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Inbound email gives your business a dedicated inbox address. When a vendor emails an invoice to that address — either directly or via a forwarding rule — Cleo Pay automatically parses the attachment and creates a payable draft in your inbox. You can then review, edit, and approve the draft without manually entering any invoice data. This is especially useful if you receive invoices by email from vendors who are not yet connected to your Cleo Pay account.

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Set up inbound email

1

Enable inbound email

Call the enable endpoint to activate the feature for your account. Cleo Pay generates a dedicated email address for your business.
curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.cleo-pay.com/api/inbound-email/enable \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN'
The response confirms that inbound email is now active.
2

Find your dedicated email address

Retrieve your inbound email settings to get the dedicated address assigned to your business.
curl --request GET \
  --url https://api.cleo-pay.com/api/inbound-email/settings \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN'
The response includes an inboundEmailAddress field — for example, your-business-name@inbox.cleo-pay.com. Save this address; you will need it in the next step.
3

Forward vendor invoices to your inbox

Share your dedicated address with vendors so they can email invoices directly to it. Alternatively, set up a forwarding rule in your email client to automatically forward any invoice emails to the Cleo Pay address.Cleo Pay processes emails with PDF or image attachments. When an invoice arrives, the system extracts fields such as vendor name, invoice number, amount, and due date, then creates a payable draft.
Setting up a forwarding rule from your accounts-payable inbox (for example, ap@yourcompany.com) means you never have to manually forward individual emails.
4

Review parsed emails and drafts

Once emails start arriving, you can list them to see what has been received and processed.
curl --request GET \
  --url https://api.cleo-pay.com/api/inbound-email/emails \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN'
Each item in the response represents one received email and includes the parsed status and a reference to the payable draft that was created. To view full details for a specific email — including parsing results and any errors — fetch it by ID:
curl --request GET \
  --url https://api.cleo-pay.com/api/inbound-email/emails/{inboundEmailId} \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN'
Open the linked draft in the Cleo Pay dashboard to verify the parsed fields, assign it to a vendor connection, and submit it for approval.

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Disable inbound email

If you no longer want to receive emails at your dedicated address, disable the feature: 
curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.cleo-pay.com/api/inbound-email/disable \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN'
Emails sent to your inbound address after disabling will not be processed. Your dedicated address is preserved, so re-enabling the feature restores full functionality.
Disabling inbound email does not delete existing parsed emails or the drafts already created from them. Your historical records remain accessible.

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Supported attachment types

Cleo Pay parses PDF and common image formats (JPEG, PNG). Emails without a supported attachment are received but will not produce a payable draft. Check the email detail response for a parseStatus field to diagnose any issues.

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API reference

MethodEndpointDescription
POST/api/inbound-email/enableEnable inbound email
POST/api/inbound-email/disableDisable inbound email
GET/api/inbound-email/settingsGet settings and dedicated address
GET/api/inbound-email/emailsList received emails
GET/api/inbound-email/emails/{id}Get email details