FAQ & usage

Every way to feed Amperlo, every knob worth turning, and the deliberate no-features.

What is Amperlo?

A mobile-first logbook for EV drivers who want the real cost per mile — not the manufacturer figure, not the smug LinkedIn version. Every charge, every mile, every receipt, in one place. Free tier covers one vehicle end-to-end.

Four ways to log a charge

Pick whichever is fastest for the situation — all four land in the same review queue and are parsed by the same AI pipeline.

1. Quick Log — one-tap in the app

Bottom-nav "+". Pre-filled for the "marina overnight" case (source = marina, date = yesterday). Designed to work one-handed in the dark at the boat.

2. Photo or PDF upload

Upload a receipt image or PDF from the charge network. Claude (or Kimi) reads it, extracts kWh, cost, VAT split, network, tariff, discount, ref number. High-confidence rows auto-confirm; the rest wait for you in the review queue.

3. Forward to your receipt address

Every account gets an address like receipts+<token>@amperlo.com. Forward any charge invoice from your email, we pull the attachment and parse it. Only messages sent from your registered email are accepted, so a leaked address can't be abused. See subject-line grammar below to save yourself a second step.

4. Share sheet — iOS Shortcut & Android

On Android or a PWA install, Amperlo registers as a share target — from any PDF or photo the OS "Share" button includes Amperlo. On iOS, install the "Send to Amperlo" Shortcut once (link in Settings → Tokens) and the same share sheet works from Mail, Files, Safari, everywhere.

Email intake & subject-line grammar

The receipt-mail address handles more than just the attachment. You can annotate the subject line with state-of-charge and mileage, and Amperlo pre-fills those on the resulting draft so you don't need a second trip through the app.

Address

receipts+<your-token>@amperlo.com — token is per-account, shown in Settings.

Multi-vehicle owners get per-vehicle addresses too: receipts+<token>.<plate-slug>@amperlo.com routes the receipt to a specific car, regardless of which one is currently active in the app.

State-of-charge annotation

Add to the subject — any of these forms are recognised. First match wins.

  • 22-80 or 22 - 80 or 22–80 — start%–end%, dash/en-dash/em-dash. Anywhere in the subject.
  • 22 80 — space-separated pair, but only if it IS the whole subject (otherwise "Instavolt 45 kWh 22 charged" would false-positive).
  • 80 or 80% — end-only, whole subject.

Pairs must sit inside 0–100 and go up (start < end). "23-01" gets treated as a date fragment, not a SoC pair.

Mileage annotation

Adds an odometer reading for the same day. Sanity-checked against the last known reading.

  • 45,123 — comma-formatted, anywhere in the subject.
  • 45123mi / 45123 miles / 45123 m — with a mi/miles/m unit suffix.
  • 22-80 45123 — a bare digit-run AFTER a SoC pair. The SoC pair is what makes it safe to treat the trailing number as mileage rather than a receipt id.

Bare digit-runs on their own (without SoC context or a unit suffix) are NOT parsed as mileage — receipt refs and order IDs would false-positive. Range: 100–999,999 mi. If the value is lower than your last recorded odometer we reject it and log a warning. If it's more than 2,000 mi higher we record it but flag the note for review.

Worked example

Forward the Be.EV receipt from Octopus, edit the subject to something like: 

Fwd: Your Be.EV receipt 22-80 45,123

The Fwd: prefix is stripped, 22-80 becomes SoC start→end, 45,123 becomes the mileage odometer reading for the day. The attachment goes through the same AI parse as an upload; the SoC and mileage stick through to review.

Cost-per-mile modes

"What does an EV cost to run?" is three different questions. Toggle at the top of the dashboard:

Discount & tariff detection

When your receipt shows a discount (Octopus Electroverse 51% off Be.EV, Zapmap Premium 5%, etc.) Amperlo picks it up automatically, attributes it to the loyalty programme, and reports the effective pence per kWh — the number you actually paid, not the headline. Adds up over a year into a real "here's what your subscription saved you" figure.

Same catalog holds known tariffs — Be.EV Mega Plan @ 39p, Instavolt Off-peak @ 55p (8pm–7am), etc. If the parsed rate + time-of-day match one of them, the session gets that tariff tagged automatically.

Data ownership & export

Everything you put in comes back out. Daily automated JSON backups on prod cover the last 90 days; you can trigger one on demand from Settings → Data or via the ev:backup command if you self-host. Restore is symmetric — ev:restore rehydrates the same shape.

VAT-reclaim CSV: public and marina charges track cost_ex_vat + vat_amount + cost_inc_vat separately so you can hand the quarterly total straight to your accountant.

Privacy & pricing

No ads. No third-party ad trackers (GA4 for aggregate site analytics only). Receipt PDFs are stored on private disk and served only to their owner. AI receipt-parsing sends the PDF to Anthropic or OpenRouter for a one-shot extraction — the vendor keeps it only as long as required for their standard log window and never trains on it.

Free tier is 1 vehicle with full core tracking (sessions, mileage, marina blocks, savings vs petrol) — no card, no trial trap. £4.99/mo unlocks AI receipt parsing, email intake, trips, and maintenance ledger for up to 3 vehicles. Additional vehicles: £1.99/mo each. Cancel anytime; you keep access to end of period. See pricing for the split.

What Amperlo deliberately doesn't do

Something not covered here?

Signed in? Open a ticket at /support — you get a threaded conversation and email notifications as we reply.

Not signed in? Email support@amperlo.com — same queue, same response. Include your account email so we can look up your data.

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