Receive purchase orders by email

Email is the intake method that needs no one to do anything. Buyers send orders where they always sent them, and the orders appear in PO Autopilot.

Find your address

Go to Settings. Under Email is the address for your store, with a copy button beside it.

The address is generated for your store and is unique to it. Anything sent to it creates orders in your store and nobody else’s.

If Settings says inbound email has not been configured by your administrator, the deployment has not had inbound mail set up yet. Nothing you can do on this screen will change that — it needs configuring on the server side.

Using it

Give the address to buyers directly, or keep your existing address and forward to it. Most stores forward, so buyers never have to learn a new address — see Use your own email address with forwarding.

What happens to a message

When an email arrives:

1. The sender is checked, if you have turned on approved senders. A sender who is not approved is rejected and no order is created. See Control who can send orders by email.
2. Supported attachments are found. Each one becomes its own purchase order. See Emails with multiple attachments.
3. If there are none, the body of the message is used instead, if it has content. See How email body orders work.

Each resulting order then processes exactly like an upload.

Limits

• Up to 20 supported attachments per message.
• Up to 50 MB of attachments per message in total.
• Each individual file up to 25 MB.

A message over these limits is rejected as a whole, rather than having some of its attachments processed and others dropped silently.

What does not become an order

• Unsupported attachments. A .docx in the message is ignored rather than turned into a failed order. If it was the only attachment, the body is used instead, and you may get an order that is thinner than the buyer intended.
• Signatures, logos and inline images. These are attachments technically, and images are a supported type, so a message with a logo and no real attachment can produce an order from the logo. If you see empty orders appearing from one particular sender, this is usually why.
• Duplicate deliveries. A retried or re-sent message does not create a second order.