SBX Tools Outlook shared inbox control for finance teams
Invoices, supplier questions, payment confirmations, credit notes, approval threads — every email in finance@, ap@, accounting@, and billing@ gets an owner, a status, and a history. Without leaving Outlook and without a separate helpdesk.
Sounds familiar?
When more than one accountant watches the same inbox, the inbox itself doesn't tell anyone what's been done. Folders, flags and categories don't survive a 3-person team.
"Is anyone already on this one?"
"This supplier email sat for a week — nobody owned it."
"Did anyone reply to ACME about the missing PO?"
"Sarah marked it done. Sarah's on holiday."
"It's month-end. Who handled the ACME emails?"
"Outlook says 'Marked Complete' — but did they actually finish?"
How SBX changes the day
One of our customers — a partner's finance team — had grown to the point where three people needed to monitor finance@ at the same time. They tried to coordinate with Outlook's Done flag: if you handled an invoice, you marked it done so your colleagues knew to skip it. It worked until someone marked an invoice done that wasn't actually posted yet. The supplier called two weeks later asking about overdue payment. No one could tell who had touched the email.
With SBX, each email in the inbox — invoice, supplier question, payment confirmation, anything — gets assigned to one accountant. The status starts at Open and moves to Closed when the work is done — visible to the whole team, recorded in a timeline that shows who did what and when. While the email sits with someone, the assignment itself shows that work is in progress; nobody else needs to wonder. Three accountants can work the inbox in parallel without stepping on each other.
One email, step by step
Below is one common example — a supplier invoice — used to make the flow concrete. The same four steps apply to any email in this inbox: a supplier question, a credit note, a missing-PO inquiry, a bank-detail change confirmation, or an approval thread.
The invoice arrives
An invoice email arrives in finance@. SBX shows it in the team's shared view with status Open — the default for every incoming email.
- Visible to every accountant on the team
- No forwarding chain to start
- Default status:
Open
One accountant claims it
Whoever has bandwidth opens the Assignee dropdown in the SBX panel inside the Outlook reading pane and picks their own name. The email now has a name on it — every other accountant sees who is working on it. (Assignment is the de-facto "in progress" signal; SBX does not use a separate "In Progress" status.)
- Claim it for yourself, or hand it off — the same dropdown lists the whole team
- Visible to the whole team — the assignee's name appears next to the email in the shared view, so everyone knows who's on it without asking
- Internal notes available for asking colleagues a quick question — never sent to the supplier
Post to accounting, then close
The accountant enters the invoice into your accounting system (Merit, Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite — whatever you already use). When the entry is done, they click Closed on the email in SBX. The timeline records who handled it and when.
- SBX does not integrate with accounting tools — your AP workflow inside the accounting system is unchanged
- The
Closedbutton is a status change, not a delete — the email and its history stay searchable - Internal notes stay on the email thread for later audit
Week-in-review
At the end of the week, anyone on the team can pull up SBX's overview: which emails are open, which closed, which sat untouched for more than three days, who is the busiest.
- Status filters:
Open,Closed(the only two statuses) - Per-assignee filter to see who is currently working on what (assignment shows the in-progress emails)
- Built-in indicator for emails that haven't moved status in N days
What a typical week looks like in a finance@ inbox with SBX
Monday morning, the inbox has accumulated emails from the weekend — invoices, supplier replies, a couple of bank-statement attachments, an approval thread waiting for a second pair of eyes. Each accountant claims a batch — by supplier, by topic, or just round-robin — and works through it. Mid-week, a supplier emails asking about an overdue invoice; the team can see immediately whether it was already handled, by whom, and on what date. The finance lead checks the overview on Friday: any email that sat in Open for more than three days gets flagged for follow-up.
Common questions from finance leads
Read next
See SBX in your own finance@ inbox
1 month free, no credit card. Install from AppSource and try it on a single mailbox before rolling it out to the team.
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