USE-CASE: GMAIL
Extract every receipt from Gmail into a spreadsheet, automatically.
Stop searching “receipt”, “invoice” and “payment” in Gmail at the end of every month. MailTract scans your inbox in the background, ignores the noise and turns real invoices and receipts into a checked Excel ledger.
Why searching Gmail for receipts doesn't work
A month of business email is usually thousands of messages, and only a few dozen matter to your books. Order confirmations, shipping updates, “your invoice is ready” teasers and marketing emails all match a keyword search, while the real invoice is often a PDF with a subject line that never says “invoice”.
So doing it by hand means opening each email, downloading the attachment, reading the figures and typing them into a spreadsheet, then hoping you didn't miss one or enter one twice. For a quarter of receipts that can easily take an afternoon.
MailTract is a Gmail receipt extractor built to do that job for you, and to check its own work before you rely on it.
How to auto-scan Gmail receipts
- 01
Connect Gmail (read-only)
Sign in with Google and grant the gmail.readonly permission. MailTract can read messages and attachments; it cannot send, change, label or delete anything.
- 02
Pick a date range
Choose the month, quarter or year you need. Scans run in the background and save their place, so a few years of history is fine.
- 03
Let the engine sort the noise
Every message is classified first. Order confirmations, delivery updates and marketing are skipped; real invoices and receipts are opened and read.
- 04
Review and export
Check anything flagged, approve the rest, then download the Excel workbook or push the approved expenses to your accounting software.
What it reads
Receipts arrive in every format. MailTract reads the email body itself (for receipts that are just text, like many app-store or ride-hailing receipts) and every attachment: PDF invoices, photos of paper receipts including iPhone HEIC images, and Word and Excel files.
For each document it extracts the invoice date, supplier, supplier VAT number, currency, net, VAT and gross, including a line-by-line breakdown when an invoice mixes VAT rates. Extraction is schema-enforced, so the model can only return the fields it was asked for, and any instructions hidden inside a PDF are treated as text to read, never as commands.
What you get: email receipts in a spreadsheet
Not a CSV dump. The Excel export is a formatted .xlsx workbook your accountant can use straight away: a transactions sheet with a link back to each source email, VAT totals by rate, supplier and month, an exceptions log, and an audit trail with a file hash and extraction time for every document.
If you use accounting software, approved documents can be pushed to it as draft expenses instead, and Destination Audit later confirms every one arrived intact.
Checked to the penny
Net + VAT must equal gross within ±£0.02, or the document goes to review.
No double counting
Duplicates are caught by file hash, even when an invoice was forwarded or sent twice.
Nothing invented
Uncertain documents are flagged for you to check, never guessed or quietly skipped.
Using Gmail receipts for your VAT return
If you're VAT-registered, the receipts in your inbox are the evidence behind the input VAT you reclaim. HMRC accepts invoices you receive as electronic copies, and expects VAT records to be kept for at least six years. MailTract keeps the original attachment alongside the extracted figures and can export an evidence pack with the untouched originals and a SHA-256 manifest.
See how MailTract prepares the purchase side of a UK VAT return, or read how your mailbox data is protected on the security page.
Frequently asked questions
How do I export receipts from Gmail to a spreadsheet?
Connect your Gmail account to MailTract with read-only access, choose a date range and start a scan. MailTract finds the invoices and receipts, extracts the date, supplier, VAT number, net, VAT and gross for each one, and gives you an Excel (.xlsx) workbook with a transactions sheet, VAT breakdown, exceptions log and audit trail.
Can MailTract read receipts that are photos or PDFs attached to emails?
Yes. It reads email bodies and attachments: PDFs, photos including iPhone HEIC images, and Word and Excel files. Each document is extracted separately, so one email with three receipts attached gives three rows.
Is it safe to give an app access to my Gmail?
MailTract only requests Google's read-only Gmail scope, so it cannot send, edit or delete your email. Access tokens are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, your documents are never used to train AI models, and disconnecting the account wipes its credentials immediately.
What happens if a receipt can't be read properly?
It is flagged for review instead of guessed. Low-confidence extractions, missing figures and documents where net plus VAT doesn't equal gross go to the exceptions list, where you can correct or exclude them. Nothing is silently dropped.
Will the same invoice be counted twice if it was forwarded or sent twice?
No. Attachments are fingerprinted with a SHA-256 hash and checked against what's already been extracted, so a forwarded copy or the same PDF on two threads is marked as a duplicate rather than added again.
Does it work with email accounts other than Gmail?
Yes. Any mailbox that supports IMAP over TLS can be connected, usually with an app password. The Business plan lets one MailTract account scan up to three mailboxes, such as info@ and accounts@.
Your Gmail already has the receipts. Get them out.
Connect Gmail & Start Scanning🔒 Read-only access. GDPR compliant. We never send, alter, or delete your emails.