If you have ever scanned a stack of paper bills into a single PDF, or received a supplier email with three invoices bundled into one file, you know the friction. Most data capture tools either fail on these files or treat every page as a separate invoice, which breaks two-page bills and orphans their attachments.
Datamolino handles this automatically. And it is not a small edge case: 43% of all PDFs that customers upload to Datamolino contain multiple invoices that need separating.
How content-based splitting works
Most competing solutions split PDFs in “split by page” mode. Every page becomes a new invoice, regardless of what is actually on the page. That works for clean, single-page invoices. It falls apart the moment you have a two-page bill, an invoice with a delivery note attached, or a batch scan with mixed document lengths.
Datamolino reads the content of the file. The system looks at each page and identifies where one invoice ends and the next one begins, so multi-page invoices stay together as one document, attachments and supporting pages get bundled with the correct invoice, and individual invoices in a batch each become their own transaction. This is rule-based logic, not guesswork. The same PDF, processed twice, produces the same result.
When auto-split is the right tool
Auto-split solves one specific problem: PDFs that bundle multiple separate invoices.common scenarios where it saves real time:
Batch scanning. You feed a stack of paper bills through your scanner’s document feeder and end up with one large PDF. Drop that file into Datamolino with auto-split enabled and the system separates each invoice into its own document. No need to insert document separators or scan invoices one by one. Datamolino can handle batches of up to 50 pages, even when your scan mixes single-page and multi-page invoices.
Supplier emails with multiple bills. Some suppliers send a month of invoices as a single PDF attachment. Auto-split breaks that into individual transactions on import.
Invoices with attachments. If your supplier sends a one-page invoice followed by a multi-page delivery note, auto-split keeps the invoice and its attachment together as one document, rather than treating each page as a separate bill.
When NOT to use auto-split
Auto-split is for PDFs that bundle multiple separate invoices. It is not the right choice when each PDF you import contains only a single invoice (no splitting needed), when you have a single invoice that spans several pages (split-by-page would incorrectly break it apart), or when you want to extract individual line items from one invoice (use line item extraction instead).
How to turn auto-split on
You can request a split during a web import by selecting the Auto option before you drop the files. For email imports, add @split to the subject line and Datamolino will apply auto-split to any PDF attachments in that email. If most of your imports contain multi-invoice PDFs, a folder administrator can set auto-split as the default for the entire folder. Go to Folder Menu > Accounting & Automation, open the Workflow section, change File splitting to Auto, and click Save. Once set, it applies to every web and email import without selecting it each time.
If a document has already been processed and you realise it should have been split, open it, click the document menu, select Repair fingerprint, then choose Split into individual transactions.
Why this matters for accounting firms
Practices processing dozens or hundreds of supplier PDFs a week often spend more time sorting files before import than they realise. Manual splitting is one of the largest hidden costs in AP automation. The math is straightforward: if 43% of files need splitting and your current tool requires you to do it manually, that is roughly four out of every ten documents costing extra handling time.
Content-based splitting removes that step from the workflow entirely.
For more on how this fits with the rest of the platform, see the overview of features that make Datamolino unique. If you also need detailed line-by-line capture from each split invoice, line item data extraction handles that on the same upload.
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Frequently asked questions
How does Datamolino split multi-page PDFs?
Datamolino reads the content of each page and identifies where one invoice ends and the next begins. Multi-page invoices stay together as a single document, and each separate invoice in the batch becomes its own transaction. This works differently from the ‘split by page’ mode used by some competitors, which treats every page as a separate invoice regardless of content.
Can I scan a batch of invoices into one PDF?
Yes. Feed a stack of paper bills through your scanner’s document feeder, save as one PDF, and upload to Datamolino with auto-split enabled. The system separates each invoice into its own document automatically, with no need for document separators between bills.
Is auto-split on by default?
Yes. The default setting in Datamolino is to automatically split files into individual documents, so multi-invoice PDFs are separated without any extra action on your part. If you want to keep all pages together as a single document, add @nosplit to the email subject line or select that option during web import.
How many pages can Datamolino handle in one PDF?
Up to 50 pages per file, even when the batch contains a mix of single-page and multi-page invoices.