Auto-name PDF documents in procurement

A single purchasing transaction produces four documents from three senders: order, order confirmation, delivery note, invoice. Every supplier names its PDFs after its own document number, which has nothing to do with your order number. Filery Rename reads the documents and puts supplier, order number and document type into the filename, so a transaction becomes visible as one unit again.

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Before & After

Bestellung_final.pdf 2024-03-15_Lieferant-Bosch_Bestellung_PO-2024-0412.pdf

Four documents, one transaction

Invoice checking in procurement is a comparison between three documents: what was ordered, what was delivered, what is being charged. If order, delivery note and invoice sit in different folders under foreign numbers, half the work is searching. If instead each of the three files carries your own order number in the same position in its name, the file manager assembles the transaction by itself. Order confirmations, which otherwise tend to slip through, become visible because a gap in the sequence stands out.

The order number is in the document, just not in the filename

Suppliers almost always print your order number as a reference on the confirmation, the delivery note and the invoice, because they need it for their own assignment. It still never reaches the filename, where the sender's own document number sits instead. That is exactly the information text recognition pulls out of the document and moves to the front. For suppliers who print no reference, you set the number as a fixed component when running that folder, rather than adding it to every file by hand.

E-invoicing changes the inbox, not the filing

As business-to-business invoicing moves to electronic formats, structured documents join the mix. Hybrid invoices in the ZUGFeRD format remain, on the outside, a PDF with an embedded data record, so they still sit as a file in the inbox folder and still need a name. Pure XML invoices, by contrast, flow straight into processing software and are not a case for renaming. During the transition both routes exist side by side, and the share of PDFs stays high for the foreseeable future.

A supplier file is more than invoices

Each supplier comes with framework agreements, price lists, quality assurance agreements, ISO 9001 certificates, mill test certificates, declarations on restricted substances and supplier declarations for preferential origin. These documents have one thing in common: they expire. If the issue or validity year sits in a fixed position in the filename, a sorted folder view shows immediately which certificate has not been renewed for two years. That does not replace diary management, but it exposes the most common gaps.

Audits arrive at short notice

Internal audit, the annual financial audit, customs checks and evidence on supply chain due diligence share one trait: individual transactions are sampled, and the answer is expected the same day. Filing in which supplier, order number and year appear in the filename answers such requests through a file search. Without that structure, every sample starts with opening files whose names reveal nothing at all.

How the recognition works

The document is read on your computer and its text content goes encrypted to the AI analysis. What comes back are the detected fields such as sender, date, document type and document number; renaming then takes place on the device again, and the documents are not kept in storage. For companies with their own requirements on data processing, the Custom plan with your own API keys costs 5 euros a month. The Business plan is 30 euros a month and covers 500 documents.

FAQ

What gets recognized is whatever appears as text in the document. Since suppliers usually print your order number as a reference, this works regardless of which ERP the number came from. The format of the number itself makes no difference.

Yes. You decide which fields appear in which order and with which separator in the filename, and how the date is formatted. It is worth orienting that decision around the sort order you need most often in day-to-day work.

A file can only carry one name. For collective invoices, supplier plus invoice number and period works best, while the link to the individual orders stays in the invoice verification step of your ERP system.

No. Filery works with the visible PDF content and renames the file. The embedded data record is left untouched and can afterwards be read by your accounting software as usual.

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