Bills and Renewals

Bills keeps a list of what your business owes its suppliers and what is coming up: bills and their due dates, and the trials, renewals and expiries of the services you pay for. Uncog AI reads them from the email of your owners' and admins' connected mailboxes, and puts every due date, renewal and expiry on the calendar with a reminder.

Uncog AI only records and reminds. Nothing in Bills pays, cancels or renews anything, and nothing is ever sent to a supplier.

Who can see bills

Only owners and admins can see bills. Members don't see the Bills page, the Bill cards on Home, a supplier's Money and Services cards, bill dates on the calendar or in the daily agenda, or bill suggestions in Review.

Only owners and admins can mark a bill as paid, edit it or cancel it.

How bills are found

Bills are read from every connected mailbox that belongs to an owner or admin of the account. There is nothing to turn on: connecting the mailbox is enough, and the Connect a Mailbox screen tells owners and admins so. A Member's mailbox is never read for bills. See Connecting a Mailbox for what it reads and keeps.

Bills are found in new mail as it arrives. To find bills in mail that was imported earlier, open the mailbox's actions in Settings → Email and choose Re-scan Past Mail.

Whether a new bill is recorded straight away or waits for you in Review is the Review setting on Settings → Email. With Add Confident Things Automatically (the default), a confident new bill, payment or service date is recorded for you; with Ask Me About Everything, every bill waits in Review. See AI Settings.

What Uncog AI reads

In an owner's or admin's mailbox, Uncog AI checks the email, including automated messages it otherwise skips, for:

bills, invoices, statements and payment reminders;
receipts and payment confirmations, which mark a bill as paid;
trial, renewal, expiry and contract-end notices for the services you pay for.

An email classifier decides which emails hold one. Uncog AI then reads the supplier, amount, due date and reference. When the amount and due date are only in an attached PDF invoice, it reads that one PDF: it checks it for malware first, reads its text, and keeps nothing of it.

Promotions, sale and coupon end dates, quotes and price-change notices are not bills. Uncog AI never records bank, card or BPAY details, payment links, or anything about a passport, driver licence or other identity document.

When a bill arrives through Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, Stripe or a similar billing service, the supplier is the business that sent the bill, never the billing service.

Uncog AI also marks a company as a Supplier when it records a bill or service from it, and when an email shows your business has an account with it, even with no bill: a welcome email, or a notice about your account, usage, security or an outage from a service you use. Each supplier is checked once: later emails from a company that is already a supplier aren't analysed again. With Ask Me About Everything as your Review setting, a new supplier waits in Review as Add supplier; with Add Confident Things Automatically, it is added straight away when Uncog AI is at least 85% sure. See Contacts and Companies.

The Bills page

Bills isn't in the sidebar. Open it from:

the Bill card on Home, when a bill is due in the next three days or overdue (see Your Home Page);
a bill or renewal on the Calendar: open the event and choose Open Bills or Open Renewals, which opens the supplier's company page with its Activity showing bills or services;
a supplier's company page, under Contacts: choose Open Bills on its Money card;
Ask Uncog (the search bar at the top, or ⌘K on a Mac and Ctrl+K elsewhere): type "bills" and choose Bills.

The page has two tabs: Bills and Renewals.

On Bills, choose a view:

Upcoming: open bills not yet due.
Overdue: open bills past their due date.
Paid: bills you or a receipt marked as paid.

Each bill shows its supplier, amount, due date, reference, status and the email it came from (its subject, when it was sent and which mailbox received it). The email can't be opened from Uncog AI; find it in your mailbox.

When Xero is connected, owners and admins also see the bills in Xero in each view, in the same order, marked From Xero. An open Xero bill shows what is still owed; a paid one shows its total and is listed by when it last changed in Xero. A Xero bill with the same number as a bill read from email from the same supplier shows once, as the email's bill. Xero bills have no Actions: choose Open in Xero to pay or change one there.

To change a bill, open its Actions:

Mark as Paid records it as paid and completes its due date on the calendar.
Edit Bill changes its amount, due date, reference and other details.
Cancel Bill takes it off the list and its due date off the calendar. Nothing is sent to the supplier.

A bill paid by a receipt Uncog AI found is marked as paid for you, or suggested in Review, depending on your AI settings.

Renewals

On Renewals, choose Trials, Renewals or Expiries to see the services with a date coming up, soonest first. Each shows its supplier, its next date, its status, whether it renews automatically, and the charge on renewal when the email said.

Open a service's Actions to Edit Service or Mark as Cancelled. Marking a service as cancelled takes its coming dates off the calendar. It doesn't cancel the service with the supplier.

When a trial becomes a paid plan (for example, an email confirms the first renewal), Uncog AI marks the service as active and takes the trial's end date off the calendar.

A supplier's company page

A company marked as a Supplier has two more cards on its page for owners and admins:

Money: Billed in the Last 12 Months, Next Bill Due and Next Renewal or Expiry. When a service has no renewal date, choose + Add Renewal Date, pick the service and the date, and choose Save.
Services: the plans, domains, policies and licences you have with it, each with its status and next date.

Its Activity lists its bills and services among its emails and meetings; choose Bills or Services to see only those. Mark bills paid, and edit or cancel them, on the Bills page.

When Xero is connected, the supplier's bills in Xero (open or paid, not drafts or voided ones) count in Money and in the number of bills under its name, beside the bills read from email. A Xero bill with the same number as a bill read from email is counted once. Bills from Xero are also listed in the supplier's Activity and on the Bills page, marked From Xero. You can't mark them paid, edit or cancel them in Uncog AI: choose Open in Xero and change them there.

Its Next steps asks When does your plan renew? for a service with no renewal date (enter the Renewal Date and choose Save). When no bills have been recorded and Xero isn't connected, it says so, with Connect Accounting to connect Xero. You can't add a bill or a service by hand: they come from your email and from accounting.

Dates and reminders

Each date is an all-day event on the calendar, linked to the supplier:

Bill Due: a reminder 3 days before.
Trial Ends: a reminder 3 days before.
Renewal: a reminder 14 days before.
Expiry: a reminder 4 weeks before (14 days for a card on file expiring).

You can change an event's reminders like any other event. Owners and admins also get bills due today, overdue bills and trials ending in the next 3 days in their daily agenda email.

Each notice is its own date. Uncog AI doesn't guess the next bill or renewal from past ones.

Changed amounts, dates and payment details

A later email can change a bill or a service date. A changed amount or due date, or a renewal date that moves, always waits for you in Review, whatever your AI settings say.

When an email says a supplier's payment details have changed, the bill shows this warning: "This email says the payment details have changed. Before paying, confirm by phone using a number you already have for ." Uncog AI never records such a bill on its own; it always waits in Review. Changed payment details are a common sign of invoice fraud.

What isn't possible

Paying, cancelling or renewing anything, or contacting a supplier.
Connecting Xero, MYOB or another accounting system.
Reading attachments other than one PDF invoice per email, such as images, Word documents or a second PDF.
Storing or showing an invoice PDF. Open the email in your mailbox instead.
Repeating bills or renewals automatically.
Letting members see bills, or reading bills from a Member's mailbox.
Turning bill tracking off for an owner's or admin's mailbox while it stays connected.