If you're a small business owner, freelancer, or bookkeeper, you probably receive dozens of receipts and invoices via email every week. From software subscriptions to Uber rides, keeping track of these expenses manually is tedious, prone to error, and eats up hours of your time.
What if you could automatically parse these incoming emails and extract the Date, Vendor Name, Total Amount, and Order Number directly into a Google Sheet? In this tutorial, we'll show you exactly how to do this using Mail Sheet.
The Problem with Manual Data Entry
Most accounting workflows look like this:
- Search your inbox for "receipt", "invoice", or specific sender names (like
receipts@uber.com). - Open each email one by one.
- Copy the total amount, paste it into an Excel or Google Sheets document.
- Copy the date, paste it.
- Repeat this 50 times at the end of every month.
This process is exactly what Mail Sheet was built to eliminate.
Step 1: Install Mail Sheet
To get started, you'll need the Mail Sheet extension. Once installed, it sits directly inside your Google Workspace, allowing you to run parsers securely without giving your data to a third-party server.
Go to the Google Workspace Marketplace and search for Mail Sheet, then click Install.
Step 2: Set Up Your Email Filters
Open the Mail Sheet sidebar in your Google Sheets document. The first thing we need to do is tell the system which emails to look for.
- Subject: Leave blank unless you only want specific subjects (e.g., "Your Receipt").
- Sender: Enter the email address of the vendor, for example,
receipts@apple.com, billing@stripe.com. - Label: If you use Gmail rules to filter receipts into a specific folder (like Receipts 2026), enter that label here.
Step 3: Define Your Extraction Rules
Now comes the magic. You can use Filter Mode (to grab text after a specific keyword, like "Total: $") or use our powerful AI Mode.
If using AI Mode, simply type what you want to extract in plain English:
"Extract the date of the transaction, the vendor name, the total amount paid, and the receipt ID."
Step 4: Parse and Automate
Click Parse Emails. Within seconds, Mail Sheet will comb through your filtered emails, extract the exact data points, and populate them into rows in your active Google Sheet.
To make this entirely hands-off, go to the Automation section and enable Auto-Run. Mail Sheet will check your inbox every hour (or day) and automatically log new receipts as they arrive.
Conclusion
Stop doing data entry. By automating the extraction of email receipts to Google Sheets, you ensure your books are always up to date and you have more time to focus on growing your business.
Ready to automate your inbox? Join the Mail Sheet waitlist today!