How to organize receipts and bills in your email automatically

Why receipts get buried

A receipt is important for about a week, then it becomes something you might need once a year. Bills are similar: you want to see one when it arrives and find it again when a charge looks wrong. Left in the inbox, both get buried under newsletters. Deleted, they are gone the one day you need them. Folders are the middle ground.

Doing it with filters

Every major provider has filters or rules that move mail into a folder as it arrives. It works, with a few limits.

1. Make the folders. Receipts, Bills, Orders, Travel. Keep the list short or you will never remember where something went.
2. Write one rule per sender. Your power company, your phone carrier, the two stores you order from most. Filters match an exact address or a word in the subject.
3. Run the rules on old mail. Gmail can apply a new filter to existing matching messages. Many other providers apply filters only to new mail, so the old receipts stay where they are.
4. Revisit every few months. New stores and new bills mean new rules.

The catch is that receipts come from hundreds of senders, each company sends from several addresses, and a subject word like statement means a bill from your utility but a promotion from a store.

Doing it with Mail Housekeeper

Organize is part of the cleanup. Once the junk is cleared, what is left is mail you chose to keep, and the housekeeper can file it into folders inside your own mailbox, under Housekeeper filed:

• Receipts. Receipts, invoices and payment confirmations.
• Bills. Bills due, amounts due, autopay and statements from utilities, phone and insurance.
• Orders & shipping. Order confirmations, shipping and delivery updates, tracking numbers.
• Travel. Itineraries, boarding passes, hotel and rental reservations.
• Accounts & security. Sign-in alerts, verification codes, password and account notices.
• Money & taxes. Bank and card statements, deposits, transfers, payroll and tax forms.

1. See the plan first. The plan page shows how many messages each folder would get, from which senders, with example subject lines. Nothing moves until you press Organize my mail.
2. Adjust what you like. Move any sender to a different folder, keep a sender in the inbox for good, or switch a folder off.
3. Press Organize my mail. Every move is checked against the server, logged and undoable.
4. Let it keep up. Each night, upkeep files newly kept mail once it is old enough.

The rules that keep it sensible

• New mail stays in the inbox first. Mail newer than 14 days is left where you will see it, so this morning's receipt is right where you expect. You can pick 0, 7, 14 or 30 days.
• People never move. Mail from people you write to, mail that looks like it came from a person, and anything you starred always stays in the inbox.
• A sender alone never files anything. The subject has to say receipt, bill, order and so on. A plain statement counts as a bill only from a utility, phone company or insurer.
• Nothing leaves your mailbox. Filing moves mail between your own folders using the headers already read for the cleanup. Nothing is deleted, and undo puts it all back in the inbox.

Organizing once is part of the $8 cleanup, free during the launch trial. Nightly filing comes with upkeep: 30 days included, then Keep it clean at $19 a year. How filing works and pricing have the details.