Last updated August 23, 2026
Expensieve stores the information you give it directly: transactions you enter, receipts you photograph or upload, messages you forward from email or WhatsApp, and the categories, merchants, and payment sources you create. The original text and files behind a transaction are kept only where you tell us to keep them — see “Where your original content is stored” below. When you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and profile picture — nothing else from your Google account. If you choose to connect Google Drive, we also store a connection token for it, described below.
Your data is used only to run Expensieve for you: extracting merchant, amount, and date from a receipt or forwarded message, applying currency conversion, generating your monthly reports, and sending you a notification when a transaction is logged. We don't use your financial data for advertising, and we don't sell it to anyone.
To turn a receipt or message into a transaction, its content is sent to a third-party AI service that extracts the structured details — merchant, amount, and date. Only the content you submit for that purpose is sent; we don't scan your inbox or chats beyond what you explicitly forward.
The same service also suggests which of your categories a transaction belongs to, from the merchant name, and which of your payment methods you used, when your message says so. For that it receives the merchant name, the names of your categories and payment methods, and your message text — scrubbed as described below. Card numbers and other payment-method identifiers are never sent; we match those on our own servers.
Before any text leaves for that service, we remove the personal data it doesn't need: email addresses, phone numbers, and card numbers are scrubbed from the text first. The merchant, amount, and date are kept, because those are what we're extracting.
We don't hand your receipt files to the AI service without your consent. Images and PDFs are read on our own servers first — we extract the text locally — and only that extracted text, scrubbed as above, is sent to a text-only model. The file itself stays with us. This is what happens to a receipt we can read, and it involves no decision from you.
When we can't read a receipt locally, that is where it stops. It waits in your Inbox and nothing more is sent. From there it is your call: enter the details by hand, or have us send that one file to an image-reading model, which is the only thing that can still read it. Before it leaves we tell you exactly what goes — the file itself, including anything else visible in it, since we can't see inside an image to scrub it the way we scrub text.
That consent is yours to give and to withdraw. You can give it one receipt at a time, deciding each time; or, if we offer it and you turn it on, give it once in advance so that receipts we can't read are sent without asking again. Either form covers only files we could not read locally — a receipt we can read never reaches an image-reading model — and a standing consent can be withdrawn wherever you granted it, taking effect for everything from that point on. Where you have given no consent in either form, the file is not sent.
You choose where the original content behind each transaction is kept — the receipt images and PDFs you upload, and the source text of anything you type in or forward from email or WhatsApp. We don't keep that text in our database; it is saved to your chosen destination as a small text file, the same way a receipt image is. We don't assume an answer. There are three states:
You can change this at any time in Settings. Changing it affects where new content goes: files already stored are never moved and never deleted as a result of the change.
If you connect Google Drive, Expensieve requests a single, narrow permission: drive.file. This grants access only to files our app itself creates in your Drive. We cannot see, open, or list any of your other Drive files, folders, or their contents — that access is never requested and is not technically available to us.
With that permission we do exactly two things: create the “Expensieve.app” folder and write your files into it — receipt images and PDFs, plus the small text files that hold the original message behind a typed or forwarded entry — and read those same files back so they can be displayed to you inside the app. They are shown to you through Expensieve after you sign in; they are never made public and are never shared with other users.
To do this without you being present — for example when a receipt arrives by email or WhatsApp — we store a Google connection token (a refresh token). It is encrypted before being saved and is never shown in our logs. Short-lived access tokens are requested from Google as needed and are not stored.
You can disconnect Google Drive at any time in Settings, and you can revoke our access entirely from your Google Account permissions page. Either way, the receipt files already in your Drive remain yours and stay where they are — we don't delete them. Once access is removed we can no longer display them inside Expensieve, so the app links you to the file in your own Drive instead.
Expensieve's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We do not transfer this data to others except as needed to provide the features described here, and we never use it for advertising or sell it.
If you choose to send transactions through our WhatsApp bot, you save your WhatsApp number in Settings. We use that number for one purpose only: to identify you from an incoming message. When the bot receives a message, we match the sender's number to your saved number so the transaction is recorded to the right account. It is not used for marketing, is never shared with other users, and we don't message you on it for anything other than replying to the transactions you send. You can change or remove your number at any time in Settings.
Access to your account is restricted to the Google account(s) you or an administrator have approved. Your transactions are never visible to other users of Expensieve.
Your data is kept for as long as your account is active. If you'd like your account and data deleted, contact us using the details below.
Questions about this policy or your data can be sent to privacy@expensieve.app.