Track Spending From Bank Alerts Without Linking Your Bank

Every time you tap a card or send a PayNow, your bank emails you about it. That email already has the amount, the merchant and the time. It just sits in your inbox, and a month later you have no idea where the money went.

You can put those emails to work without handing anyone your banking login. Forward them to Graiden once, and each one is read, logged and categorized for you. This guide covers DBS, POSB, OCBC, UOB and PayLah!, what you need to set up, and what this approach will not catch.

How It Works

1. Your bank emails you an alert for each transaction, if you have email alerts turned on.
2. Your email app forwards only those alerts to your private Graiden address, using a filter that matches your bank's sender address.
3. Graiden reads each email and logs the purchase with its amount, merchant, date and category.

Graiden never connects to your bank, so it can't see your balance and can't move money. Everything it knows comes from the alerts you decided to forward.

Which Alerts Are Covered

These are the sender addresses Graiden's guides use. They come from alert emails that Graiden users have actually forwarded, rather than from the banks' documentation.

Two things to notice. DBS and PayLah! are separate senders, so add both if you use both. And OCBC uses two addresses, which the Graiden filter file handles for you.

For a bank-by-bank walkthrough, see the guides for DBS and POSB, PayLah!, UOB and OCBC.

Step 1: Turn On Email Alerts in Your Bank App

In your bank's app or internet banking, open the alert or notification settings and turn on email alerts for transactions. Set the alert threshold as low as it goes. If the threshold is $50, a $4 kopi never produces an email, so Graiden never sees it.

The menu names change between app versions, so look for "alerts", "notifications" or "transaction alerts" under settings. Do this for each bank and for PayLah! separately.

Step 2: Add Your Graiden Address in Gmail

You can find your private Graiden address in the Graiden app, under Settings. In Gmail on a computer, go to Settings, then Forwarding and POP/IMAP, then Add a forwarding address, and paste it in. Gmail sends a confirmation message to that address. Graiden catches it and asks you to approve it in the app.

Gmail's forwarding settings only exist in a browser, so you need a computer, or your phone's browser switched to Desktop site. Our Gmail forwarding walkthrough has screenshots for every step. If you use Outlook, iCloud or Yahoo, the email forwarding guides cover those too.

After the address is verified, leave "Disable forwarding" selected. You do not want to forward your whole inbox. The filter in the next step sends only the emails you choose.

Step 3: Import the Filter for Your Banks

Graiden makes one filter file that matches the senders for the banks you pick. In Gmail, go to Settings, then Filters and Blocked Addresses, then Import filters. Choose the file and click Create filters. Leave "Apply new filters to existing email" unticked.

The Graiden app can walk you through this and build the file for your banks, or you can build it from the bank alerts guides.

Test It With a Small Purchase

Buy something small with the card or wallet you just set up, wait a minute or two for the alert, and check Recent emails in the Graiden app. When the transaction shows up with the right amount and merchant, you are done. If nothing arrives, the usual causes are an alert threshold set too high or a typo in the forwarding address.

What This Won't Catch

• Cash. No email, no entry. Add cash purchases by hand.
• Anything below your alert threshold. This is why Step 1 matters.
• Transfers to people. A PayNow to a friend is logged, but it usually lands in "Other" until you recategorize it, because the alert does not say what it was for.
• Banks and wallets you did not add. Each sender needs to be in your filter.

Overseas Spending

Before a trip, turn on Travel Mode in Graiden and pick the local currency. Alerts in that currency are then converted to your home currency, and the original amount is kept in the purchase's note. If an alert is in a currency you didn't set, the amount is logged as written, so check overseas purchases once you are home.

What Happens to the Emails

The text of each forwarded email is read by AI providers to pull out the amount, merchant and date. Graiden deletes the email text automatically within 3 days and keeps only the purchase details and category. The filter only matches your bank's alert address, so newsletters and promotions are never forwarded in the first place.

Forwarding Alerts vs Linking Your Bank

Bank sync apps such as Dobin pull transactions straight from your accounts, which means they also catch purchases that never produced an alert. In exchange, you give the app your internet-banking login. Forwarding alerts works the other way round: you share nothing about your bank, and you only get what your bank chooses to email. Neither is wrong. Which one you prefer comes down to how you feel about sharing a login. We compare the two properly on the Graiden vs Dobin page.

What It Costs

Every new account gets a free week of automatic logging, with no card needed. After that, Graiden Pro is US$24.99 a year or US$2.99 a month. Typing purchases in by hand stays free.

If you are moving over from Seedly, whose app closed on 31 December 2025, we wrote a separate guide to keeping track of spending after Seedly.