passwords are stored encrypted in Supabase Vault, the server-side secret store. They never appear in plaintext in the database or in your browser, and they are decrypted only when a sync worker needs to call your provider.
Related
Connect Gmail
OAuth flow, scopes, and sync behavior.
Connect IMAP
Any provider, with credentials encrypted at rest.
Forwarding addresses
Capture specific senders without an OAuth grant.
Documents overview
What happens after a source captures a file.
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