How automatic expense tracking works — and what it reads

Where the transactions come from

Your bank already tells you about every payment — by SMS for most transactions, and by email when email alerts are on. Spendly reads those alerts and turns each one into a transaction: amount, date, account and payee.

It does not connect to your bank, does not read Google Pay, PhonePe or Paytm, and never asks for a net-banking password, card number or UPI PIN. A UPI payment from any app is captured because your bank reports it.

Email (Gmail)

• You connect the Gmail account your bank sends alerts to. Access is read-only.
• Only messages from the alert addresses of 30 supported banks are read; personal email is not.
• Only the extracted fields are stored — not the email itself.

• Make sure your bank sends email alerts: how to turn them on.

SMS and notifications (Android app)

• In the Android app, bank transaction texts — and bank app notifications — are picked up as they arrive.
• Personal messages, OTPs and offers are filtered out on your phone and never leave it.
• iPhone does not let apps read SMS, so on iPhone Spendly works through Gmail alerts and manual entries.

How Spendly avoids counting things twice

• Most banks send an SMS and an email for the same payment: Spendly pairs them and records one transaction.
• Money moved between your own accounts becomes one transfer, not spending plus income.
• A credit-card bill paid from your bank becomes a transfer to the card — the card swipes were the spending.
• Money sent to or received from a broker or crypto exchange counts as investing, not spending or income.

What happens when Spendly is not sure

Clear alerts are added on their own. Anything uncertain — an unknown payee, a payment to a person, a possible duplicate — waits in Needs review for you to confirm, with a suggested category. Change a category once and Spendly remembers it for that payee.