---
title: "How do you connect FOUNDATION to your inbox so that a vendor invoice arrives coded to the right job and cost code?"
description: "A vendor or subcontractor invoice from your email is ready for FOUNDATION with job and cost code. Bombos gives the reason, you approve."
image: "https://bombos.ai/assets/og-en-v2.png"
---

# How do you connect FOUNDATION to your inbox so that a vendor invoice arrives coded to the right job and cost code?

![Piet Baudoin](https://bombos.ai/assets/team/piet.jpg)By Piet Baudoin, updated September 27, 2026

You put Bombos next to your inbox and FOUNDATION: it reads the vendor or subcontractor invoice in the email, finds the job and the cost code and prepares the entry with the reason beside it. Anything that differs from the budget or the subcontract is on top. After you press Approve in Bombos, the invoice is in FOUNDATION. Bombos works next to FOUNDATION, not instead of it.

## What Does FOUNDATION Already Do, and What Not?

FOUNDATION is built for construction accounting. Its accounts payable tracks retainage and prints lien waivers, and the Document Imaging module lets you scan, store, route and approve invoices. Job costing breaks budgets into your own cost codes or standard CSI divisions and compares actual costs against the estimate, with work in progress reports at month end.

What FOUNDATION cannot see is what never reached it. A subcontractor emails his pay application to the project manager, not to accounts payable. A supplier invoice mentions a street address and a delivery number, but no job number and no cost code. The note that the extra footing was agreed on site sits in a reply three emails down. Your AP clerk forwards, asks and waits before a single line gets coded.

Bombos does that groundwork. It reads the email, the attachment and the thread above it, finds the job and the cost code in FOUNDATION and puts the reason next to the proposal. What only the project manager knows, such as which cost code the crane rental goes on for this job, Bombos interviews him about and writes down, so the next invoice follows the same rule.

## Which Tasks Run on FOUNDATION?

Every task below starts with an email and ends, after your approval in Bombos, in FOUNDATION. Invoice coding is the usual first one, because the question behind every invoice is the same: which job, which cost code, and does the amount fit what was agreed? Once that runs, the next tasks use the same lookups: an invoice that is higher than the subcontract or the quote, a supplier invoice nobody wants to key in by hand, a reminder to a customer who has not paid. Each of them already takes time in your office today. Which one comes second is your call, not ours. You start with one task. After that, your own team teaches Bombos the next one, and you do not need to be technical for that.

-   [An invoice looking for its project](https://bombos.ai/en/invoices-against-the-project/)
-   [Invoices that don't match the quote](https://bombos.ai/en/use-cases/invoices-that-do-not-match-the-quote/)
-   [Supplier invoices nobody retypes](https://bombos.ai/en/use-cases/retyping-supplier-invoices/)
-   [Payment reminders that go out late](https://bombos.ai/en/use-cases/payment-reminders-that-go-out-late/)

## What Changes in Your Week?

Invoices stop waiting in inboxes for a job number. Your AP clerk opens Bombos and finds each invoice with its job and cost code proposed, the reason written out, and any difference with the subcontract or the quote marked first. Checking replaces keying and chasing. At month end the costs are already on the right jobs, so the work in progress report reflects the work instead of the backlog. Project managers get a question only when the paperwork really leaves one open.

That is how you do more with the same team, at a higher quality, without hiring a second AP clerk first. We set up the first task with you, with your own FOUNDATION and your own inbox. After that you can do it yourself, and your own people teach Bombos what comes next.

## What Doesn't Go Out Without Your Approval?

Bombos enters no invoice in FOUNDATION, codes no cost to a job and sends no question to a subcontractor or project manager until someone at your company has pressed Approve in Bombos. A lien waiver or a question about retainage waits just the same. It never releases a payment or retainage. That limit is always on. Only Bombos can switch it off, at your explicit request and at your own risk.

For every step you can read back afterwards what happened and why. For the work inside your office, such as looking things up, checking and preparing, you decide how much Bombos does ahead of time; messages to customers and payments always wait for your approval. A proposal can be wrong, even when the reason sounds believable. When in doubt, Bombos asks instead of guessing.

Bombos also works with [QuickBooks Online](https://bombos.ai/en/integrations/quickbooks-online/), [Knowify](https://bombos.ai/en/integrations/knowify/), [JobTread](https://bombos.ai/en/integrations/jobtread/), and [Contractor Foreman](https://bombos.ai/en/integrations/contractor-foreman/).

All tasks Bombos takes on are listed under [use cases](https://bombos.ai/en/use-cases/).

## Leave your number and we'll call you back to talk through your situation.

A few lines about how things go at your company is enough, or just your number. You won't get a sales pitch but a conversation: what stands out to us, which work could get lighter first at your company and what your team can take on after that. It costs nothing. If we see something worthwhile together, we start with that first piece of work.


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