Turn Bank SMS Alerts into Expense Entries

Every time you pay by card, transfer money or take cash from an ATM, your bank sends a debit alert by SMS. On a busy trip those messages are the most complete record you have: the amount, the currency, the date and the place, sent the moment the money left your account.

The trouble is getting them into the expense report. Copying amounts from a phone screen into a spreadsheet is slow, and it is easy to enter the same payment twice: once from the receipt and once from the alert. Quantum-NoteMaster now reads the alerts for you and works out which ones are new.

Open your trip and tap + Paste bank SMS. Copy your bank’s debit alerts from your messages app and paste them into the box, several at once if you like: a day’s worth or a whole week. Tap Read messages and each alert is read for its amount, currency, date and place.

Every alert becomes its own line in a preview, with a tick box. Nothing is saved until you choose: untick anything that was personal, then tap Add ticked items. Lines that were hard to read are still offered, marked “Please check”, so you can look at them later instead of losing them.

Say you photographed a hotel receipt for US$120 and paid it with a naira card. Later the bank alert arrives: ₦186,000 debited at the same hotel. Instead of adding a second expense, the preview offers Fill in. Tick it, and ₦186,000 becomes the Amount charged on the hotel line you already have. The receipt stays on record, and the report uses what actually left your account.

Bank fees are handled the same way. When an alert includes a separate charge, such as a card or transfer fee, it becomes its own line, so finance can see it. If you paste the same fee twice, it is recognised and not added again.

Bank messages carry more than an expense report needs. When an alert is read, only the amount, currency, date, place and reference are used. Your available balance and your account number are not kept, even though they are in the message you pasted.

Reading a paste counts as one receipt reading from your plan’s monthly allowance, however many alerts it contains. Pasting a week of alerts in one go is therefore the cheapest way to use it.

If you have connected the Quantum-NoteMaster Telegram bot, you can paste or forward a bank alert to it straight from your phone. The bot reads it, adds it to your most recent open trip and marks it “Please check”, so you can confirm it in the app when you have a moment.

Cash withdrawals in another currency are handled too. When you take cash abroad with your home card, the bank alert shows only what left your account, so the bot and the preview ask how much cash you received. Leave it blank to fill in later. The guide on ATM cash abroad explains how that cash then sets a fair exchange rate.

Not every receipt is paper. Ride-hailing apps, airlines, hotels and bank transfers often send a PDF. On a trip, tap Upload photo or PDF and choose the file; on an existing expense, use Choose file. In Telegram, send the PDF to the bot as a file. It is read like a photographed receipt: the date, vendor, total and currency are filled in for you to check.

The PDF itself is kept as the receipt. You can open it from the expense, and it is included in Download receipts (ZIP), named to match the report row. PDFs up to 4 MB are accepted, which covers nearly every e-receipt and transfer slip.