Keep receipts and invoices in Obsidian, PDFs included

The short answer

Every receipt you forward becomes its own note in a folder you pick, tagged from the subject line, with the PDF attached. Do it as receipts arrive and you'll have a tidy archive by the time anyone asks for one, whether that's your accountant, your client or your own expense report.

Before: the tax-time inbox hunt

You know the afternoon. The deadline is close, and you're typing "invoice" into Gmail, then "receipt," then "order confirmation," then the name of that software you canceled in June. Some invoices are in your work Outlook. A few are in Downloads as invoice (3).pdf. One is a photo on your phone.

Nothing is lost, exactly. It's just in six places, and finding it costs you a few hours you'd rather keep.

After: one tagged receipts archive

Now picture the same receipts as notes in a single Obsidian folder. Each one is titled with the vendor and month, tagged by what it's for, and holds the original PDF. Here's what one looks like:

Because it's a regular note, you can add your own line underneath ("expensed to Acme project") and it stays with the receipt.

How to set it up

The bridge from inbox chaos to an archive is a habit you can build in a week: forward with a predictable subject. Four things make it stick.

1. 1

   Step 1: Set a destination folder and template

   In the plugin settings, choose a folder such as "Finance/Receipts" and the note template you want. Every receipt you forward lands there.
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   Step 2: Forward with a consistent subject pattern

   Rewrite the subject as vendor, what it is and the month, then add tags at the end: "Adobe invoice Nov #receipts #tax". Keep each tag one word, because a tag runs until the next #.
3. 3

   Step 3: Authorize your other addresses

   If receipts also arrive at a work or second address, add it as one of up to 3 extra sender addresses and confirm it by email, so forwards from it are accepted.
4. 4

   Step 4: Capture paper and app receipts from your phone

   On iPhone, use Share, then Mail, on a receipt PDF or a screenshot, and send it to your ingest address from your own account.

A few subject patterns that work well:

• Adobe invoice Nov #receipts #tax
• Uber trip Berlin #receipts #client
• AWS bill Oct #receipts #business

Put the tags at the end and the readable part first. When you forward, your mail app adds "Fwd:" to the subject. That prefix isn't removed for you, so delete it while you're rewriting the subject. More on the rules in how subject-line tags work.

Automating it (and the limits)

A manual forward takes a few seconds per receipt, and it's the method that works everywhere. Whether you can automate it depends on your mail app:

• Gmail: automatic forwarding isn't supported. Gmail keeps the vendor as the sender, so those emails are dropped. Forward manually instead.
• Outlook: a "Forward to" rule (for example, for messages from a vendor's billing address) sends the email as you, so it works where your organization allows external auto-forwarding. "Redirect to" keeps the original sender and won't work. Here's how to set up an Outlook rule (where allowed).
• Apple Mail on a Mac: a "Forward Message" rule works, but it only runs while Mail is open on that Mac.

If you also collect paper receipts or app screenshots, your phone is the fastest route. See save receipts from your iPhone.

Finding receipts later

This is where the subject-line habit pays off. Search your vault for tag:#tax and every tax-related receipt is right there, each with its PDF. Need only client expenses? Search tag:#client.

If you use Bases or Dataview, you can go one step further and build a table of every note tagged #receipts, sorted by date. That's your own setup in Obsidian, and it takes a few minutes once the notes are there.

Attachment limits and privacy

Attachments up to 25 MB come through as files and as embeds in the note, which covers the typical invoice PDF with room to spare.

Financial email deserves a careful home, so here's where it goes. The email's content (subject, body and attachments) stays on our servers for 72 hours at most, only long enough for your plugin to fetch it, and is then deleted. Those servers are run by Hetzner in Germany. The finished notes and PDFs live in your vault, as files on your own device. The details are in how we handle your email.

One more thing: this is a filing system, not tax advice. Keep original records for as long as your local rules require.

Which plan fits

A freelancer with around 30 receipts a month fits comfortably in Starter, which is $2.49 a month for 300 emails. That leaves plenty of room for other things you forward. The Free plan gives you 10 emails (lifetime, they don't reset), which is enough to set up your folder and test your subject pattern on real receipts. Pro ($4.49 a month, 1,000 emails and multiple vaults) makes sense if you also want a separate business vault. For the math on your own volume, read how many emails you need.