Turn Bank SMS Into Transactions Automatically With Vaulty

Every time you pay, your bank usually sends you an SMS. A chai in the morning, a ride to work, fuel on the way home, dinner at night. By the end of the week there are a dozen of these messages, sitting between OTPs, delivery updates and offers.

All the details you need to track your spending are in those messages. The hard part is getting them out. Most of us either copy each one into an expense tracker by hand, or give up and guess at the end of the month.

This post shows how Vaulty, the expense tracker we make for Android, turns supported bank transaction SMS into draft transactions you can review and save in a few taps.

Your bank already sends the information

A typical bank transaction SMS looks something like this:

Rs.250.00 debited from A/c XX4821 at UBER on 19-10-26 via UPI. Ref 1234567890.

Example only. Every bank words its messages differently.

That one line already tells you:

• the amount: ₹250
• the direction: money went out (debited), not in
• the merchant: Uber
• the payment method: UPI
• the account: the one ending in 4821

So the information isn't the problem. The problem is turning a pile of messages into a spending record you can actually use: one that adds up, has categories, and sits in one place.

See Vaulty turn SMS into transactions

See the workflow in action. In this 30-second clip, four bank SMS arrive, Vaulty picks them up, and they're reviewed and saved into Activity.

Read the transcript

Every time you pay, your bank texts you. Chai, Uber, petrol, biryani… And they just sit there.

Vaulty picks them up. All four. Each SMS becomes a transaction. No typing. No copying.

Merchant, amount, category, UPI — already filled in. Just give it a quick look. Save All.

Done. It's in your activity. Your spending. Automatically organized. Vaulty. Free on Android.

How Vaulty handles the process

The whole flow is Bank SMS → Vaulty detects it → Review → Save → Activity. Here's what happens at each step.

1. Your transaction SMS arrives

Nothing changes on your bank's side. You pay as usual, and your bank sends its normal transaction SMS.

If you've turned on SMS Capture in Vaulty's settings, Vaulty detects supported bank transaction SMS as they arrive. SMS Capture is off until you switch it on, and it only looks at messages that arrive after you give permission.

2. Vaulty creates pending transactions

Each detected message becomes a pending SMS transaction. In the video, Vaulty's notification counts them up as they arrive ("4 pending transactions — Tap to review your transactions").

Inside the app, they wait in the SMS Messages area. Each one shows the merchant, the amount and when it happened, and nothing has been saved yet. When you're ready, tap Review Pending SMS.

3. Review the details

Vaulty prepares each pending SMS as a draft transaction on the Review Transactions screen, with:

• merchant, such as Chai Point or Uber
• amount, such as ₹20 or ₹250
• category, such as Dining Out or Transportation
• payment method, such as UPI

Vaulty matches the transaction to your account using the last four digits in the SMS. In the demo, that's a savings account ending in 4821. Each draft also shows a confidence score, and you can edit or remove any draft before saving it. If a category isn't what you'd pick, change it here.

4. Save the transactions

When everything looks right, tap Save All. In the video, Vaulty confirms "Saved 4 transactions", and all four appear in Activity, grouped under the day they happened, with a total for the day.

No more copying numbers from SMS

Without this, tracking one payment means opening the bank SMS, remembering the amount, opening your expense tracker, typing the merchant and amount, picking a category and choosing the payment method. Then doing it again for the next one.

With SMS Capture turned on, Vaulty does the reading and the filling in. Your part is a quick check and a tap.

The example from the video

The video is a screen recording of the Vaulty app. The four bank SMS in it are sample messages in a common bank format, sent to a test phone. Here's what Vaulty prepared from them:

Together, that's ₹4,470 in expenses, which is the estimated total Vaulty shows at the top of the Review Transactions screen.

These are the categories Vaulty suggested in this demonstration. For other merchants, or merchants it doesn't recognise, the category may be different or may need you to choose one. That's what the review step is for.

Why this is useful for everyday spending

Most of the payments we forget to track are small and frequent:

• quick UPI payments at shops and stalls
• food and coffee
• rides and autos
• fuel
• everyday purchases

These are exactly the payments that produce a bank SMS and then get buried under OTPs and promotional messages. A ₹20 chai isn't worth stopping to log on its own, but twenty of them in a month add up. When those messages turn into draft transactions, the small spends make it into your records too.

If you pay with more than one UPI app, our guide on how to track all your UPI spending in one place covers where else your payments get recorded, and the gaps SMS alerts leave.

Review before you save

Vaulty doesn't silently add every SMS to your records. The flow you see in the video is:

Detect → Review → Save

Detected transactions wait for you, and nothing is saved until you review it and tap save. That gives you a chance to fix a category, delete something you don't want, or skip a message that isn't really spending.

A few things worth knowing:

• Not every message will be detected. Vaulty recognises many common bank SMS formats, but banks word their messages differently, and some messages may be read less accurately or missed.
• No SMS, no transaction. Some banks don't send an SMS for every payment, especially small ones, and cash never produces one. You can add those yourself.
• Avoid double entry. If a payment comes in through SMS, don't also type it in by hand, or you'll count it twice.
• Add your accounts with their last four digits so Vaulty can match each SMS to the right account.
• Android only. iPhones don't let apps read SMS.

For details on how SMS data is handled, see our privacy policy.

Try Vaulty

Want to spend less time entering expenses?

Try Vaulty and let your transaction SMS do more of the work. Turn on SMS Capture, review what Vaulty detects, and save it in a tap.

Get Vaulty on Google Play

You can also read more about Vaulty or browse more guides on the Vaulty blog.