Collect documents from clients — without the email attachment chase.

Because email was built to push attachments outward, and collection needs the opposite — and every weakness shows up at exactly the moment the data is most sensitive. When you ask a client to "just email it over," you inherit six structural failures at once:

• Size caps bounce files. A large loss-run PDF, a scanned deed, or a folder of statements hits the attachment limit and the send fails — so the client zips it, splits it, or gives up.
• PII sits in the inbox forever. A passport scan or a bank statement now lives in your mailbox permanently, syncs to every device, and is one careless forward from exposure. You cannot revoke an email.
• Versions fork. The client sends the wrong 1099, then the right one, then a corrected one — and you are left guessing which of three attachments is current at 11pm.
• Nothing is organized. Files arrive scattered across threads with names like "scan_final_v2," and you spend real time downloading and refiling before you can even start the work.
• There is no audit trail. Six months later, when a regulator, examiner, or opposing counsel asks who supplied a document and when, an inbox is not a chain-of-custody record.
• Follow-up is manual nagging. You have no view of what is outstanding, so chasing the missing K-1 is another email, and another, and another.

A standing permissioned upload link flips the direction: email carries the request link, never the payload, and the client uploads into a space you control. You own the structure, the audit trail, the retention clock, and the ability to shut access off. The full horizontal playbook — across prop firms, accountants, lawyers, lenders, and agencies — is in how to collect documents from clients securely.

Clients pay nothing, ever, and never create an account — only admin seats on your side are billed, and pricing is flat. File collection uses permissioned upload links, which are part of Peony's core sharing, so you can start on the free tier. Above that, two flat per-admin plans add the controls most collection workflows want:

• Business — $30/admin/month. Adds Simple NDA gating, screenshot protection, AI document Q&A, and unlimited e-signatures — the plan for organized intake plus a confidentiality gate and a year of analytics retention.
• Data Room — $52/admin/month. Adds dynamic watermarks, Advanced NDA with countersigning, granular permissions, and auto-indexing — for intake that carries real regulatory or reputational risk and gets shared onward.

The pricing is flat per admin seat, not metered: there are no per-room, per-client, or per-upload fees, so separating every client into their own room costs nothing extra. The people uploading to you — clients, borrowers, LPs, counterparties — are always free and never need an account, so your bill is bounded by the one, two, or ten admins on your team who run collection, not by how many people send you files. Full plan detail is on the pricing page.

With standing links, update-in-place folders, and a repeatable structure you build once and reuse. For seasonal or quarterly collection — an accountant across a filing season, a lender pulling borrower reporting every quarter, a fund manager collecting subscription documents close after close — the link stays the same and you update the folder tree in place. The client or borrower reuses one doorway every cycle instead of getting a fresh checklist and a new upload link each round.

Because the folder structure is effectively a template you control, standing up the next cycle is copying the pattern, not designing it from scratch. Each submission is still logged per submitter with email, timestamp, and version, so the audit trail accrues cycle over cycle. For the private-credit version of this recurring workflow — financials and covenant certificates from a book of borrowers, every reporting period — see the borrower reporting data room guide.

Document collection is not identity verification. Peony holds, permissions, and logs the documents; it does not confirm that a passport is authentic or belongs to the person who uploaded it. When your workflow needs that — common for lenders, prop firms, and fund managers running KYC/AML — you run the check through a specialist like Sumsub, iDenfy, or Veriff and use the Peony room as the secure container that collects and audits the resulting files. The two sit side by side: the verification vendor proves who someone is; Peony proves what they submitted, when, and who touched it afterward.

Peony does not scan uploads for malware. If virus scanning is a hard requirement, run submitted files through a dedicated scanner in your own pipeline before processing. And a scope note on retention: expiry and revocation govern access to the room, not deletion from a client's own device if you allowed download — so for intake you don't want copied out, set downloads off and collect view-and-upload.

Don't over-tool a single low-stakes file. One signed form back from a trusted contact doesn't need watermarks and NDA gates — a plain upload link on the free tier is plenty. The data-room controls start earning their keep the moment you have multiple external submitters, sensitive personal or financial data, a retention obligation, or anyone who will later audit the chain of custody.