Use your own email address with forwarding

Your buyers already send purchase orders to something like orders@yourcompany.com. You do not have to change that, and you should not have to ask hundreds of buyers to update an address book entry.

Instead, forward that mailbox to your PO Autopilot intake address.

How this works

PO Autopilot gives your store an intake address and processes anything sent to it. It does not host your domain or run your mailbox. Your existing mail provider keeps doing that; it just also passes a copy to PO Autopilot.

PO Autopilot cannot receive mail at your own domain. Orders must reach the intake address, whether the buyer sends them there directly or your provider forwards them.

Set up forwarding

1. Copy your intake address from Settings, under Email.
2. In your email provider, add a forwarding rule from your orders mailbox to that address.
3. Complete any confirmation step your provider requires. Several send a verification message to the destination before forwarding starts — see below.
4. Send a test purchase order to your own address and check it appears in Orders.

The exact steps depend on your provider. In Google Workspace it is a filter or a forwarding address on the mailbox; in Microsoft 365 it is a mail flow rule or mailbox forwarding. Your IT administrator will know which fits your setup.

Verification messages

Some providers will not enable forwarding until a code sent to the destination is confirmed. PO Autopilot’s intake address is not a mailbox you can read, so that code is not visible to you.

Where a provider offers it, use a rule-based forward — a mail flow rule or a filter that forwards matching messages — rather than the account-level forwarding that requires confirmation. If your only option is the confirmed kind, ask whoever set up your store’s inbound email for help.

Forward selectively

You rarely want your whole orders mailbox forwarded. Newsletters, replies and internal chatter all become orders if you send everything.

Most stores forward on a condition instead — messages with attachments, messages from known buyer domains, or messages matching a subject pattern like “PO” or “purchase order”.

Pair this with approved senders inside PO Autopilot for a second layer that does not depend on your mail rules being right. See Control who can send orders by email.

Check it worked

Send a real purchase order from an outside address, not from the orders mailbox itself — a message that starts in the destination mailbox is not always forwarded by the same rules.

The order should appear within a few seconds of your provider forwarding it. If nothing shows up, see My emailed order didn’t appear.