How to turn on transaction alerts at Wells Fargo

Find Manage Alerts

1. Sign on at wellsfargo.com.
2. Open the Accounts menu at the top of the page and choose Manage Alerts.
3. Stay on the Account Alerts tab, and choose your card or account under Set alerts for.

Alerts are set up one account at a time, so repeat the steps below for each card you want to track. In the Wells Fargo Mobile app, Wells Fargo's help page gives the route as Menu in the bottom bar, then your name or Welcome at the top, then Manage Banking Alerts.

Turn on the purchase alert

For a credit card, Wells Fargo calls the alert you want Single Purchase Amount, described as: “Alerts you when a purchase is above an amount that you choose.” Debit cards have a similar card activity alert with an amount you set: “if the set amount is $5.00, you will receive an alert if the transaction is $5.01 or higher.”

1. Find the purchase alert in the list and open it.
2. Set the amount to $0 if the page allows it, or to the lowest amount it accepts, so that every purchase sends an alert.
3. Under Email, tick the address you'll use for tracking.
4. Click Update.

If the Gmail address you want isn't listed, use Edit email addresses under the alert to add it. Choose email rather than text or push notifications. Email leaves a record that can be filed and read later, which is what makes the alerts useful for tracking.

Credit cards also offer Daily Total Spending, which Wells Fargo sends “only once a day,” and Online, Phone or Mail Purchase, which covers only those purchases. For tracking every purchase, Single Purchase Amount is the one to use. Wells Fargo says alerts begin one to two business days after you set them up.

Send the alerts to a Gmail label

A Gmail filter keeps the alerts out of your inbox and collects them in one place:

1. In Gmail on a computer, click Show search options in the search bar.
2. In the From field, enter alerts@notify.wellsfargo.com, the address Wells Fargo gives for its alerts. If your alerts come from a different address, use that one.
3. Click Create filter.
4. Select Skip the Inbox (Archive it) and Apply the label, and choose or create a label such as Expenses.
5. Select Also apply filter to matching conversations so alerts already in your mailbox get the label too.
6. Click Create filter.

Other Wells Fargo alerts you've turned on, such as payment reminders, come from the same address, so they'll be labeled too. If you'd rather keep those in your inbox, wait for your first purchase alert, then edit the filter under Settings, See all settings, Filters and Blocked Addresses, and add that alert's subject in the Subject field. This step is optional if you use Bankless Budget, which recognizes emails that aren't purchases and doesn't add them to your budget.

What these alerts don't cover

• Amounts can change. Wells Fargo sends credit card alerts “when the purchase is authorized, not after the charges have posted”. A restaurant tip is added later, and at gas pumps the first amount is often a placeholder that's usually less than what you paid, with the actual total settled afterward.
• No categories. An alert tells you the merchant and the amount, not what kind of purchase it was.
• Each cardholder signs up separately. For debit cards, Wells Fargo says joint account holders “must sign up for card activity alerts individually”, because each has their own card number.
• Only what you set up. Cash, and any card without the alert turned on, won't appear.

It's worth reviewing your alert settings from time to time, and after you get a new card.

Using the alerts with Bankless Budget

Bankless Budget turns these alerts into a spending dashboard and a monthly budget. It reads the alerts in the Gmail label you choose 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. On the Free and Plus plans you start each import yourself; on Pro, alerts are imported as they arrive. It never asks for your Wells Fargo login.