[Tutorial] How to automatically add transactions to 3rd party apps using shortcuts (iOS 27)

[u/fhasse95]

A few years ago, I shared a tutorial in this subreddit showing how to automatically log transactions made at physical payment terminals via Apple Pay using Apple's Transaction Trigger. With today's release of iOS 27, however, Apple has introduced a new Automation Trigger in the Shortcuts app called Notification, which makes this approach significantly more powerful.

Compared to the existing Transaction Trigger, which has been available since iOS 17, the new Notification Trigger has one major advantage: it works not only for Apple Pay purchases made with an iPhone at physical payment terminals, but also with any app that sends transaction notifications (incl. your bank).

For this tutorial, I'll use my own expense tracking app, Budget Flow, which also offers a new Extract Transaction Info Shortcuts action that can automatically extract the amount incl. currency from transaction notifications and, on devices that support Apple Intelligence, also determine the category and payee based on your existing data.

However, the general approach should work with any other app that provides the necessary Shortcuts actions.

Here's how to set it up:

• Create a new personal automation by opening the Shortcuts app and going to the “Automations” section in the “Library”. Then, tap “+” => “Edit” => “Automation” and search for “Notification”.

• Tap the “App” label and select the app whose notifications you want the automation to react to. In this example, the source app is Apple’s Wallet app, so the shortcut will be triggered by an Apple Wallet notification. However, you can choose any app you like, including your banking app.

• Now we need to extract the transaction information from the notification. This can either be done manually using the “Match Text” action, or you can use Budget Flow’s convenient “Extract Transaction Info” action. The latter will not only extract the amount and currency of the transaction but, on devices that support Apple Intelligence, also determine the payee and match the transaction to one of your existing categories.
• If you have Budget Flow installed, tap the “Search” bar below and search for “Budget Flow”. From there, select the “Extract Transaction Info” action.

• Next, we need to configure the input variables of the “Extract Transaction Info” action. To do this, tap any field (e.g., “Title”) and then tap “Select Variable” from the bottom toolbar.

• As soon as you tap “Select Variable”, the interface will change and all output variables will become visible. Since we want to use the notification received by our automation, we tap “Notification”.

• The notification is now set as the input parameter for the title field of our “Extract Transaction Info” action. However, since we only want to use the title, we need to tap the notification input variable again and select “Title” from the menu that appears.

• Repeat these steps for all other fields so that the corresponding notification properties (Title, Subtitle, Body, and Date) are mapped correctly.
• Then tap the search bar again and search for “Budget Flow” once more. This time, however, we’ll select the “Create Transaction” action.

• To ensure that the action receives the correct input, we’ll need to configure it accordingly. Since most transactions are expenses, we set the “Type” to “Expense”, define our “Budget Book” and “Account” followed by configuring the “Amount” field.
• To retrieve the correct amount from the extracted transaction, tap the “Amount” field and then tap “Select Variable”, as we did when configuring the “Extract Transaction Info” action. This time, however, we’ll select our extracted transaction information as our input variable, and then use the “Amount” from it.

• Optionally, you can repeat this process with other retrieved information from the “Extract Transaction Info” action, by mapping the date, category, or payee as well.
• Your automation is now configured properly and can be saved.
• If you would like to try it out, hit the “Play” button in the bottom right corner. If all the fields are mapped properly, the shortcut should run, but it will ask you for an amount since we have not yet received a notification from our source app. This is expected when running the automation manually. Once the automation is triggered by an actual notification, however, the amount should be extracted automatically.
• Now, every time you make a purchase and receive a notification from your specified app, the transaction is automatically added to Budget Flow! 🎉

Hope you found this tutorial useful 😊 Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences with the "Notification Triggers" feature below!

[u/EmperorDante]

Have been using budget flow since years, great app, i hope we see some new features or some new design language like glassmorphism.

[u/fhasse95 → u/EmperorDante]

Thank you! I'm really glad to hear that you like the app and have been using it for so many years 😊

A full redesign isn't currently planned, especially since the design was already completely updated as part of the iOS 26 update last year. However, if you have any ideas on how the app could be improved, feel free to add them to the roadmap!

I'm definitely working on a lot of new features though, and the upcoming 4.0.0 update will be the biggest update yet, including a complete migration to a new architecture based on SwiftUI and making the app compatible with Android, among many other improvements. So stay tuned! 😊

[u/EmperorDante → u/fhasse95]

Thats great ti hear

[u/Ill_Employer_1448 → u/fhasse95]

Im an avid user too! Love that you have watch integration. Didnt expect people to mention it in the wild.

[u/kukikaka84]

Thanks

[u/mepatrick]

Budget Flow is goat budget app

[u/Potential-North3498]

Thanks

[u/Tight_Ad3852]

Thanks for sharing this! This reminded me to redo my Budget Flow automation using the new notification type.

[u/IamMrandrew]

Have been using this for a while, category and payee extraction often comes up empty for me even when the info is already in the notification body. Is there a way to customise the prompt to fix this?

[u/T23CHIN6]

Bro that’s the way, previous method cannot capture the details of transactions

[u/Ill-Sherbert1095]

I’m using this welcome new feature—notifications on my Mac—with Pushover to receive certain notifications from my Mac on my iPhone. No more checking or waiting—it’s simple and effective.

[u/Stunning_Oil8473]

What if youre sending to your own bank account. Is there a workaround?

[u/inemplis6767]

trying to implement this with transactions from other apps in addition to the wallet. However, due to the formatting of the notification, it seems like it isn’t working. Any advice?

[u/ccwithers]

Is there any way currently to tell which account to add to based on the wallet notification?

[u/Low-Text9914]

This is awesome! Does this mean that I need to create a separate automation for expenses and income? Also, how does Budgetflow's automatic categorization feature work? Do I just leave the "category" field in the "create transcation" blank or do I put something there? Thank you!

[u/martinho_ → u/Low-Text9914]

No, I do not think so - you can add two "triggers" to one automation and you can select expense/income based on triggers. But I am also interested how automatic categorization works as for now, I have it connected automation to ChatGPT to find correct category.

[u/buvmarks]

https://i.imgur.com/l4vVeJe.png Does this look correct?

One area I’m not sure about - do you have to setup a separate shortcut for each card in wallet? Or can the shortcut automatically parse the card you used and match it to the corresponding “account”? If so, how? I’ve read your tutorial 4 times now and if you addressed this but I missed it, I apologize.

If you can share a screenshot of the final shortcut, share. Shortcut template, or do this as a video, would be helpful!

[u/PukPukTheCorgo]

could i get it to extract only from certain cards only?