Every transaction you make already generates an email. Your bank confirms the UPI payment, your card issuer flags the swipe, your broker acknowledges the SIP. That inbox full of alerts is a complete, timestamped record of your money — it's just trapped in Gmail.

Spenco runs on those emails. Set up forwarding once, and every new alert lands in your dashboard as a transaction — categorised, counted, and feeding the predictions that tell you where your balance is *going*. No SMS permission. No Account Aggregator consent screens. No sharing your bank login with anyone.

The whole setup takes about ten minutes, and you only do it once. Here's the full walkthrough.

## How it works

You get a unique, private Spenco email address. In Gmail, you create **one filter** that matches mail from your banks — and only that mail — and forwards it to your Spenco address. Spenco parses each alert into a transaction.

<!-- SCREENSHOT/DIAGRAM: flow diagram — Bank → Gmail filter → unique @spenco address → dashboard. [I'll build this in brand colors] -->

The important design choice: **you never forward your whole inbox.** The filter you create matches only your banks' alert addresses. Everything else — personal mail, work mail, newsletters — stays exactly where it is.

## Step 1: Get your unique forwarding address

Log in at [app.spenco.ai](https://app.spenco.ai) and head to **Settings** — it's in the sidebar. You'll land on the **Account** tab (it carries a small "Setup" badge until you're done), where **Step 1: Email forwarding** is waiting with a **Set up** button.

<!-- SCREENSHOT (app, mine): Settings → Account tab showing the "Email forwarding — Set up" step card -->

Click **Set up**. Spenco generates your private forwarding address on the spot — it looks like `yourname.xxxx@mail.spenco.ai`.

<!-- SCREENSHOT (app, mine): Email forwarding dialog with the unique address + copy button -->

Copy it — you'll paste it into Gmail in the next step. Keep this tab open; you'll come back to it twice more.

## Step 2: Tell Gmail about the address

In Gmail, click the **gear icon → See all settings → Forwarding and POP/IMAP**.

<!-- SCREENSHOT (Gmail, yours): Forwarding and POP/IMAP settings tab -->

Click **Add a forwarding address** and paste your Spenco address.

<!-- SCREENSHOT (Gmail, yours): "Add a forwarding address" popup with the Spenco address pasted -->

Gmail now wants proof that the address is really yours, so it sends a confirmation code to it. Which brings us to the neat part.

## Step 3: Grab the confirmation code from Email logs

That confirmation email went to your Spenco mailbox — so it shows up in Spenco. Open **Email logs** in your Spenco settings (there's a direct link in the forwarding dialog), and you'll see Gmail's confirmation email with the code.

<!-- SCREENSHOT (app, mine): Email logs page showing the Gmail confirmation email/code -->

Copy the code, head back to Gmail, and paste it into the confirmation box.

<!-- SCREENSHOT (Gmail, yours): confirmation code entry -->

## Step 4: Leave "Disable forwarding" selected

This one trips people up, so read it twice: back on Gmail's Forwarding settings page, **keep "Disable forwarding" selected.**

That setting controls *blanket* forwarding — your entire inbox. You don't want that, and Spenco doesn't either. Your bank alerts will travel through the filter you're about to create, and nothing else leaves your inbox.

<!-- SCREENSHOT (Gmail, yours): Forwarding tab after verification, "Disable forwarding" still selected -->

## Step 5: Create the filter

Back in Spenco's forwarding dialog, you'll find a bank picker — HDFC, ICICI, Axis, Kotak, IDFC FIRST, American Express and more. Tick your banks and Spenco assembles the exact Gmail filter string: every alert address those banks send from, joined with OR.

<!-- SCREENSHOT (app, mine): bank picker with a couple of banks selected + the copy-filter button -->

Copy the string, then in Gmail click the **sliders icon** at the right end of the search bar to open the search options panel.

![Gmail search bar with the filter/sliders icon at the right end](../../assets/gmail-search-sliders-icon.jpg)

Paste the filter string into the **From** field and hit **Search** first. You should see your recent transaction alerts in the results — and nothing personal. This is your chance to sanity-check exactly what will be forwarded.

![Gmail search options panel with the bank addresses pasted into the From field](../../assets/gmail-filter-from-field.jpg)

Happy with the matches? Open the sliders panel again and this time click **Create filter**. In the actions list, tick **Forward it to:**, pick your Spenco address from the dropdown, and click **Create filter**.

![Gmail filter actions with "Forward it to" ticked and the Spenco address selected](../../assets/gmail-forward-it-to.jpg)

One thing to know: Gmail only forwards mail that arrives *after* the filter exists — it won't push your old alerts through (you'll see its note, "old mail will not be forwarded"). Getting history in is covered in the next step.

## Step 6: Tell Spenco you're done

Back in the forwarding dialog, click **"I've set it up."** Spenco marks forwarding as active, and you're live.

<!-- SCREENSHOT (app, mine): dialog/settings showing forwarding status Active -->

From here on, every bank alert flows in automatically. The next time HDFC emails you about a debit, it's a transaction in your dashboard before you've opened the email.

## Check that it's flowing

The fastest test: forward one recent bank alert manually from Gmail to your Spenco address. Within a minute or two it should appear in **Email logs**, and the parsed transaction in your **Transactions** view.

Manual forwarding is also how you bring in history — since Gmail's filter only handles new mail, select a few weeks of old alerts and forward them the same way. Spenco parses forwarded mail exactly like filtered mail, so your dashboard starts with context instead of a blank slate.

## Troubleshooting

**The confirmation code isn't in Email logs.** Give it a minute and refresh. Still nothing? Double-check the address you pasted into Gmail against the one in your forwarding dialog — one wrong character and the code went nowhere.

**My bank isn't in the picker.** Find the sender address your bank uses for alerts (open any alert and check the From field), and add it to the filter string yourself with an extra OR. The filter is a plain Gmail search — you can extend it freely.

**Is Spenco reading my inbox?** No — Spenco never connects to your Gmail account at all. The only mail Spenco ever sees is what your filter forwards, and you defined the filter. You can also enable a sender whitelist in the forwarding settings, so Spenco only accepts mail from addresses you've approved — even if something else gets forwarded by mistake, it's dropped.

**I use Outlook.** Supported — the forwarding dialog has an Outlook tab with rule-based setup. A full Outlook walkthrough is coming as its own post.

## Ten minutes, once

That's the entire integration: one address, one filter, zero permissions granted to anyone. Your alerts were already being sent — now they're working for you, powering the cash-flow forecast instead of gathering dust in a Gmail label.

[Set up your forwarding address →](https://app.spenco.ai)