Send documents for digitisation

You will learn how to send a client’s paperwork to your digitisation service, and how to check what happened to it.

• Any member who can see the client’s files. Sending a folder document creates a task, so it also needs the right to manage the client and the Documents app.
• A Client Portal contact can send documents from their own task and from the portal’s documents page, when your firm allows it.
• Your firm must have Allow digitisation of client documents turned on in company settings, and the client must have a Digitisation email.
• The Documents app is on the Elite plan.

Digitisation hands paperwork to the service your firm uses to read it. Uku collects the files you selected, sends them in one email to the address on the client, and records the result. Uku does not read the documents itself, and it does not choose the service — you do, by setting the email address.

Firms most often send supplier invoices, receipts, and bank statements this way. The service scans them and returns the results to your firm. What comes back, and in what form, is an arrangement between your firm and that provider.

Two settings must be in place before the button works.

Path: Settings & Apps → Company settings

Tick Allow digitisation of client documents. Without it, no document is sent anywhere.

The address lives on each client, in the Digitisation email field. Open the client, edit it, and fill the field with the address your digitisation service gave you. Clients without an address cannot have documents sent.

Path: open the task → Files

1. Open the task the documents are attached to.
2. Select the files you want to send.
3. Click Digitise.
4. Check the list, then click Send.

Uku sends everything you selected as one email, whatever the number of files. Selecting five files produces one send, one record, and one line in the task’s history.

The task shows the result: Sent, Failed, or Files missing. While the send is in progress it reads Digitisation queued.

Path: open the client → Documents

1. Select the file and click Details.
2. Click Digitise in the file panel.
3. Check the details, then click Send.

A document that sits in a folder and belongs to no task does not need one first. Uku creates one task called Digitised for all of them, files those documents onto it, and sends. The task is where the outcome is recorded, as with any other send. The files do not move: they stay in their folders, with the same names and the same copies on your drive.

Selecting files that sit on different tasks produces one send per task, not one big send. Ten files on one task are a single email; five files on two tasks are two.

A Client Portal contact can send documents from their own task and from the portal’s documents page. Your firm’s address is used, so the paperwork still reaches your service.

When a contact sends a folder document, the Digitised task Uku creates belongs to your firm. The client’s manager is the assignee and the contact is added as the portal assignee. If that client has no manager, the company owner gets it.

Your client is told the outcome through the notification bell in the portal, not on screen — the send runs in the background. Documents they have already sent are left out, and the portal names them; it only asks when everything they picked has been sent before.

• 15 MB for one file.
• 18 MB for one send, counting every file together.

The documents view checks the sizes before anything is sent and refuses the batch, on your side and in the portal. The task view does not: there, an oversized send fails and Uku shows the error afterwards.

Two settings switch it on, and without both the button is hidden rather than refused. Check that Allow digitisation of client documents is ticked in company settings, and that the client has a Digitisation email. Both are needed before the button appears in the list, the row menu, or the file panel.

Each file shows the state of its newest send: Digitised, In digitisation, or Digitisation failed. Sending a file again replaces what was there, so a failed re-send hides an earlier success on that view. Hover the chip for who sent it and when, or open the task for the full history.

Open the task and read the outcome there. The two common causes are size and the address. Check that no file is over 15 MB and that the whole batch is under 18 MB. Then check the client’s Digitisation email for a typing mistake.

The same two settings hide it for them: your firm’s switch and that client’s Digitisation email. With both in place the button appears on their documents page and on their tasks. See Find your documents.