Portmoneo gives your account a forwarding address. Forward a receipt or invoice from your inbox and it becomes an expense once you approve it — the same local ledger a camera scan writes to, without opening the app to scan.

Most receipts already arrive as email: the train ticket, the software invoice, the hotel confirmation. Portmoneo lets you forward that email to your own address and turns the attachment into an expense, so you skip the scan step entirely. It uses the same ledger and the same scan allowance as a photo.

How Do You Add Expenses by Email?

Open the app, find Add expenses by email, and copy your forwarding address. Then forward the message that holds the receipt.

Copy your address. The setting shows your forwarding address, which belongs to your account.
Forward the receipt email. Send it to that address from the email account you signed in with. A vendor email with the receipt attached works as-is.
Approve the import. The receipt waits for your approval before it is processed. Nothing is charged to your scan allowance until you approve it.
Check the expense. The parsed merchant, date, tax lines and total land in the ledger, where you can edit them like any other expense.

Forwarding the message keeps the original attachment, so you do not download and re-upload a file. If a receipt fails to read, you can retry it from the same screen or forward it again.

What Happens After You Forward an Email?

Your email lands in a queue you control. Mail sent from your signed-in account to the shared address waits for your approval, and the scan allowance is used only after you approve — not when the email arrives.

That order matters for two reasons. Nothing enters your ledger without you agreeing to it, and mail that is not from your account cannot file anything at all. The failed list is separate, so a receipt that could not be read does not sit in the same place as one waiting for your decision.

Approved expenses appear in the app like any scan. You can filter, edit and export them from the same ledger.

The optional private forwarding address works differently. It imports a receipt without the approval step and spends your allowance when it is processed, so treat it like a password and keep it to yourself.

Which File Types Can You Forward?

Attach the document to the email, or forward the vendor message that already has it. Portmoneo accepts the common receipt formats:

Format	Typical source
PDF	Software invoices, e-tickets, utility bills
JPG, PNG	Photos and phone screenshots of a receipt
HEIC	iPhone photos forwarded from another device

Multi-page PDF invoices are supported. Attach the document, or forward the receipt email as it is — when a message has no attachment, Portmoneo reads the text of the body. Many receipts (card and subscription confirmations) are the email itself, with nothing attached. A clear document reads best; you can correct any field by hand after extraction.

Does Portmoneo Read Your Inbox?

No. Portmoneo does not connect to Gmail, Outlook or any mailbox, and it never asks for your email password. You send a message to your address; the app never reaches into your inbox to find one.

That is the same rule as the rest of the app: no bank login, no mailbox login. A forwarded message is treated like a scanned photo — the document is read for the fields it contains, and your ledger stays on the phone.

The shared address only accepts mail from the account you signed in with, so it is not the one to guard. The private forwarding address is: mail to it is processed without the approval step, and anyone who has the address can add receipts to your account and use your scan allowance.

Can You Automate the Forwarding?

Yes, with a rule you set up in your own mail app. Create a filter in Gmail or a rule in Outlook that forwards messages from a vendor to your Portmoneo address. New receipts then arrive on their own and wait for your approval.

The rule lives in your mailbox, not in Portmoneo — you decide which senders are forwarded and you can switch it off at any time. This is the setup to use for the same recurring bills every month, so the receipt is already in your ledger when you sit down to sort expenses.

Gmail: create a filter that forwards messages
Outlook: set up a rule to forward email

What Does Email Import Cost?

Email import uses the same allowance as a camera scan. Free gives you 5 scans per day, and a forwarded receipt counts as one when it is processed — after your approval on the shared address. A multi-page invoice is billed by the existing page rule.

	Free	Premium
Scans per day (email or camera)	5	Unlimited
CSV export	Yes	Yes
PDF / Excel export	—	Yes
Ads	Yes	None

You need to sign in with an email account to use the address — it has to belong to someone. Guests can still scan by camera. The Premium price is the one shown in Google Play.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to forward from a specific email address?

For the shared address, forward from the email account you signed in with — that is how Portmoneo knows the receipt is yours. The private forwarding address accepts any sender, which is why you keep it secret.

Can I forward several receipts at once?

Yes. Send them as separate messages or attach more than one document; each accepted receipt becomes its own expense.

What if a receipt cannot be read?

It moves to a failed list, where you can retry the analysis. If a retry is not offered, forward the email again to start a fresh import.

Does the app read the text of my email?

It reads the receipt, not your conversations. When a message has an attachment, that document is read. When it has none, the body text is read, because the receipt may be the email itself.

Can I use email import on iPhone?

Not yet. The live app is Android on Google Play; iOS is a waitlist. The forwarding address works from any mail app, but the expenses are filed in the Android app.

Forward Your First Receipt

Find a receipt sitting in your inbox, copy your address from Add expenses by email, and forward it. Approve the import, check the extracted fields, and you have the same result as a scan without opening the camera.