Troubleshoot Receiving Documents

This article covers documents that never arrive, arrive and will not import, or import into a purchase document that cannot be posted. Start at E-Invoice Inbound Runs, which records every read of the inbox and what happened to each document.

For supplier bank details, see Troubleshoot Supplier Bank Approvals.

Nothing is arriving at all

Cause and solution: Open E-Invoice Inbound Runs and read one row. Three counters explain almost every case.

Counter	What it means	What to do
Skipped - Own Outgoing Post	These were your own outgoing documents coming back	Normal. Never supplier invoices
Skipped - Addressed To Another Party	Addressed to a Peppol identifier other than this company's	Usually the company mapping points at the wrong platform company
Skipped - Older Than Window	Older than the look-back window	If receiving was off for longer than the window, this is where the missing documents went

Documents Offered to BC is the counter to read next: it says how many of the returned documents actually reached Business Central after the skips. Documents Returned 12 with nothing visible means something different depending on whether that counter is 0 or 12.

Look-Back Cutoff shows the resolved date the window produced, which answers "why was this invoice too old" without arithmetic. Triggered By says whether the run came from Receive (E-Document Service) or Scan Inbox Now.

If Documents Returned is 0, the platform had nothing for the query. Check Can Receive on E-Invoice Platform Companies — if the platform is not the receiving access point for your identifier, the inbox is always empty.

If Asked Only For Unread is set, the run only asked for unread documents. Use Scan Inbox Now on Vendor Bank Approvals, which always reads the whole window regardless.

A row with no Ended At is a run that failed before completing; the counts are whatever was known at that point, and Message says why.

Could not read the inbox from the e-invoice platform

Cause: The platform call failed. The platform's own error follows the colon.

Solution: Check the connection with Test Connection, and confirm outbound calls are allowed. See Troubleshoot the Connection and Setup.

Unit of measure code does not exist.

Business Central looks for a Unit of Measure whose Code, International Standard Code or Description matches, and stops the import when none does. Add the unit, or use Add Missing Units on the E-Invoice Platform Setup page.

Cause: The supplier used a unit code that nothing in your database answers to. The import stops before it reaches the supplier or the general ledger.

Solution:

Open E-Invoice Platform Setup.
Choose Add Missing Units. It creates a Unit of Measure for every unresolved code seen on incoming documents.
Review the result — each new unit takes the code itself as both Code and International Standard Code, and you may prefer to point it at a unit you already have.

Documents that were held up by those codes are no longer blocked once the units exist.

To create or correct one by hand instead:

Choose the Search icon, enter Units of Measure, and then choose the related link.
Add a row, or open the unit you already use for this.
Fill in International Standard Code with the UN/ECE Recommendation 20 code the supplier sends — C62 for a piece, HUR for an hour, KGM for a kilogram.

Pointing an existing unit at the supplier's code is usually better than creating a second unit that means the same thing.

No G/L account can be found for descriptions

Cause: The line descriptions resolve to no account through text-to-account mapping or the fallback. The import does not stop — it creates a line with no type and no amount, which can neither be posted nor sent for approval.

Solution: See Assign G/L Accounts by Line Description. The short version: add a mapping row with Debit Acc. No. filled in, or set the non-item-lines fallback account on Purchases & Payables Setup.

No vendor could be identified for sender

Business Central cannot recognise a Belgian supplier on its own, so assign the vendor here — the Peppol identity is then registered and later documents match by themselves.

Cause: None of the identifiers on the document resolved to exactly one vendor.

Solution: On Incoming Supplier Recognition, choose Assign Vendor, then answer yes to registering the Peppol address so later documents match automatically.

Where more than one vendor answers, nothing is assigned on purpose — attaching a supplier's bank details to the wrong vendor is the failure the list exists to prevent. Resolve the duplicate vendor records first.

The import ran but ended in an error.

Open the e-document to see what Business Central logged.

Cause: Business Central's own import failed after the document was handed over.

Solution: Open the e-document and read its error. The cause is usually one of the two above — an unresolved unit or an unmapped account.

The import ran and produced no document yet.

That is what a background run does when it is waiting for a purchase order to match.

Cause: The document was routed to a purchase order that does not match anything open.

Solution: Check the Order Reference (BT-13) column against your open purchase orders, and consider receiving this supplier as invoices instead. See Receive Documents as Invoices or as Purchase Orders.

E-Document number no longer exists.

A failed download and Business Central's duplicate detection both delete the document, which leaves this row behind as the record that it arrived.

Cause: The e-document was removed, but the recognition row remains as the record that something arrived.

Solution: Nothing, usually. If the document really is missing, use Scan Inbox Now to read the window again — duplicate detection will absorb anything already handled.

Actions on Incoming Supplier Recognition that refuse

These are everyday refusals on the list, each meaning what it says:

This document is status, not Pending Approval, so there is nothing to reopen. — you chose Reopen Stuck Document on a document that is not stuck.
The purchase document for this row no longer exists. It may have been deleted, in which case the next receive will create it again.
No purchase document has been created from this e-document yet. — the import has not produced one, or is waiting for a purchase order to match.
The e-document no longer exists, so there is nothing to open.
The import created a type, which this action cannot open. Open the e-document instead.
Assign a vendor before registering the Peppol identity. — choose Assign Vendor first.
This row did not register a Peppol identity. — there is nothing for Remove Peppol Id to undo.

Could not download document id from the e-invoice platform: reason

Cause: The platform would not hand over the document body during import.

Solution: Retry the receive. If it persists for one document, download its UBL from E-Invoice Platform Documents to see whether the platform holds it at all.

The related The e-invoice platform did not supply a document id for this entry, so its content cannot be fetched. means the inbox entry itself is incomplete on the platform side.

The supplier's PDF is missing from the purchase document

See Where Supplier Documents Are Stored. The most common case is a blank preview with a working Open Document, which is a preview limitation with external file storage rather than a lost file.