Forwarding Documents by Email

Email intake turns your inbox into an upload channel. Forward an email with shipment documents attached to your organization’s private intake address, and CargoLint classifies the attachments, groups them into a shipment, runs the cross-document checks, and replies to the sender with the results and a link to the shipment.

It’s built for the moment documents arrive by email anyway - from a supplier, a carrier, or a colleague - and forwarding them takes less time than downloading and re-uploading.

Before you start

• You’re an Owner or Admin (required to enable intake and manage senders)
• Senders must be registered members of your organization
• Attachments are PDF, PNG, JPEG, or TIFF, up to 20MB each

Set it up once

1. Enable email intake

Go to Settings → Integrations → Email Intake and choose Enable email intake. CargoLint generates your organization’s private address, for example:

acme-freight-x7k2m9q4ab@intake.cargolint.com

The random token in the address is deliberate - treat the address like a credential. You can rotate it anytime, which invalidates the old address immediately.

2. Add allowed senders

Add the email addresses that may forward documents. Each address must belong to a registered member of your organization - that’s what lets the results reply link straight into the app for them. Emails from any other address are ignored.

3. Share the address with your team

Allowlisted members can save the intake address as a contact and forward documents to it from their regular mail client.

Forwarding documents

Forward (or send) an email with the documents attached to your intake address. From there:

1. Each attachment is classified as one of the four document types CargoLint processes.
2. Attachments from one email are grouped into one shipment. If an extracted reference (invoice number, bill of lading number) matches an existing shipment, they join that shipment instead.
3. Cross-document consistency checks run once every document finishes processing, same as documents uploaded in the app.
4. The sender gets a reply with the results.

Processing time depends on the documents; the reply typically arrives within a few minutes.

What the reply contains

• An outcome line per attachment - “Processed”, “Not a supported document type”, and so on
• The overall check status with the top findings, and each document’s extraction confidence
• A link to the shipment in CargoLint (sign-in required)

Limits

• Only the four core document types are processed. Attachments that classify as anything else are set aside without using storage, and the reply names them so nothing disappears silently.
• File rules match in-app uploads: PDF, PNG, JPEG, or TIFF, up to 20MB per file, up to 10 attachments per email. Small inline images such as signature logos are ignored automatically.
• One email creates one shipment (or joins one existing shipment). To build a shipment across several emails, use the same references in the documents so they match up, or attach everything to a single email.
• The reply goes to the sender’s registered address only. To share results with someone else, use sharing from the shipment afterwards.
• Each organization has an hourly intake cap to keep runaway forwarding rules in check.

How access is controlled

Four layers decide whether an email is accepted:

1. The intake address itself contains a random token only your team knows, and you can rotate it from Settings at any time.
2. The sender must be on your allowlist.
3. The sending mail server must pass standard email authentication (SPF or DKIM), so a forged “From” address is rejected even if it matches your allowlist.
4. Anything that fails these checks is dropped silently - no bounce, no reply - so probing the address reveals nothing.

Tip: If the intake address leaks - a forwarded email chain, a shared screenshot - rotate it from Settings → Integrations → Email Intake. The allowlist and sender authentication protect you in the meantime, but rotation costs nothing.

Troubleshooting

No reply arrived. Check, in order: the sending address is on the allowlist exactly (aliases don’t match), the intake address is current (rotating invalidates the old one), at least one attachment is a supported file type, and your organization isn’t over its hourly cap. Rejected emails are dropped without a reply by design.

The reply says “Not a supported document type”. The attachment didn’t classify as an invoice, packing list, bill of lading, or certificate of origin. If it genuinely is one, image quality is the usual culprit - see Scanning Tips and upload it in the app to review.

A document shows “Still processing”. The reply was sent after a waiting period even though one document hadn’t finished. It will complete in the app; open the shipment from the link to see its current state.

What’s next

• Working with Shipments - Where forwarded documents land
• Shipment Consistency Checks - The checks behind the reply’s findings
• Sharing & Cloning - Send results onward to brokers or clients