Documents That Arrive in One PDF, or by Email

You run a forwarding desk, and one of your suppliers sends each shipment’s paperwork the same way: one email, one attachment, a scanned PDF holding the commercial invoice, the packing list, the bill of lading and the certificate of origin back to back. Here is how that file becomes four documents, checked against each other, without you cutting it apart.

“My supplier sends everything in one file. Do I have to split it myself?”

No. Upload the file as it is, from the Dashboard or the Documents page, and choose its shipment in the Group as picker. When CargoLint finds several documents in a PDF, it splits the file into them, from 2 up to 25 documents, each covering its own pages.

Each document lands in the shipment you chose, named after the file with its page range, such as “supplier-docs (pages 3-4).pdf”, and is processed like a separate upload. It gets its own kind, its own fields and Quality score, its own document checks and its own review.

A document that runs over several pages stays one document. A page that continues the one before it, such as an invoice’s second page of lines, stays with it, so a three-page invoice is one invoice.

See Uploading Documents and Document Types.

“What happens to the file I uploaded?”

It stays, with the status Split. Its page shows the original file and the line “This file held 4 documents; each is now its own.”, followed by the documents, each with its kind, its status and a link to open it. In the Documents list, the original shows Split and its documents appear as rows of their own; the status filter’s Split option lists the files that were split.

The original holds no fields and leaves the shipment, so the cross-document checks and the Expected Documents card read only the documents split out of it.

See Document Statuses and Working with Shipments.

“What if CargoLint cannot split it?”

The file shows Failed, and its page says: “The file holds several documents and could not be split into them. Upload them as separate files.” That happens when:

• The file holds more than 25 documents.
• The documents are in an image file, or share a single page. Only a PDF’s pages are divided.
• CargoLint cannot tell where each document’s pages start and end.

If a split looks wrong, upload the documents as separate files. See Troubleshooting.

“Can I just forward the supplier’s email?”

Yes, once email intake is set up. An Owner or Admin opens Settings, then Integrations, chooses Enable email intake on the Email Intake card to get your organization’s private address, and adds its Allowed senders. Each allowed sender must be a registered member of your organization, so a supplier outside it cannot write to the address directly: you or a colleague forward their email.

Each attachment is read like an upload in the app, so a combined PDF is split the same way. One email creates one new shipment, and the documents split out of a PDF land in it beside the other attachments. The upload rules still apply: PDF, PNG, JPEG or TIFF, up to 20MB per file and 10 attachments per email. A combined PDF is one file and one attachment, whatever it holds.

See Forwarding Documents by Email.

“What does the reply tell me?”

The reply goes to the sender’s registered address, with an outcome line per attachment. A combined PDF reads “Split into 4 documents”, with its own count. A file CargoLint could not split reads “Could not be processed”. An attachment set aside at intake says why, for example “Skipped - the PDF is password protected; send it without a password” or “Skipped - your plan’s documents for this month are used up”.

The reply waits for the split documents to finish, then gives the shipment’s check status with its top findings and a link to the shipment. If an attachment is still being read an hour after the email arrived, the reply goes out anyway and its line reads “Still processing”.

“How does one file count against my plan?”

Each document in it counts. A file split into four documents counts four: one when it is uploaded and the other three once it is split. A document that fails, including a file that could not be split, counts at upload and comes back off the month’s count about a minute later. A file refused at upload, such as a password-protected PDF, never counts.

On Starter, a split file can take the month past its 10 documents; after that, uploads and email attachments are refused until the next month. On paid plans, each document past the allowance is billed at the plan’s overage rate.

See How documents are counted.

Tip: One file per document still reads best. If a supplier can send separate files, the split is one less step to depend on; if not, the combined PDF is handled for you.

What’s next

• Uploading Documents - The Group as picker, supported files and how a pack is split
• Forwarding Documents by Email - Setting up the intake address, allowed senders and the reply
• Working with Shipments - Where the split documents land and how they are checked together
• Document Statuses - Split, Failed and every other status a document can show
• Billing and Plans - Monthly allowances, overage and how documents are counted