For accountants: monthly inbox → ledger

By the Mail → Excel team · Updated 2026-10-18

Bookkeeping teams do the same export every month. Automating it saves hours and removes copy-paste errors.

What monthly closings actually need

• All invoices received in the period, saved with stable names.
• A spreadsheet with date, vendor, invoice number, amount and file path.
• A way to prove nothing was missed — e.g. a count of messages scanned.

Audit-friendly naming

Rename attachments immediately: YYYY-MM-DD_vendor_invoice-no.pdf. This survives mailbox migrations and makes reconciliation trivial.

safe_vendor = re.sub(r"[^A-Za-z0-9]+", "-", vendor)[:40].strip("-")
name = f"{date:%Y-%m-%d}_{safe_vendor}_{invoice_no}.pdf"

Monthly run (15 minutes)

1. Run the export with a date filter: first day of month → today.
2. Check the message count against the mailbox search count.
3. Open the Excel file, filter status = review, fix the exceptions.
4. Archive the folder — it is your evidence trail for the period.

Common mistakes