DocReadi

Getting started

Getting started

This chapter covers creating a DocReadi workspace, signing in, accepting an invite to someone else's workspace, and the checklist that walks you through your first upload. If you're joining a workspace someone else already set up, skip to Accepting an invite.

Creating your workspace

Go to /ui/signup and fill in three fields: Company name, Email, and Password (at least 8 characters). Your company name becomes your workspace's identifier — DocReadi derives a URL slug from it, so "Acme (Pty) Ltd" becomes a workspace at /c/acme-pty-ltd/ui. If you arrived from the pricing page with a plan already picked, the form shows what you're signing up for; otherwise you start on a free 90-day trial with 200 credits (one credit is one page), no card required.

Submitting the form creates your workspace, logs you in immediately, and sets up a default email-in inbox at <your-slug>[email protected] — one less thing to configure before you can send documents in (see Sending documents in).

An account can only exist once per email address. If you try to sign up with an email that's already registered, the form tells you to sign in instead or contact support if you've forgotten your password.

Signing up with Google or Microsoft

The sign-up page and both sign-in pages show Continue with Google and Sign in with Microsoft above the email form. Microsoft accepts work, school and personal accounts. DocReadi asks the provider for your name and email address only; it gets no access to your mail or files.

If no DocReadi login uses your email yet, you land on a Create your workspace step. Enter your Company name and choose Create workspace. You get your own workspace on the same free trial as email sign-up. Choosing a provider on the sign-in page does not create a workspace by itself.

The provider has to confirm your email address to DocReadi. If it hasn't, the sign-in is refused with a message, and you can use your email and password or the sign-up form instead.

Verifying your email

After signup, DocReadi sends a confirmation email. Verifying it is the first step on your onboarding checklist (below) and it gates two things specifically: minting API keys and setting up webhooks. Until you click the link, both of those refuse. If the email doesn't arrive, the checklist's "Verify your email address" step links straight to a resend.

On a trial workspace, verifying your email also starts document processing. Uploads land and your credit balance shows as normal, but each document parks at status Awaiting verification until an admin on the workspace clicks the link in the confirmation email — parked documents then resume and process automatically, with no need to re-upload or retry anything. (Upgrading to a paid plan releases them too, verified or not.) This only applies to trial workspaces with an unverified admin; paid plans and workspaces you've joined as a teammate (rather than created) are unaffected.

Accepting an invite

If DocReadi set a trial workspace up for you, you'll have received an invite link to /invite/accept. Open it, and — provided the link hasn't expired — you'll be asked to set a password. Submitting creates your account and your new workspace in one step, on the free 90-day trial with the credits the invite carries (the standard 200 when the invite doesn't name a figure). Invite links are single-use: once your account exists, the same link can't be reused to create a second one. If the link has expired or was already used, contact support for a fresh one.

An invite from DocReadi to start a trial always creates a new workspace. To join a colleague's existing workspace, an additional login has to be provisioned for it — see Adding teammates.

Signing in

Each workspace has its own sign-in page at /c/<your-slug>/ui/login, with an Email and Password field. There's also a universal sign-in at /ui/login for people who belong to more than one workspace (see Switching workspaces below) — sign in there and DocReadi routes you to the right one.

Both pages accept the same email and password. If you open a link to a page inside a workspace while signed out, you land on that workspace's sign-in page; once you sign in you go straight to the page you opened, as long as you belong to that workspace. If you don't, you're signed in to your own workspace instead, as if you had used /ui/login.

If your workspace has two-factor authentication turned on for your account, signing in with the correct password takes you to a second screen asking for your 6-digit code before your session starts. Two-factor auth is a per-user setting under Settings → Two-factor auth — see Workspace administration.

If a DocReadi login already exists for your email, Connect your Google account (or Microsoft) asks for that login's password once. DocReadi never connects a provider account without it. After that, the provider button signs you straight in. If you never set a password, or have forgotten it, use the Reset it link on that page, then come back. There is no screen for disconnecting a provider account.

If you have two-factor authentication turned on, you may still be asked for your DocReadi 6-digit code after a Google or Microsoft sign-in. The first time you connect a provider to an existing login, you are always asked for it.

Forgotten your password? Use the link on the sign-in page to reach /forgot-password, enter your email, and follow the reset link that's emailed to you.

Switching workspaces

If you're a member of more than one workspace — an accountant working across several clients' workspaces, for example — the account menu in the top navigation lists every workspace you have access to. Choosing one re-issues your session for that workspace with no re-authentication; you already signed in once. You can only switch to a workspace you actually have a membership for, and a closed or inactive workspace won't appear.

Your onboarding checklist

The first time you land on your dashboard (/ui), you'll see a Set up your workspace card tracking five steps, in this order:

  1. Verify your email address — required before API keys or webhooks work.
  2. Add your company entities — tell DocReadi the legal name(s) you operate under. This comes before your first upload on purpose: without it, DocReadi can't reliably tell a bill you owe from one you've issued, and it can accidentally register your own business as a counterparty. Add these under Settings → Entities (see Master data).
  3. Upload your first document — drag a PDF onto the upload zone on your dashboard, connect an automated source from Settings, or try the sample invoice (below) if you don't have one at hand yet.
  4. Review an extraction — every document waits in your review queue by default; open one, check the fields, and approve it. Each export rule's Send choice decides whether it waits for approval; a new rule starts at Approved documents only (see Delivering documents).
  5. Set up an integration — wire up whichever part of the pipeline you'll use day to day: an API key for programmatic ingest, an Inbox source for automated folder polling, or a webhook that pushes approved data into your accounting system.

Each step ticks off automatically as you complete it, in any order — the checklist doesn't care which one you do first (other than the recommended entities-before-upload ordering).

If a step doesn't apply to you — say you'll never use an integration — click Skip on the right of its row. The step stays on the card, greyed out and marked Skipped, with an Undo button to put it back. A skipped step counts as dealt with, so the heading reads, for example, "3 of 5 complete · 1 skipped". Verify your email address can't be skipped: API keys and webhooks stay locked until you verify.

Once every step is done or skipped, the card shows a one-time "Your workspace is set up" confirmation and then disappears for good. If you dismiss the card early, or it went away because you skipped steps, a "Show setup checklist again" link appears in the dashboard footer. It brings the card back and puts every skipped step back on it.

Reading the dashboard

Your dashboard (/ui) is the upload zone plus a running view of what's processing, what's stuck, and what needs your attention — the fastest way to see the state of your pipeline day to day. The Upload Documents panel accepts drag-and-drop or click-to-browse; on mobile it's tap-to-choose. From here you can jump straight into the queue described in Reviewing documents.

If you drop a batch of files and one of them can't be accepted — a file type your workspace doesn't take, or a PDF longer than the page limit — the rest of the batch still uploads. A banner names each skipped file and why. If nothing in the batch was accepted, you see the same message as an error instead of a silent empty drop.

Whenever DocReadi has met a new vendor or customer in your documents that it couldn't confidently match to your registry, the dashboard shows a "We met N new counterparties in your documents" card. It links straight to the candidates waiting for confirmation in your counterparties registry — confirming them speeds up matching on future documents, though a candidate left alone auto-confirms on its own after a few consistent appearances.

To see every document booked to one vendor or customer, open your counterparties registry and click the Docs count or Documents link on its row — this filters your document list to that counterparty, with a chip showing who you're filtered to and a ✕ to clear it.

Once you've processed at least 10 documents, Admins and above may also see a card naming one validation check that's flagged at least half of your last 20 documents — for example, "Flag unusual VAT rates" flagged 12 of your last 20 documents. If that's expected for how your documents work, the card links straight to that check's row on Settings → Features to turn it off. Turning a check off only stops the warning on new documents — anything else that check does upstream (like creating or matching a counterparty candidate) keeps happening exactly as before. Dismiss clears the card for that check without changing the setting; it can come back later if a different check starts tripping the same threshold.

Trying a sample invoice

Don't have an invoice handy to test with? As long as your email is verified and you hold the Reviewer role or higher, the empty document list (before you've sent anything in) shows Try a sample invoice →. Selecting it runs a built-in demo invoice through the real pipeline — the same classify, extract, validate, and counterparty-matching steps a real document goes through — and drops you straight into it once it's done.

The sample is free, however your credit balance stands: it never draws down a credit and never waits on a top-up, even on a workspace that's genuinely out of credits. It's marked with a Sample badge everywhere it appears — the document list, the viewer, and the review pane — so it's never mistaken for a real document, and it's left out of every report, export, delivery, and webhook. Its counterparty (a demo company called Acme Office Supplies) arrives as a real candidate in your counterparties registry, so confirming it works exactly like confirming a genuine one.

There's one sample per workspace — selecting Try a sample invoice again opens the one you already have rather than creating another. Reviewing and approving it counts toward your onboarding checklist's Upload your first document and Review an extraction steps, same as a real document would. Beyond the exclusions above, it behaves like any other document, including being removed by your workspace's normal data retention.

Next steps

Looking for the developer/API reference? See /api/docs-guide. Can't find an answer? Email [email protected].