How to track expenses from Gmail

1. Turn on transaction alerts at your bank

Sign in to your bank's website and look for alert settings. Turn on the alert for purchases or transactions, choose email as the delivery method, and set the amount to the lowest your bank allows so small purchases are included. Do this for every bank and card you want to track.

The menus differ from bank to bank. Our step-by-step guides walk through the settings at specific banks, and we're adding more. Don't see yours? Tell us which bank you use.

2. Find the address the alerts come from

Once an alert arrives, open it and look at the From line. That address is what your Gmail filter will match, so copy it exactly. Chase, for example, sends from no.reply.alerts@chase.com. Each bank uses its own address, so you'll need one for every bank you track.

3. Create a label

Gmail uses labels instead of folders. To create one on a computer:

1. On the left side of Gmail, next to Labels, click Create new label.
2. Enter a name, such as Expenses.
3. Click Create.

In the Gmail app for Android, tap Menu, then Create label under “All labels”. Google's help page on labels has the steps for other devices.

4. Create a filter that labels the alerts

A filter applies your label to each alert as it arrives, so you never have to sort them by hand.

1. In the search box at the top of Gmail, click Show search options.
2. In the From field, enter your bank's alert address.
3. At the bottom of the search window, click Create filter.
4. Select Apply the label and choose the label you created.
5. If you don't want the alerts in your inbox, also select Skip the Inbox (Archive it). This is optional. The alerts are labeled either way.
6. Select Also apply filter to matching conversations. Gmail shows the number of emails it found, for example “Also apply filter to 12 matching conversations”. This labels the alerts you already have as well as new ones.
7. Click Create filter.

You can also start from an alert you already have. Select the checkbox next to it, click More, then Filter messages like these, and continue from step 3. For more than one bank, create a filter for each address and give them all the same label.

To change a filter later, go to Settings, then See all settings, then Filters and Blocked Addresses. Google's help page on filters covers the rest.

5. Turn the alerts into a budget

With your alerts under one label, you have two options.

By hand. Open the label once a week and copy each alert's date, merchant and amount into a spreadsheet, adding a category as you go. It costs nothing, and nothing else gets access to your email. It takes a few minutes each week.

With Bankless Budget. Sign in with Google and enter your label's name during setup. Type it exactly as it appears in Gmail. Setup checks that the label exists and counts the emails in it, so you can tell whether the filter is working before you import anything.

When you import, Bankless Budget reads the alerts in that label and sends each alert's text to Google's Gemini AI, which pulls out the purchase details, like the merchant, amount and date, and suggests a category. If a category is wrong, you can change it. Tick Remember this merchant for next time and future purchases with the same merchant name will be filed the same way. For a whole chain, add a merchant clue to the category instead.

How imports work depends on your plan:

• Free: you start each import with the Import emails button. Each import reaches back up to 30 days, with up to 100 imported transactions a month.
• Plus: you start each import yourself, with no monthly limit, and can reach back as far as your plan keeps history.
• Pro: alerts are imported as they arrive.

Bankless Budget only reads the label you name. If that label is renamed or deleted in Gmail, nothing more is imported, and an import you start yourself reports that the label is missing. It doesn't fall back to reading the rest of your mailbox. If you rename the label, update the name in Bankless Budget's settings.

Limits worth knowing

• Anything without an alert. Cash, and any account where alerts aren't turned on.
• Spending from before your alerts started. Only alerts in your mailbox can be read. If you've deleted old ones, they're gone.
• Final amounts, sometimes. An alert can be sent when a charge is authorized, before it settles. A restaurant tip is added later, and at the pump the first amount is often a placeholder that's usually less than what you actually paid. It's worth checking these against your statement. In Bankless Budget you can edit the amount once the charge settles.
• The same purchase twice. Some banks send one alert when a charge is authorized and another when it settles, sometimes for a different amount. Bankless Budget flags pairs that look like the same purchase on its Possible duplicates page, where you can delete the extra one. If they really are two charges, like an order a store charged in two parts, choose Not duplicates and both stay.
• Balances. Alerts describe individual purchases, not what's left in your account.