Email & SMS integration

How it works

Banks and card issuers notify you about every transaction by SMS or email. Monivera’s integration forwards those notifications into the app, where the AI parses the amount, merchant, and date, picks a category from your own category list, and logs the transaction — automatically. No review step, no confirmation. Your job shrinks to nothing.

Monivera is available on iOS, so the setup below uses Apple’s Shortcuts app.

Set up the email automation

The whole thing is a single Shortcuts automation: when an alert email arrives, it runs Monivera’s Log Transaction action on the email’s contents — no tapping required.

1. Create the automation trigger

1. Open Monivera and go to Settings → Set up iOS Shortcut — this opens the Shortcuts app on the Automation tab.
2. Tap New Automation, then choose Email.
3. Configure the trigger so only real alerts fire it:
   • Sender — your bank’s alert address (for example ibandking.alert@dbs.com).
   • Subject Contains — a phrase every alert shares, like Card Transaction Alert, so promos never trigger it.
   • Select Run Immediately so transactions log without a confirmation tap.
4. Tap Next.

2. Add Monivera’s Log Transaction action

1. Tap Create New Shortcut to open the shortcut editor.
2. Search for the Monivera app and add its Log Transaction action.

3. Feed the email’s content in

1. Tap the action’s Text field.
2. Tap Select Variable above the keyboard.
3. Choose Shortcut Input — it’s listed under the “Receive emails as input” step.
4. Tap the Shortcut Input token, then pick Content from the bar at the bottom.
5. Tap the ✓ to save the automation.

That’s it. Every email matching your filter now logs itself — parsed, categorized, and added to your ledger automatically.

Bank texts instead of emails? Use the Message trigger in step 1 the same way, filtering by your bank’s sender ID.

Choosing your sources (important)

Pick one primary source per account — your bank or card issuer — and stick to it.

• Don’t integrate both the bank and the vendors it pays. If your card alerts you about a food-delivery charge and the delivery app also notifies you, you’ll log the same meal twice and spend the month wondering why your food budget looks so bleak.
• Do rely on the money source: bank and card notifications capture everything, exactly once, with the real amount that left your account.

Filtering tips: keep the promos out

Banks love sending marketing. Your budget does not need to know about their new travel card.

• Filter by sender — only trigger on your bank’s transaction sender ID or email address, not every message from the bank.
• Filter by subject or keywords — transaction alerts have predictable phrasing (“charged”, “debited”, “payment of”). Promotional emails don’t. Add a title/keyword condition so only real transactions flow through.
• When in doubt, exclude — a missed transaction is a ten-second manual log. A stream of promo noise is categorization cleanup.

Multiple alerts at once

If a single alert email lists several transactions, Monivera detects each one and logs each as its own — no need to split them up.

When the AI isn’t sure

The AI never guesses silently: an alert it can’t parse or categorize with confidence isn’t logged — it lands in the dashboard’s Needs Review section instead, where assigning it is a single tap. And if a logged transaction ever comes out wrong, tap it in the ledger and edit any field.

Troubleshooting

• The automation never runs — check that it’s set to Run Immediately (not “Run After Confirmation”), and that the Sender and Subject Contains filters actually match your bank’s alert emails.
• Transactions aren’t logged — make sure you’re signed in to the same account in Monivera. If you’ve signed out, open the app and sign back in.
• Can’t find the Log Transaction action — confirm Monivera is installed and has been opened at least once, then search “Monivera” in the shortcut editor’s action list.