150 invoices a month. Zero filing.
Sebastian runs a technical wholesale business in the Sauerland region of Germany. Here's how he archives every incoming invoice in a legally compliant way, keeps track of payment status, and wins back around 7.5 hours a month for his customers.
- 100-150
- incoming invoices per month
- 1,000+
- documents archived and counting
- ~7.5 hrs
- saved every month
Who is Sebastian?
Sebastian is the managing director of a technical wholesale company in the Sauerland, a region in Germany known for its engineering and manufacturing businesses. His days belong to customers, suppliers, and his team. What his days should not belong to: paperwork.
Every month, between 100 and 150 incoming invoices land in his inbox. Every single one has to be archived in a legally compliant way. And because an unpaid invoice can quickly turn into late fees, he also wants to know the payment status of each one at any time. Two modest requirements - until you try to meet them by hand.
The problem: filing eats the time customers deserve
Before Paperarchive, handling invoices meant a familiar grind: download the attachment, rename the file, drop it into the right folder, keep a separate list of what is paid and what is still open. Multiply that by 150, every month.
- 100-150 incoming invoices a month that must be archived in a legally compliant way
- No overview of which invoices were paid, open, or about to become overdue
- Filing and admin time that he would much rather spend with customers
- No appetite for training a system from A to Z with complicated rules
"I didn't want to configure a document system for weeks. I wanted something that simply works - and learns when I correct it."
What Sebastian was looking for
His list of requirements was short but non-negotiable:
It simply works
No rule engine to feed, no folder structures to invent. Forward a document, done.
It learns from corrections
Change a sender, reassign a category, add a tag - once. The system should remember it and apply it automatically to the next document from the same sender in the same context.
Legally compliant archiving
Incoming invoices need to be stored in an audit-proof (GoBD-compliant) way and stay retrievable - without him having to think about it.
Status at a glance
No invoice should slip through, become overdue, and trigger unnecessary late fees.
The solution: forward the email, forget the filing
Sebastian put Paperarchive through its paces. Today, his entire invoice intake runs through one habit: he forwards every incoming invoice to his personal Paperarchive email address. That is the whole workflow.
Paperarchive reads each document, recognizes the sender, extracts the amount and due date, assigns a category, and archives the file in an audit-proof way. When Sebastian corrects something - a sender, a category, a tag - Paperarchive remembers the correction and applies it automatically the next time a document from the same sender arrives in the same context.
See how Paperarchive sorts invoices automatically →
And Paperarchive got better because of him
While testing, Sebastian suggested that document naming should be more customizable in the settings. He was right. Custom naming patterns have been part of Paperarchive ever since. Thank you, Sebastian!
Follow an invoice through Sebastian's workflow
Click through the five steps every incoming invoice goes through - from the inbox to the automatic reminder.
An invoice arrives - and gets forwarded
A supplier sends an invoice by email. Sebastian forwards it to his personal Paperarchive address. That is the only manual step in the entire process.
The journey didn't end there: an open API and one good idea
For Sebastian, archiving was only half the job. He also wanted to track the status of every incoming invoice, so that no payment deadline would ever pass unnoticed and no late fee would ever be charged.
So he used the open Paperarchive API and agentic coding to build his own little solution: a status tracker for incoming invoices. It shows him at a glance what is paid, what is open, and what is about to become due.
His approach inspired a feature that every Paperarchive user benefits from today: automatic reminders when an invoice is about to become overdue - first by email, and optionally by push notification. The same works for documents that contain deadlines, such as letters from the tax office, and for contracts that are about to expire or renew. One customer's tracker became everyone's safety net.
The result: about 7.5 hours a month, back where they belong
Since switching to Paperarchive, Sebastian has archived more than 1,000 documents, with the number growing every month. The filing happens on its own. The status is always visible. And nothing becomes overdue anymore.
- ~7.5 hrs
- saved per month - time that now goes to customers and service
- 1,000+
- documents archived, growing every month
- 0
- invoices slipping through or triggering late fees
"I just forward my incoming invoices via email, and they're just there when I need them. I stopped thinking about document organization entirely."
Your invoices deserve the same treatment
Try Paperarchive free for 30 days. Forward one invoice and watch the filing take care of itself.
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