Capture bank alerts

Does your bank send you an e-mail or text message for every transaction? Then a Shortcuts automation can pass each message to newmonth. Card payments, direct debits and salary land in your review list.

Steps

1. Tap on the Home tab, then Settings → Automation → Bank Alerts. The screen lists these same steps.
2. Tap Open Shortcuts and go to "Automation". Tap "New Automation". If you already have one, tap instead.
3. Choose "Email" as the trigger. If your bank sends text messages, choose "Message".
4. Under "Sender", enter the address your bank's alerts come from. Choose "Run Immediately" and tap "Next".
5. Choose "Create New Shortcut". Pick newmonth from the app list and add Add Transactions from Bank Alert.
6. Set Text to Shortcut Input → "Content".
7. Set Account to the account the alerts are about. Then tap "Done".

How a message is read

• newmonth looks for one transaction per line, like "REWE: -12,34 EUR". A minus is money spent. No sign is money received. Lines with the balance are skipped.
• Some messages look different. Then Apple Intelligence on your device reads the message. To turn this off, use Read Alerts with Apple Intelligence on the setup screen. It shows only on devices that support Apple Intelligence.
• Categories come from your payee rules . Without a rule, newmonth uses the payee's last category.
• Maybe you also use Apple Pay capture on the same account. Then the bank's message the next day shows up as a Possible Match for that payment.

Good to know

• newmonth never reads your Mail or Messages. It only sees the text your own automation sends it. It reads that text on your device.
• The e-mail trigger only watches e-mail accounts set up in the Mail app.
• Each transaction gets the date the message arrives. If your bank writes the next morning, fix the date when you review it.
• In a shared budget, each person sets this up on their own device.