AI Notification Importer
The Notification Importer AI turns the notifications and SMS your bank and payment apps send you into transactions in your budget. You don't need to connect your bank: if your phone gets a notification about a purchase, the importer can pick it up, and all you do is confirm it.
The notification importer works only in the Android app. iOS and the web can't read other apps' notifications. On those, use CSV import or, on iOS, receipt scanning. See Platform availability.
Why use it
Bank connections often break or fall out of sync. The notification importer works without them: your bank already tells you about every card payment, transfer or deposit, and the importer uses those messages to keep your budget up to date with almost no typing.
The feature is experimental and may not work with every bank's notifications and messages yet. If yours aren't picked up, tap Send feedback at the top of the Notification Importer AI screen to let us know.
Here's how it works
- Local Identification: the app checks your incoming notifications on your phone to spot ones that look like money transactions, such as debits, charges and credits. Everything else is ignored.
- Secure Data Transmission: notifications that look like a transaction are sent securely to our server for processing.
- AI-Powered Processing: AI reads the amount, merchant and other details and suggests a category and account where it can.
- Automatic Transaction Logging: the result becomes a transaction in the app, waiting for you to reconcile it.
- Immediate Data Deletion: the notification data is deleted from our server after processing.
Turn it on
- Go to More › Settings, and under Notifications & Alerts tap Notification Importer AI ("Imports transactions from bank notifications and SMS").
- Turn on Allow notification access.
- A Notification Access Required message explains why the app needs access. Tap Grant access.
- Your phone's notification access settings open. Find Beyond Budget in the list and allow access.
- Go back to the app. Allow notification access now shows as on.
From now on, transaction notifications are imported in the background. The screen also shows Import notification count, the number of notifications imported so far.
To turn the importer off, tap Allow notification access again. Your phone's notification access settings open, where you can remove Beyond Budget's access.
The Notification Importer AI switch can also appear at the bottom of the side menu. It opens the same screen.
Reconcile imported transactions
Imported transactions aren't added to your budget straight away. They wait in Pending reconciliation until you've checked them, so nothing ends up in the wrong category.
- When something is waiting, the Budget health check on the Budget tab shows how many transactions there are to reconcile. Tap it to open Pending reconciliation.
- Transactions from the importer are listed under From notifications (scanned receipts are under From receipts).
- Tap a transaction to open Transaction reconciliation. Check the amount, type and date, then pick the account from Suggested accounts and the category from Suggested categories (or choose others), and a payee from Suggested payees if you like.
- Tap the checkmark at the top to add it to your budget.
If an import looks like a transaction you already have, the screen warns you that it might be a duplicate. In the list, swipe a transaction to the left to delete it, or to the right to move it to another budget (when you have more than one).
The settings icon at the top of Pending reconciliation has options for how imports are handled: Cleared by default, Reconciled by default, Auto-select suggestions ("Automatically selects the most likely option when available") and Delete learned rules, which removes the rules the AI learned from your reconciliation choices.
Reconciling works the same way for scanned receipts.
Ignore apps that aren't financial
Some apps send notifications that look like transactions but aren't, such as shopping offers or delivery updates. You can block those apps so their notifications are never imported:
- Open an unwanted transaction from From notifications in Pending reconciliation.
- At the bottom of Transaction reconciliation, tap Ignore transactions from this app.
- Confirm with Ignore. Messages from that app will no longer be imported, and the transaction is removed.
To see or undo your blocks, open Notification Importer AI and, with access on, tap Blocked packages ("Manage apps that are ignored"). You can also get there from the settings icon in Pending reconciliation. Each blocked app shows how many transactions it has blocked since. Tap one to remove it from the list, and its notifications will be imported again.
Privacy
- The check for transaction-like notifications happens on your phone. Notifications that don't look like a transaction never leave your device.
- For the ones that do, the app sends the notification's text and title, the name of the app that sent it, and your budget's language, country and currency, so the AI can read it correctly.
- The notification data is deleted from our server after processing.
- You can switch the importer off at any time by removing Beyond Budget's notification access.
Free and Pro
On the Free plan, the importer screen shows how many free notification imports you have left. Free includes 20 notification imports; once they're used, new notifications aren't imported until you upgrade to Pro, which gives you unlimited imports.
Troubleshooting
- Nothing is imported: open Notification Importer AI and check that Allow notification access is on. If it's off, turn it on again and grant access.
- Free imports used up: the screen says "All your free notification imports have been used." Upgrade to Pro to keep importing.
- Notifications from your bank aren't picked up: make sure the bank app or SMS app isn't listed under Blocked packages and that its notifications are turned on in your phone's settings. Some banks' messages aren't recognised yet. Tap Send feedback on the importer screen to tell us which bank.
- Unwanted imports: block the app that sends them (see Ignore apps that aren't financial).
- Prefer to import in bulk? Download a file from your bank and import it instead: CSV or OFX, QIF and OFC.