In our experience, when a user reports "hundreds of missing receipts," roughly 80–95% of the time the items they're counting aren't actually receipts. ExpenseBot targets the order confirmations, payment confirmations, and invoices themselves — not the full lifecycle of emails that surrounds a purchase.
What we deliberately skip
Common things that look receipt-shaped in your inbox but aren't real receipts:
- "Delivered: 1 item" / "Your order is on its way" — shipping and delivery notifications. Skipped because the original order confirmation was already processed; processing the delivery note would create a duplicate row.
- "Did your recent order meet your expectations?" — surveys.
- "Your refund request has been received" — refund flow notifications. Refunds are handled separately via the Refund Offset feature, not as new expense rows.
- "Information about your recent purchase" — account info, not the receipt itself.
- "Add a different payment method" — account management.
- "Your subscription is on its way / has been activated" — provisioning notifications.
- "Order new favourites from X" — promotional based on past orders.
- Marketing emails that happen to contain the words "your purchase" or "your order" in the subject.
What you should see in your spreadsheet
Real receipts and order confirmations show up as one row per actual purchase. So 100 Amazon purchases = roughly 100 rows (minus any duplicates we deliberately suppress). Open your spreadsheet and look at the merchant column — you should see a diverse mix of merchants you actually shop with. Sort by merchant or count distinct vendors for a quick health check.
Real-world example
A recent paid user told us "found only 3 receipts despite hundreds." When we checked his account directly, his spreadsheet had 499 expense rows across 200 distinct merchants. He was looking at his Gmail inbox, counting any email that looked receipt-shaped (delivery notifications, surveys, marketing), and comparing that mental count to his sheet. The actual processed count was 100x his initial estimate.
When you DO spot something genuinely missed
If a specific receipt you know exists isn't in your sheet, reply to support with: sender, subject line, date, and approximate amount. We'll trace it through your Gmail directly and tell you exactly what happened — already in your spreadsheet under different merchant naming, deliberately skipped as non-receipt, or a real gap in our subject patterns we should fix. Specific examples are far more useful than aggregate counts.
Year-long historical scans
If you ran a 1-year historical scan, expect it to take 1+ hour to complete depending on inbox volume. We send you a confirmation email when it's done — wait for that email before judging completeness. The in-app banner also ticks elapsed time so you can see it's still running.