Features
The way of a letter, and what nexpaper does for you on the way.
This page lists what nexpaper can do in the order a piece of paper goes through the app: it comes in, waits in the inbox, gets filed and is found again years later. The pictures come from the app, filled with an invented household. Lena sets everything up, Tom is her partner, Greta her mother.
Paper comes in by several routes
Not every letter lies next to the scanner. So nexpaper takes files from the browser, from the phone, from a mailbox and from a folder on the network. Everything lands in the inbox first; nothing is in the archive straight away.
In the browser
The “Upload” button in the sidebar, or you simply drag files anywhere onto the page. Large files go up in pieces and can be resumed after an interruption. If you have exactly this file already, nexpaper transfers nothing.
With the phone
The quick upload has big buttons for “Take a photo”, “Choose a file” and “From photos”. The camera finds the sheet by itself, straightens it and turns several pages into one document.
From another app
On Android nexpaper appears in the share menu once it sits on the home screen. On the iPhone a shortcut steps in, which you build once.
By mail
Invoices that arrive as attachments you forward to nexpaper's mailbox. It is fetched every five minutes. Out of the box this is off; the operator switches it on.
From the scanner
A folder on the network that nexpaper watches. Everybody has a subfolder in it, and what lands there goes to their inbox. This too is off out of the box.
Through the interface
Your own scripts, or a scanner that uploads directly, use a key that can only upload, as soon as the operator allows keys. The interface is open at /api/v1.
What nexpaper accepts
PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF (multi-page too), HEIC from the iPhone, WebP, AVIF and e-invoices as XML. What a file is, nexpaper reads from its content and not from its extension. Pictures become a PDF, and the photo stays beside it as the original.
Word, Excel and other office files nexpaper does not accept, and an email does not become a document by itself, only its attachments.
Text recognition comes along
Photos and scans are read with Tesseract, and an invisible text layer goes underneath. Pages that carry text already stay as they are. It can recognise six languages, German and English out of the box; the operator sets which ones are needed. All of this happens in the same container, and nothing goes on the network for it.
Check first, then file
Everything new waits in the inbox. The fields are filled in already, and beside each one it says where the proposal comes from. So you see at a glance what is solid and what was only a guess.
Proposals with their origin
nexpaper proposes sender, kind, date, amount and title from several sources, always in this order: from the data of an e-invoice, from your rules, “as last time”, from the text of the letter and, last of all, from an AI if you have set one up. The field says so, for instance “Rule” or “from the text”. What you have changed by hand once is not overwritten by a later proposal.
- As last time: If a letter carries the same IBAN, customer number or letterhead as one already filed, nexpaper takes over its sender, kind and tags. This is a comparison, not a learning method.
- Remember as a rule: After you change something, the inbox asks “Always like this?”. With “Remember as a rule” it applies from the next document on.
- It spots duplicates: The same file, but also a letter that was scanned or photographed again, carries the note “Looks like a document you have”. You can discard it.
- From the keyboard: j goes on, k back, x selects, Ctrl Enter files.
Good to knowThere is no AI out of the box. If you set one up, you can switch it off per person, and documents in personal vaults never go to a model unless you change that. What goes out is described on the page about the inbox.
The letter you will look for in three years
The archive shows everything you may see, ordered by month, as a list or as tiles. Older months load as you scroll. With “Filter” you narrow down by vault, kind, sender, tag, owner or period.
A search that finds parts of words
The search box looks through titles, senders, notes, tags and the whole recognised text. Every word must appear, upper and lower case do not matter, and parts of words work too: “ergy” finds “Energy”. A hit shows an excerpt with the word marked.
If you want to be more exact, write filters into the search line.
"please transfer"looks for exactly these words in this order.kind:invoiceandsender:brandtnarrow it down to one kind or one sender.tag:carlooks for a tag,amount:>100for amounts over 100 €.
The archive by month
Below the search box the documents stand month by month. A small mark tells you whether a document carries a note, is shared with people or has a link to the outside. The “Export” button sits right beside it.
A fuzzy search that forgives typing mistakes does not exist. Parts of words, accents and upper or lower case, on the other hand, do not matter.
A document, with everything that belongs to it
A click in the archive opens the document. nexpaper shows the pages right in the browser, with search in the document, contents and zoom. Beside them are the tabs “Details”, “Text”, “Notes”, “Versions” and “History”.
Fields and dates
Title, sender, kind, date, amount with currency, tags and vault can be changed if you may edit. Four dates come on top: “Due on”, “Contract until”, “Warranty until” and “Keep until”. If you type a year in short form, nexpaper asks, for example “Did you mean 2027?”.
The dates are kept on the document. nexpaper does not send reminders about them.
Anyone who sees the document may write a note, for instance “paid on 3 April”. Everyone sees it, and the search finds it too.
Nothing gets lost, even when you change it
The “History” tab says who did what and when: created, changed, moved, shared, opened as a link, deleted. The contents are not in it.
Under “Versions” you upload a new version, for example when a corrected invoice arrives. A new version replaces nothing, each one is kept with its original, and an older one is brought forward again with “Restore”. “Download” gives you the searchable PDF or the original, exactly as it came in. Whatever you delete stays in the trash for 30 days and can be brought back.
Turn, reorder, join and split pages
A scan comes in crooked, a page is upside down, two letters have ended up in one document. You can put that right in nexpaper itself, in the inbox and in the document, with “Edit pages”.
The original stays
You tap a page and turn it left or right, move it forward or back, or delete it. It is saved as a new version, and the original is kept. “New document from here” cuts at a page, and “Join with another” puts the pages of other documents at the end.
- Splitting a batch scan: If you put a blank sheet between the letters while scanning, nexpaper finds it and proposes cutting the stack there. A click between two pages cuts or joins again. The separator sheets are dropped.
- Scanned on both sides: nexpaper recognises blank backs and leaves them out when it splits.
Tidy up so the search stays clear
After a year “Wiesental Energy” and “Wiesental Energy Ltd” stand side by side. The “Organise” page tidies that up.
Senders, kinds and tags in one place
For each vault you see all senders, kinds and tags with the number of their documents. You can search, sort by name or by most documents, rename, merge and delete, each time with a question first. Everyone who manages the vault may do this.
Merging works only within one vault. nexpaper brings ten kinds with it, from “Invoice” and “Contract” to “School” and “Other”. You add kinds of your own straight from the picker, with “+ New kind”.
Who sees what, and who may do what
Everybody has a vault of their own that, at first, only they can see. For everything that belongs to several people, the operator creates shared vaults, such as “Home”.
Three rights, that is all
A vault knows three rights. “Read” means look, search and download. “Edit” adds uploading, filing and editing pages. “Manage” also means sharing, giving rights and deleting. There are no more, and that is on purpose.
Single documents can additionally be shared with one person, even if they cannot see the vault. For someone without an account, such as the tax adviser, there is a link that shows only this document, expires on its own and can be withdrawn at any time.
E-invoices and a ZIP for the tax adviser
E-invoices are read
nexpaper reads ZUGFeRD, Factur-X and XRechnung from the invoice's own data, not from a photo. Invoice number, date, due date, seller, IBAN, net, tax and gross are taken over exactly as they stand in the data. If an invoice arrives as a pure XML file, nexpaper sets a readable page from it, and the XML stays the original.
The invoice is not checked against the official rules in the process. nexpaper reads it; it does not validate it.
A ZIP for when the tax office asks
“Export” in the archive packs the documents of a period and of the vaults you choose into a ZIP, optionally with the originals, the e-invoices as XML and a list as CSV. The folders are named as in nexpaper: vault, year, sender. A preview states the number, the size and the sum of the amounts beforehand.
The tax adviser can also fetch the ZIP through a link, without an account. An export in the DATEV format does not exist.
On the phone: take a photo and be done
nexpaper is a web app and can be put on the home screen. On the phone it opens on the quick upload once per visit, on a computer on the inbox.
A camera that finds the sheet
“Take a photo” opens the camera. It recognises the edges of the sheet, triggers by itself once the sheet has been still for about a second and a half, and straightens the page. You drag the corners by hand if needed. You choose between “Colour”, “Greyscale” and “Black and white”, switch the flash on and take several pages one after another. “Done” makes one document of them.
The quick upload also shows which vault the photo goes to, and your latest uploads with their state.
Good to knowIn the browser the camera works only if nexpaper is reached over https. Without that, the page offers the file picker. There is no app of its own for iPhone or Android, and nexpaper does not work offline either.
German or English, light or dark
Everybody sets it for themselves
The interface comes in German and English. The operator adds more languages as a simple JSON file; missing texts then fall back to English. Light, dark or “Like the system” is chosen by each person under “My account”, and so is whether the archive opens as a list or as tiles. What Tom chooses changes nothing for Lena.
What nexpaper does not do
nexpaper wants to stay small. So that nobody is disappointed later, here is what you might expect and will not find.
It is cut to fit a filing cabinet for the home and small businesses. If you need workflows, custom fields or freely configurable storage paths, Paperless-ngx suits you better.
- No office files: nexpaper does not accept Word, Excel or emails as documents.
- No encryption of the documents: They lie as readable files on your server, so that they stay yours without nexpaper.
- No reminders for dates: Due dates are saved, but not announced.
- No export for bookkeeping: There is ZIP and CSV, no DATEV, and nexpaper makes no claim to tamper-proof archiving.
- One mailbox, one sign-in provider: One IMAP mailbox per server, and signing in through a service works with exactly one provider.
- Best in your own network: nexpaper likes to run at home, and on the road you reach it by VPN.