The Inbox

The Inbox is where you work through documents once processing has finished. Mercora reads each document and suggests where it belongs; you check what it read against the original, settle the trade (matching), review any discrepancies and approve. Other workflows send their proposals here too, so one queue holds everything waiting on a person. The Inbox has three columns:

• The rail on the left lists the items in the open tab, grouped into sections such as Match and Ready to approve.
• The document in the middle shows the original file, with zoom controls. Lists and tables Mercora read, such as a contract’s Required Documents or an invoice’s charge lines, sit in a bar docked under the document: click it to expand and edit them like a spreadsheet.
• The review panel on the right shows the trade it’s matched to, any discrepancies and the fields Mercora read, with Approve at the bottom.

You can drag the dividers to resize the columns. On a phone, you see one pane at a time and switch between Review and Document.

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Tabs

Each tab shows how many items it holds. A Waiting item comes back to Needs you by itself when processing finishes, when a counterparty replies, or when a later check raises a new discrepancy.

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The rail

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Sections

In Needs you, items are grouped by the kind of attention they need, in this order: In Waiting, items are grouped into Processing (Mercora is working) and Waiting on a reply (waiting on someone outside, or parked by you). Click a section header, or press T, to fold or unfold it. Mercora remembers which sections you folded in this browser.

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Each row

A row shows the file name, the document type, the trade it’s on, how long it has been waiting and a status, such as Unmatched, 2 disc. or Clean. For example, 07_Bill_of_Lading_RCLLCH2607841.pdf reads B/L, VCS-S-2026-0714, < 1h, Clean. See Statuses you see in the Inbox.

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Search

Type in Search… to narrow the list by file name, trade reference or document type. Search only narrows what you see in the open tab.

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Filters

Click the filter icon, or press F, to filter the rail:

• Owner: whose items to show. A member’s items are the files they uploaded and the emails they forwarded from their sign-in address. Unassigned holds what arrived with no member attached, for example an email a supplier sent straight to the workspace mailbox. You can choose several owners. With no owner chosen, you see the whole team’s queue. The tab counts follow the same filter.
• Type: Documents or Actions (proposals from workflows). Empty means both.

Active filters show as chips under the search box. The Owner filter only changes what you see. It doesn’t change who can open or act on an item.

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Ordering

Click the display icon to choose the order within each section: Priority, Date added, Document type, Trade matched or Discrepancies, and to flip the direction. Priority puts documents with critical discrepancies first, then those with warnings or waiting more than a day. Your filters and ordering are saved to your account, so they follow you to another browser. Reset to default goes back to the workspace default. Workspace admins can make their current view the default for everyone with Set as workspace default.

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Assign several documents at once

In the Match section, tick the box on each document you want to put on the same trade. Shift-click to select a range. The main area changes to Assign selected documents: pick the trade and click Assign N documents. Press Esc or click Cancel selection to stop.

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Reviewing a document

Open a document from the rail. The review panel works through it from top to bottom.

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Check a field against the original

Click a field or a discrepancy to highlight where its value appears in the document. A small amber dot next to a value means Mercora was less sure of it, so check it first. When a document came by email, the email shows in a bar above the document. Click it to open the sender, subject and body.

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Edit a field

An edited field shows who changed it and when. Hover over it and click revert to go back to what Mercora read. After you save, Mercora checks the document again, so a discrepancy caused by a misread can disappear, and a new one can appear. Your corrections are kept if the document is processed again.

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Read a value straight from the document

If Mercora missed a value or read it wrong, you can draw a box around it on the document:

1. Hold Option (Alt on Windows) and drag a box around the value. Or click the ⌥ drag to extract field button at the top left of the document first, then drag.
2. Mercora reads the value inside the box and suggests which field it belongs to. If you had a field selected, the value goes to that field.
3. Check the value, change it if needed, and click Apply. Nothing is saved until you do.

To save a passage as a note instead, click into the notes box before you draw. You can also select text in the email bar to save it as a note or read a value from it.

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Numbers that can be read two ways

When a printed quantity or weight could mean two different numbers, for example “745,087”, Mercora shows both readings under the field and marks the one that matches the deal. Click the right one.

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Invoices

For invoices, the panel also shows:

• The invoice type: whether it’s an invoice or a credit note. If Mercora couldn’t tell, the row shows Credit note? until you pick.
• The direction: whether it’s a receivable (AR) or a payable (AP). You can set this before the invoice is matched.

If a required field is missing, such as an invoice’s due date, the field is marked in red and Approve asks you to set it first.

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Notes

Use Notes at the bottom of the review panel to leave a note on the document for your team. You can also add a note to a single discrepancy with Note….

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Approving

The button at the bottom of the review panel says what it will do, and the line beside it explains the effect, for example “Links it to the trade · accepts 2 differences”.

• Click Approve, or press Enter.
• Approve stays unavailable until the document is matched and its checks have run. The line beside it says Match it first or Run the checks first.
• If the document isn’t on any trade, the button reads Approve without a trade and asks you to confirm. Enter never approves a document that’s linked to nothing.
• Approving accepts the document’s remaining open differences with the trade. Review them before you approve. See Discrepancies.

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Contracts and recaps

Approving a contract or a recap opens a short approval flow across the main area, because it can create or change a trade:

1. Where should this document go? Choose Create a new trade, Match to existing trade, or Don’t attach a trade (under “Doesn’t belong to a trade?”). Mercora marks its recommendation Recommended. With the Contracts module on, Create a new trade is replaced by Create contract, which saves the document as a purchase or sale contract, on its own or starting a new deal. Click Next.
2. Should this document create a trade leg? A trade has a purchase leg and a sale leg. Choose Create a new trade leg or link to the existing one, and set the leg type (Purchase or Sale), or choose Save directly to trade to attach it without a leg. Check the leg’s fields, such as buyer, seller, contract number, quantity and unit price.
3. Check the summary on the right (Current selection, Trade info and the leg to create) and click Approve document.

Approving a contract from Create contract skips the leg step: you review the contract’s fields and click Approve document directly. See Starting a trade from a contract.

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Amendments

An amendment opens an Amend panel in place of the usual review. You decide on each changed term there before the final approval. Enter doesn’t skip those decisions.

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After you approve

The document moves to Done, and the next item opens. Once approved, a document’s information becomes part of the trade’s record, and Mercora re-checks the trade’s other documents that are still under review against it. To move an approved document to a different trade, use Reassign to Trade in the ⋯ menu. See Matching documents to trades.

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Rejecting

Reject a document that shouldn’t be processed, for example a draft or a copy you don’t need.

1. Click Reject under the Approve button.
2. Click Confirm next to “Reject this document?”.

The document moves to Done, shown as Dismissed. Rejecting doesn’t change the trade.

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Request a correction

When a document is wrong at the source, for example a counterparty’s invoice shows the wrong quantity, ask them to fix it. Mercora doesn’t send the email for you. It records that a correction was requested on those discrepancies.

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The ⋯ menu

The ⋯ menu at the top of a document has: Everything except Download needs permission to edit documents.

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Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcuts don’t fire while you’re typing in a field or have a menu or picker open.

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Other items in the Inbox

Besides documents, the Inbox holds proposals from the workflows your workspace uses. Each one waits for a person to approve, change or decline it. Use the Type filter to show only these. Each of these appears only when its workflow is turned on for your workspace and your role can use it.

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Who can do what

Viewing the Inbox needs permission to view documents. Approving, rejecting, editing fields, matching and the ⋯ menu actions need permission to edit documents. View-only roles see the same panels without the buttons. See Roles and permissions.

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Next steps