Inbox
From letter to archive, and nothing lands unseen.
Everything new waits in nexpaper's inbox first, whichever way it came. The fields are filled in there already, and beside each one it says where the proposal comes from. You look it over, change what is wrong and file it. This page explains the whole way, from bringing things in to the click on “File it”.
Five ways, one destination
Whether you drag a file into the browser, photograph a sheet with the phone or the scanner in the hall fills a folder, the document ends up waiting in the inbox. Everybody has their own, and in a shared vault everyone with edit rights sees the same.
| Way | Who sets it up | Out of the box |
|---|---|---|
| Upload in the browser or drag onto the page | nobody, it works straight away | on |
| Photograph or share with the phone | each person; for sharing on Android nexpaper has to sit on the home screen | on |
| By mail to the mailbox | the operator | off |
| Scanner folder on the network | the operator | off |
| Key for uploading (shortcut, script, scanner) | each person, once the operator has allowed keys | off |
The mailbox
Under “Settings”, “Inputs” the operator enters an IMAP mailbox. nexpaper fetches it every five minutes. The attachments (PDF, pictures and e-invoices as XML) land in the inbox of the person who forwarded the mail. nexpaper knows them by their confirmed sender address or by an address of the form paper+lena@example.com. The mail itself does not become a document.
- Unknown senders land in the operator's inbox, marked “unknown”, or stay in the mailbox if you prefer. Nothing is filed by itself.
- Afterwards the mail is marked as read, moved to the folder “nexpaper” or deleted, as the operator chooses, and only once every attachment has been taken.
- Your own addresses: Under “My account”, “Upload” you add more sender addresses. Each gets a confirmation link, so that nobody enters someone else's address. For that the server needs a mail server for sending.
The scanner folder
A scanner on the network or a share writes into a folder that nexpaper watches. Every person has a subfolder in it, and what lands there goes to their inbox and is taken out of the folder. A file counts only once it has lain still for ten seconds, so that a half-written scan does not vanish.
What is not taken is not lost
Files of the wrong kind, too large or empty move into the subfolder “abgelehnt” with the reason beside them. Hidden and half-finished files and the system folders of a NAS are left alone. Files straight in the folder go to the operator, marked “unknown”.
What nexpaper does before you look
After the upload a worker process of its own reads the document, one document at a time, the accounts taking turns. You do not have to wait. The inbox says “Being read” until then, and afterwards the fields are filled in.
Pages and preview
nexpaper splits the document into pages and makes a preview. Pictures become a PDF, and the photo is kept as the original.
Text recognition
Pages without text of their own are read with Tesseract, and an invisible text layer goes underneath. Pages that have text already stay as they are. The result is a plain searchable PDF, not PDF/A.
Six languages
German, English, French, Dutch, Polish and Turkish are in the image. German and English are on out of the box. More languages make recognition a little slower, and nothing is downloaded later.
Straightening
nexpaper straightens skewed and turned pages before reading, upside-down ones too. The operator can switch this off.
Long documents
With a long document, pages and preview are there at once, and the text follows later. From 300 pages on, the inbox says so plainly.
When it does not work
A password protection, a damaged file or too many pages are named with the reason. You try again with “Try again” or delete the file.
Good to knowThe operator sets the limits under “Settings”, “Storage”. Out of the box nexpaper takes files up to 200 MB and documents up to 2,000 pages.
Check, change, file
The inbox shows the inboxes of all vaults in which you may file. Each entry says which vault it waits in and who it comes from. Whoever may only read in a vault does not see its inbox.
One click files it
You choose an entry and see the pages large, with the fields beside them. If everything is right, you file it with “File it”, and the next letter opens. If something does not fit, you change it first: title, sender, kind, date, amount, tags, vault and the four dates.
- Searching and sorting: The list can be filtered by vault, source and by who a file came from. It searches titles, senders and the text as well. It sorts by newest, oldest or by the date on the document.
- Edit pages works right in the inbox, from turning to “New document from here”.
- From the keyboard: j goes on, k back, x selects, Ctrl Enter files.
Duplicates stand out
If you have this very file already, nexpaper does not even transfer it in the browser. If it arrives anyway, it carries the note “Uploaded, but you have the same file already as …”. A letter you have scanned or photographed again is spotted by picture and text. There it says “Looks like a document you have”, and two buttons offer “Discard” and “See the one you have”.
The comparison is made only with documents you may see yourself.
You do not have to file at once
The inbox is a place, not a duty. You can leave things lying and file them later, and until then you find them with the search in the inbox. Nothing is deleted without asking, and deleted documents stay in the trash for 30 days.
Twenty letters after the holiday
When a whole stack has piled up after a trip, you do not file it piece by piece. With “Select” you mark several entries, set vault, kind and a tag together and file them all with one click.
Set together, check singly
“Filing takes over the proposals. What you choose here applies to everything selected.” That is what the dialog says, and what it does. If you leave a field on “Unchanged”, each document keeps its own proposal. The button reads “File N” and takes up to 200 documents at once.
Each document is checked on its own. If one fails, nexpaper names the reason, and the others are filed all the same.
Where the proposals come from
nexpaper proposes fields from different sources and always takes the most reliable one first. The order is fixed, and each field says which source won.
1. E-invoice
If the file has invoice data, sender, date, amount and number come exactly from it. It cannot get more reliable than that.
2. Rule
A rule you have made sets vault, kind, tag, sender or title. More on that below.
3. As last time
The same IBAN, VAT number, customer number or letterhead as on a filed document brings its sender, kind and tags along. For that nexpaper looks at your last 25 matching documents. It is a comparison, not machine learning.
4. From the text
nexpaper takes the date after words like “Invoice date” or “Rechnungsdatum”, the due date after “due”, “payable by” or “fällig”, the amount after “Total due”, “Amount due” or “Total” (in German “Gesamtbetrag” or “Summe”). Net and tax lines never count. German and English, euros, dollars, francs and pounds.
5. AI, if you want it
Only where nothing more reliable knew the value, and only as a proposal. No AI is set up out of the box.
Your word counts
What a person has changed themselves is not overwritten by a later proposal. Without AI the title comes from the file name or the subject of the mail; for e-invoices it is “Invoice” or “Credit note” and the number.
Say it once, nexpaper remembers
When you change something in the inbox that should always be so, nexpaper asks, provided you manage the vault. For example “Sender “Wiesental Energy” is always Invoice”. With “Remember as a rule” it becomes a rule, with “Just this once” it does not.
If, then
A rule consists of conditions and consequences. Conditions are “Sender” “is” or “contains”, “Text contains”, “Kind is”, “Source is” and an amount “over” or “under” a limit. For one word you may give up to five alternatives with “or”. Consequences are vault, kind, tag, sender and title.
The title can be a pattern, such as “Power {month} {year}”. The placeholders are {sender}, {kind}, {date}, {month}, {year} and {amount}. Words are compared as plain text, never as a pattern, so you do not need a regular expression.
- Order and counter: Rules can be ordered, switched on and off, and each shows how often it has applied.
- Who makes them: Whoever manages a vault makes its rules, and everybody does so for their own. The operator sees the rules of all vaults.
- Limits: A rule puts a document only into a vault in which the uploading person may file. No rule reaches into somebody else's personal vault.
AI, but only if you switch it on
nexpaper does without AI, and that is the default. If you want help with filling in anyway, you set it up under “Settings”, “AI”. It then proposes title, sender, kind, date and amount. Nothing is filed until a person confirms.
Three kinds, one off switch
You can choose “No AI”, a “Local model” in your own network, with Ollama for instance or anything that speaks the /v1/chat/completions interface, and a service on the internet. That one may speak the OpenAI interface or the Messages interface. nexpaper seals the key for it and never shows it again. “Save and try it” runs a test that holds no document content.
- What goes out: the recognised text of the first two pages of a new document, 6,000 characters at most, plus the list of kinds. No picture, no file, no account name, no vault name.
- Personal vaults stay out: Out of the box nothing from a personal vault goes to a model. There only rules apply.
- A daily limit: 200 requests a day for the whole server out of the box. Once it is reached, rules and reading go on.
- Off per person: Under “My account” each person switches the AI off for their documents. The operator can also decline to allow it for individual accounts.
Good to knowHow reliably a model fills in the fields depends on the model, and nexpaper cannot promise it. That is why it is only ever a proposal that you see before anything is filed.
E-invoices arrive ready
Read, not guessed
A PDF with embedded invoice data (ZUGFeRD or Factur-X) and a pure XML invoice (XRechnung, UBL or CII) are recognised by nexpaper by themselves. Sender, date, due date, amount, invoice number, IBAN and buyer reference come from the data, not from text recognition. The inbox says “E-invoice recognised” with the profile, such as XRechnung or EN 16931.
A readable page as well
A pure XML file cannot be looked at. So nexpaper sets a simple A4 page from it that you can read and print. The XML stays the original and can be downloaded. A credit note gets the title “Credit note” with its number, and the kind stays “Invoice”.
Whether an invoice meets the official rules, nexpaper does not check.
One stack, one scan, many documents
If you put ten letters into the feeder at once, you get a single PDF. That is what the trick with blank sheets is for.
A blank sheet in between
Before scanning, put a blank sheet between the letters. nexpaper finds blank pages, proposes cutting the stack there and asks “Split the batch scan?”. You see the proposed parts, and a click between two pages cuts or joins again. “Split into N documents” separates them, and the separator sheets are dropped. If you do not want that, choose “Keep as one document”.
Scanned on both sides too
nexpaper recognises stacks scanned on both sides as well. Blank backs are dropped when it splits. The operator can switch the recognition off under “Settings”, “Storage”.
It is about blank pages, not barcodes or counting numbers. If you separate your stack with barcodes, you need another tool for that.
Using the inbox, step by step · Bringing things in · Rules and AI