Email not syncing

Your connected inbox stopped pulling in new invoices, or the source shows a red Sync failed chip in Sources.

Inbox Ledger auto-syncs every connected inbox every 60 minutes. Work through the causes below in order, most common first.

Access expired (Gmail or Outlook)

Symptom. A Gmail or Outlook source shows Sync failed, and hovering the chip reveals an authorization or token error.

Cause. Inbox Ledger refreshes its access every hour using a stored refresh token. If you removed Inbox Ledger's access in your Google or Microsoft account, or the provider voided the grant, the refresh fails and the inbox stops syncing.

Fix. Open Sources, click the source to open the edit window, then click Reconnect. You go back through the same Google or Microsoft consent screen you used at setup, and a fresh token is stored.

Confirm. The Sync failed chip clears, and the next 60-minute cycle pulls new mail.

IMAP login rejected

Symptom. An IMAP source shows Sync failed with an authentication error in the chip tooltip.

Cause. The mailbox password changed, two-factor authentication now blocks the normal password over IMAP, or the provider flagged the sign-in as suspicious.

Fix. Open Sources, click the IMAP source, and enter the current password. If two-factor is on, use the app-specific password your provider issued for IMAP. Click Test Connection before saving. A success message means the login works.

Confirm. Save the source. The next 60-minute cycle signs in with the new credentials.

Gmail or Outlook reports a stale sync cursor

Symptom. The sync log shows History expired, performing full resync (Gmail) or Delta link expired, performing full resync (Outlook).

Cause. Both providers track new mail with a short-lived cursor. If a source was idle for over a week, or the mailbox changed in bulk (mass delete, folder move, label rebuild), the provider voids the cursor.

Fix. Nothing to do. Inbox Ledger detects the expired cursor and falls back to a full re-sync on the next run. The message is informational, not a failure. To pull mail right away instead of waiting, run a scan from Retroactive Scan (see below).

The sync runs but no invoices appear

Symptom. The source shows a recent Last sync time with zero new Documents, yet you know invoices arrived.

Cause. Auto-sync only looks at new mail since the last cycle. It does not reach back through your inbox history. Invoices that arrived before you connected the source are not pulled automatically.

Fix. Open Retroactive Scan, click Find Past Invoices, pick a period (Today, This month, Last month, or Last quarter), tick the inbox, and click Scan Selected. Scanning works by email delivery date, so an invoice is found only when the email carrying it arrived inside the period you chose.

Confirm. The scan queues, and matching invoices appear in Documents as each one finishes.

The PDF was filtered as non-financial

Symptom. Sync succeeded, but a specific PDF you expected never reached Documents. A Skipped counter on the source card shows a number above zero.

Cause. An AI classifier skips email PDFs it scores as non-financial, such as marketing, contracts, and newsletters, before they reach extraction.

Fix. Re-ingest the file through a bypass path. See Document marked non-financial.

Throttled by the provider

Symptom. Repeated sync errors mentioning rate limits or quota, usually on a large mailbox.

Cause. A heavy sync can hit Gmail's per-user quota or Microsoft Graph's throttling. Inbox Ledger retries with a backoff.

Fix. Wait for the next 60-minute cycle. If the rate-limit error persists across several cycles, email support.

Read the source counters

Each source card shows Last sync, the result, and counters for Documents, Failed, and Skipped (the last appears only when something was skipped). A recent sync with zero new documents means the mailbox has no new invoices since the last cycle, not that the sync broke.

Still stuck

Email support@inboxledger.app with your organization name, the source type, and the error text from the Sync failed chip's tooltip.

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