Build the rules, download one file, import it into Gmail. Faster than clicking through Gmail's filter dialog ten times — and you get a copy you can re-import into another account.
Importing it into Gmail
Open Gmail on a desktop browser, then Settings → See all settings → Filters and Blocked Addresses. At the bottom, choose Import filters, pick the file you just downloaded, press Open file, then Create filters.
Gmail shows you every rule before it creates any of them, so nothing happens until you confirm. Tick Apply new filters to existing conversations if you want the rules to run over the mail already in your inbox — useful for a cleanup, dangerous if one of your rules deletes things.
The same screen has an Export button. That is how you copy a set of filters from one Google account to another, and it is worth doing as a backup before you start deleting rules.
Filters, rules, labels — same thing
If you came from Outlook you are looking for "rules". Gmail calls them filters and they do the same job: match incoming mail on a condition, then act on it. Gmail has no folders, so where Outlook moves a message to a folder, Gmail applies a label and optionally archives it — which together look exactly like a folder.
That is the pairing worth knowing: apply a label plus skip the inbox is the Gmail equivalent of "move it to that folder and stop bothering me."
Four rules most inboxes want
Receipts out of the way: has the words receipt OR invoice OR "order confirmation" → label Receipts, skip inbox. They are searchable when you need them and invisible when you do not.
Newsletters in one place: has the words unsubscribe → label Reading, skip inbox, mark as read. This one is blunt and it works; a genuine email almost never contains the word.
A client never gets lost: from their domain → label Clients, star, never send to spam. Starring is the part that matters — it survives your inbox being noisy.
Automated noise: from your build server, monitoring, or calendar-invite robot → label it, skip inbox. Do not delete; you will want it the one week something breaks.
Where filters stop helping
Filters sort mail. They cannot tell you that a client you label carefully has not written in five weeks, or that you promised someone a proposal on Tuesday. Filing is not follow-up.
That is the job Simple CRM for Gmail does — notes, deals and tasks attached to the person who emailed you, in the sidebar, stored in your own Google account. Fourteen days free, no card.