When documents are sent to you from your supplier, the ordering of pages and formatting of the documents is out of your control. You may receive an email from your supplier with one PDF containing 20 pages, which could be 10 separate bills for you to split out. On the other hand, you may receive an email of 10 separate PDFs, that could collate for a singular bill, meaning it needs to be grouped in the correct order to allow for the correct extraction.

Lightyear can process multiple PDF invoices attached to a single email, treating each file as an individual document for review and approval. These grouped submissions appear on a single line in the interface, with the total number of documents indicated (e.g., 50).

All these actions and scenarios can be solved for within Lightyear itself.

In the example where you have one PDF document containing multiple bills, you'll need to split these into the individual documents. There are two ways to do this, depending on the number of pages within the document.

While your document is in Processing, click More > Split Pages.

This will take you to a new page, with each individual page of the document displayed on the left, and the regular Panel 3 displayed on the right.

To reorder the pages, either before or after splitting, go to the Reorder Documents section of this article to learn more.

Say you have a 10-page document, containing 5 bills that are each 2 pages. An example of this document can be found at the bottom of this article called '5 Documents.pdf'.

While on the Split page, you'll see a field at the top called 'Split After Every', with a counter to choose a number.

You can adjust the number according to where you need to split the pages. In this example, as each bill is 2 pages, I can use Split After Every and select 2.

You will see the individual pages below automatically add scissor icons after every 2 pages, meaning when you click the Split button the pages will be split into 5 separate documents.

If the document is slightly more complicated, the 'Split After Every' option won't work as cleanly for you. In the example where you have a 10-page document, the first document could be 3 pages, the second 5 pages, and the third 2 pages. An example of this document can be found at the bottom of this article called '3 Documents.pdf'

Click the blue scissor icon between the pages you need to split, and these will be separated for you.

Click the green button at the bottom of the page to split into the desired number of pages.

Grouping can be useful in two scenarios:

Where the pages of a single document have been emailed or uploaded to Lightyear as individual documents. To extract the correct data, you need to group these.

Where you have your bill to be extracted, along with some supporting documents you want to add to the back. Think job sheets, an email chain with additional details, a delivery note, etc.

Regardless of the reason why you need to group, the process to do it is simple!

In Processing, find the row of documents that have been emailed in together, indicated when the Qty column is greater than one. Or, use the bulk select options to choose multiple uploaded/emailed documents. Click More > Group & Reorder, and you'll be directed to an overview of the documents.

When multiple invoices are sent in a single email, they appear grouped on a single line in the Lightyear interface, with the total number of documents indicated. This allows users to easily identify and manage grouped submissions.

This page will display the first page of each individual document, along with the number of pages within each. Here you have the ability to reorder the documents by clicking and dragging them to the order you want. Once you're happy with the new order, you can click Group.

This will group the documents together into one PDF in the order specified.

When the documents have more than one page, or in the example where the group of documents contain an email signature or an additional document that is not needed, this view won't allow you to edit the order of the pages within or remove the unneeded documents/pages.

In this example, I have a two-page bill, a sample blank page that I need to attach to the bill, and an email signature. This example can be found in the attachment 'Grouping Documents.zip'

Here, you can see which documents have multiple pages. As the email signature is in the middle of each document, clicking Group would add this image to the new grouped PDF regardless of where I reorder it to. In this case, you can click Group & Edit.

If you've used the Split feature, this will be a similar view.

Each of the pages within the documents will be displayed individually, allowing you to see the complete view of what's being grouped. You can reorder individual pages that were previously within document one, and move them to the end of the page order.

With the example provided, I want to move the email signature to the end of the pages, and split this out. Once I finish, I can either delete or ignore this image. For the remaining pages, I want to add the Sample page in between the two bill pages and group these. This can be done like so:

If you have a multiple-page document, or a recently grouped or split document, you can make use of the Reordering feature.

Find an example attached below called 'Reordering Example.pdf'. This is ordered with Page 5 first, followed by 2, 3, 1, and lastly Page 4.

Once your document is in Lightyear, you can click More > Reorder.

Click and drag any of the pages to move them around. If you can't clearly tell which page is which based on the thumbnail, you can use the Panel 3 image of the document to click between pages like you would elsewhere throughout Lightyear.

Once you're happy with the order, click Save.