Tidy Orders

Receipt forwarding tutorial

Set up Gmail receipt forwarding for Tidy Orders

The best setup is targeted forwarding: send purchase confirmations to your Tidy Orders address, keep personal mail out, and let the review queue handle the extracted transaction.

Tutorial 8 min read Updated April 26, 2026
Goal: get receipt emails into Tidy Orders automatically enough to save time, but selectively enough that only purchase confirmations, invoices, and receipts enter the classification flow.

Before you start

Open Tidy Orders in another tab and go to Integrations.

  1. Find the Email Forwarding card.
  2. Copy your unique address. It looks like receipts+your-alias@inbound.tidyorders.com.
  3. Keep the Integrations page open so you can come back and copy the address again if needed.

That address is unique to your account. Receipts forwarded there can be parsed, matched against bank transactions, and sent to your review queue.

Step 1: test one receipt manually

Start with a manual forward. This confirms that the receipt email has enough detail for Tidy Orders before you automate anything in Gmail.

  1. Open Gmail on desktop.
  2. Find a recent receipt, invoice, or purchase confirmation.
  3. Open the message, choose Forward, and send it to your Tidy Orders address.
  4. In Tidy Orders, open Review Queue and check for the new pending transaction.

Good receipt candidates

  • Include merchant name, order date, total amount, and line items when available.
  • Use the original receipt email, not a cropped screenshot pasted into an email body.
  • Forward the full message thread if the order total is only visible in earlier content.

Step 2: create a targeted Gmail filter

Google's Gmail help recommends filters when you only want certain messages forwarded. For Tidy Orders, this is usually better than forwarding every new email.

  1. In Gmail, click the search options icon in the search box.
  2. Enter criteria that catch receipt emails from a specific merchant or sender.
  3. Run the search first and confirm the results are purchase receipts.
  4. Choose Create filter.
  5. Select Forward it and choose your Tidy Orders forwarding address.
  6. Add a label such as Tidy Orders receipts so you can audit what was forwarded.
  7. Click Create filter.

Start narrow, then add more merchants once you trust the results.

from:(orders@example.com OR receipts@example.com) subject:(receipt OR invoice OR order)

Step 3: handle Gmail forwarding verification

Gmail may require a forwarding-address verification step before filters can forward to a new address. If Gmail asks for verification, follow the Gmail prompt first.

Important: do not turn on broad automatic forwarding for all mail. Keep forwarding off globally, then use filters for receipts. This keeps sensitive personal or client email out of your purchase workflow.

If verification cannot be completed for your Tidy Orders address, use manual forwarding while you contact support. Manual forwarding still uses the same receipt parsing flow.

Recommended filter criteria

Useful receipt filters usually combine sender, subject, and keywords.

  • Known merchant senders: receipts, orders, billing, invoices, or no-reply addresses.
  • Subject terms: receipt, invoice, order confirmation, payment, shipped, subscription, or renewal.
  • Exclusions: newsletters, promotions, sale announcements, shipping-only alerts, and support tickets.

A good rule of thumb: if the email does not prove a purchase amount, do not forward it.

Step 4: review the first week

Let the filters run for a few days, then check the Review Queue and the label you created in Gmail.

Match Receipt lines should map to the right vendor and amount.
Trim Remove filters that forward newsletters or shipping-only updates.
Tune Set vendor defaults after you approve repeated purchases.

Once the first week looks clean, repeat the same filter pattern for the merchants you use most often.

Gmail references

Gmail's own help docs explain that forwarding filters affect new matching messages and that forwarding to a new address can require verification. See Google's help on automatic forwarding and creating Gmail filters.