n8n PayPal Gmail Receipt Matcher for YNAB (OpenAI)

Match PayPal receipts in Gmail to YNAB transactions automatically—then alert only when something doesn’t line up

This n8n workflow monitors your Gmail for new PayPal receipt emails, compares them against your recent YNAB transactions, and uses an OpenAI model to decide whether there’s a reliable match—sending an ntfy push notification only when no match is found.

What this workflow does

• Polls Gmail every minute for new emails from service@paypal.com.
• Fetches YNAB transactions via the YNAB API for your budget covering since yesterday.
• Feeds the PayPal email snippet and the transaction list to an OpenAI chat model to identify a matching transaction by amount and merchant.
• Parses the model’s JSON verdict and flags whether a confident match was found.
• If no reliable match exists, it posts an ntfy notification to your configured topic, including the model’s reasoning to help you investigate quickly. Otherwise, it takes no action.

Use cases

• Automatically reconcile PayPal receipt emails with YNAB spending so your categories stay accurate.
• Reduce manual receipt matching when PayPal sends multiple emails or merchants appear inconsistently.
• Catch edge cases (e.g., amount mismatches) by triggering an ntfy alert with clear reasoning.

Technical details

• n8n Gmail Trigger (polls inbox; requires OAuth2 permission to read incoming emails).
• HTTP Request to the YNAB API using an HTTP Bearer Personal Access Token; replace YOUR_YNAB_BUDGET_ID.
• OpenAI chat model step to produce a JSON “match/no match” verdict.
• Logic and flow control using if, code, and supporting nodes (e.g., no op, sticky note).
• ntfy notification endpoint with bearer token support (or swap ntfy for another notification target).

Designed for n8n users, automation engineers, and SaaS operators who want AI-assisted receipt reconciliation without constant alerts.