Set it up once. Then forget about it.

1. Connect Gmail

If your business inbox is on Gmail, this is the one to do. xpensli reads incoming receipts as they arrive — confirmations, invoices, subscription renewals — and files them. You don't forward anything. You don't do anything. It just works.

1. Open Settings. From your dashboard, head to Settings.
2. Find Gmail integration. Scroll to the section labeled Gmail integration.
3. Click Connect Gmail. Google asks you to grant read-only access. We never modify your inbox — we only read messages that look like receipts.
4. That's it. New receipts start showing up on your dashboard within a minute or two.

Why read-only? So we can't delete, label, archive, or send anything. Disconnect any time from the same Settings page.

2. Set up email forwarding

Not on Gmail? No problem. We give every account a private forwarding address. Anything you send to it gets processed exactly like a Gmail message — vendor extracted, amount detected, category assigned.

1. Find your forwarding address. We sent it in your welcome email. It looks like receipts-xxxxxxxx@inbound.xpensli.app. Treat it like a password — anyone with the address could send you receipts.
2. Forward a receipt by hand the first time. Find a recent receipt in your inbox and forward it to your address. Within a minute it should appear on your dashboard. That confirms everything is wired correctly.
3. Set up rules for the specific senders you want auto-forwarded. Pick five or six recurring receipt senders — Amazon, Stripe, your bank, your utility providers, your subscriptions — and create one rule per sender. Step-by-step instructions for each major client are below.

Don't forward your entire inbox. Blanket forwarding rules (“everything that hits Inbox”) will overwhelm your daily processing budget and route normal personal mail through our pipeline — which violates the Terms you agreed to. Set per-sender rules instead.

Gmail

1. Open Gmail on the web, click the gear icon → See all settings.
2. Open the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and click Add a forwarding address. Paste your receipts-…@inbound.xpensli.app and confirm the verification email Gmail sends to it (it'll show up on your dashboard within a minute — open it, click the link).
3. Switch to the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab → Create a new filter.
4. In From, enter one sender (e.g. auto-confirm@amazon.com or just the domain @stripe.com), then click Create filter.
5. Tick Forward it to and pick the address you just verified. Click Create filter.
6. Repeat for each sender. Keep the list tight — five to ten rules covers most people.

Outlook (Outlook.com / Microsoft 365)

1. Open Outlook on the web, click the gear icon → View all Outlook settings.
2. Go to Mail → Rules → Add new rule.
3. Name the rule something memorable (e.g. Forward Amazon receipts).
4. Under Add a condition, pick From and enter one sender address (e.g. auto-confirm@amazon.com). For a whole domain, use Sender address includes → @stripe.com.
5. Under Add an action, pick Forward to and paste your receipts-…@inbound.xpensli.app address.
6. Save. Outlook applies new rules to incoming mail only — tick Run rule now if you want it to back-fill recent messages.
7. Repeat per sender.

Apple Mail (iCloud)

iCloud rules run on Apple's servers — set them up at iCloud.com, not in the desktop app, so they fire even when your Mac is asleep.

1. Sign in at iCloud.com → Mail.
2. Click the gear icon at the bottom-left → Rules → Add a Rule.
3. Set If a message to is from and enter one sender address (e.g. auto-confirm@amazon.com).
4. Set Then to Forward to and paste your receipts-…@inbound.xpensli.app address. Tick Don't move if you want the original to stay in your inbox.
5. Click Done. Repeat per sender.

On Gmail/Outlook accounts read through the Apple Mail desktop app, set the rules in that provider's web UI (above) — the desktop app's rules only run when Mail is open.

Worried about forwarding too much? Don't be — as long as you're following the per-sender approach above. xpensli flags anything ambiguous as Needs review and we never assume something is a business expense. You stay in control of what counts. If you want belt-and-suspenders control, you can also add senders to a blocklist in Settings and we'll silently drop anything that matches.

3. Upload a receipt directly

Sometimes you get a paper receipt, or a PDF, or a screenshot. Drop it straight into xpensli. The dashboard's capture box accepts photos and PDFs — drag, drop, done.

1. Open your dashboard. The capture widget sits near the top, right under your Xpensler Score.
2. Drop a file in. JPG, PNG, HEIC, PDF — any of those work. On your phone, tap the same box and pick a photo.
3. Wait a beat. Extraction usually takes a few seconds. The receipt lands in your list with vendor, amount, date, and a category already filled in.
4. Correct anything off. Tap the receipt to adjust the category or fix a typo. xpensli learns from every correction.