The latest articles on DEV Community by Russ (@russ-ct). https://dev.to/russ-ct https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3253290%2F51959f87-2922-4e48-94c7-24182b8fa025.png https://dev.to/russ-ct en Russ Mon, 09 Jun 2025 05:33:31 +0000 https://dev.to/russ-ct/add-12-wines-in-12-seconds-2ack https://dev.to/russ-ct/add-12-wines-in-12-seconds-2ack <h1> Add via Receipt: A Frictionless Way to Add Wine to Your Cellar </h1> <p>This is a submission for the <a href="https://dev.to/challenges/postmark">Postmark Challenge: Inbox Innovators</a>.</p> <h2> What I Built </h2> <p>At CellarTracker, we help wine collectors track their cellars and tasting experiences. I built the <strong>Add via Receipt</strong> feature which allows users to forward wine purchase receipts and have those wines automatically parsed and added to their collection.</p> <p>This dramatically reduces friction for collectors, especially those buying wine regularly from online or brick-and-mortar retailers. It eliminates the tedious manual entry process and makes cellar management as simple as sending an email.</p> <p>We now support:</p> <ul> <li>Text-based receipts (from emails)</li> <li>PDF receipts</li> <li>Image-based receipts (like photos of a printed receipt)</li> </ul> <h2> Backstory </h2> <p>I originally attempted to implement this feature using <strong>Office365</strong> shared inboxes. As a developer, this was an absolute nightmare. OAuth was convoluted, IMAP polling was unreliable, and basic webhook-style delivery for incoming mail was simply not available. </p> <p>After wasting far too much time wrangling OAuth tokens and dealing with Outlook's strange throttling and error behaviors, I made the switch to <strong>Postmark</strong>, and it was like night and day.</p> <p>Postmark’s inbound webhooks were easy to configure, fast to process, and—critically—reliable. It’s now a core part of how thousands of users add wine to their cellars every month.</p> <h2> Demo </h2> <p>You can try this feature live on <a href="https://www.cellartracker.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.cellartracker.com</a> or through our new mobile app (available on iOS and Android).</p> <ol> <li>Forward a receipt to <code>add@cellartracker.com</code> from your CellarTracker-associated email.</li> <li>Wait a few seconds (usually &lt; 1 minute).</li> <li>Open the mobile app and you'll see a notification for the wines being ready to review.</li> </ol> <p>Screenshots and video demo coming soon!</p> <h2> Code Repository </h2> <p>This is part of our production codebase and is not currently open source, but we’re happy to share implementation details and design decisions.</p> <h2> How I Built It </h2> <ul> <li> <strong>Inbound email:</strong> <a href="https://postmarkapp.com/inbound" rel="noopener noreferrer">Postmark Inbound Webhooks</a> </li> <li> <strong>Processing stack:</strong> Azure Functions</li> <li> <strong>Parsing PDFs and images:</strong> Azure OpenAI</li> <li> <strong>Wine matching:</strong> Fuzzy string matching and normalization against our 4M+ wine record database </li> <li> <strong>UX:</strong> Mobile built with React Native</li> </ul> <h2> Why This Matters </h2> <p>Wine collectors often receive many receipts and invoices each month. Our users can now simply forward them—whether it’s a digital invoice, a photo from a store visit, or a fancy printed receipt—and CellarTracker handles the rest.</p> <p>Thanks to Postmark, this was fast, robust, and dev-friendly to build.</p> devchallenge postmarkchallenge webdev api