Track expenses via chat with Claude Haiku and Google Sheets

Created by

Nirav Gajera

Last update

Last update 7 months ago

💰 AI Expense Tracker — Chat to Track Spending Instantly

Track your expenses by chatting naturally. No forms, no apps — just type and it's saved.

📖 Description

This workflow turns a simple chat interface into a powerful personal expense tracker. Just describe your spending in plain language — the AI understands it, categorizes it, and saves it to Google Sheets automatically.

Example inputs the AI understands:

spent 500 on lunch
uber 150
paid 1200 electricity bill
lunch in feb 25 cost 500 ← handles past dates too
netflix 499
$50 hotel booking ← detects currency

No rigid formats. No dropdowns. Just type naturally.

✨ Key Features

Natural language input — type expenses exactly how you'd say them
AI-powered parsing — Claude Haiku extracts amount, category, date, currency automatically
9 auto-detected categories — Food, Transport, Shopping, Bills, Entertainment, Health, Business, Education, Other
Multi-currency support — INR, USD, EUR, GBP
Past date handling — "lunch in feb 25 cost 500" saves to February 2025, not today
Running monthly total — each row stores the cumulative month total
Monthly summary — type SUMMARY or summary february for any month
Works on empty sheet — no errors on first use
Invalid input handling — friendly error if no amount detected

💬 Commands

What you type	What happens
`spent 500 on lunch`	✅ Saved: 🍕 Food & Dining — Lunch · ₹500
`uber 150`	✅ Saved: 🚗 Transport — Uber · ₹150
`1200 electricity bill`	✅ Saved: 💡 Bills & Utilities · ₹1200
`lunch in feb 25 cost 500`	✅ Saved to February 2025 correctly
`SUMMARY`	📊 Current month report with breakdown
`summary february`	📊 February report (current year)
`summary february 2025`	📊 February 2025 specific report
`HELP`	📖 Shows all commands and categories

🛠 Setup Requirements

1. Google Sheet

Create a new Google Sheet with these exact headers in Row 1:

Col	Header
A	`Date`
B	`Amount`
C	`Category`
D	`Description`
E	`Currency`
F	`Month`
G	`Raw Message`
H	`Total`

2. Credentials needed

Credential	Used for	Free?
Anthropic API	Claude Haiku AI parsing	Paid (very low cost)
Google Sheets OAuth2	Read & write expenses	Free

3. After importing

Connect your Anthropic credential to the Claude Haiku node
Connect your Google Sheets credential to all sheet nodes
Update the Sheet ID in all Google Sheets nodes to point to your sheet
Open the workflow chat and type your first expense

🏗 How It Works

You type: "spent 500 on car wash"
        ↓
Detect Intent  →  classified as: expense
        ↓
Read All Expenses  →  loads sheet (works even if empty)
        ↓
Prepare Data  →  calculates existing month total
        ↓
AI Parse Expense (Claude Haiku)
  →  amount: 500
  →  category: Transport
  →  description: Car wash
  →  date: today
  →  currency: INR
        ↓
Parse & Total
  →  derives Month from parsed date
  →  computes new running total
        ↓
Is Valid? (amount &gt; 0 and is_expense = true)
  ✅ YES → Save to Sheet → Reply with confirmation
  ❌ NO  → Ask user to include an amount

Summary flow:

You type: "summary february"
        ↓
Detect Intent  →  classified as: summary
        ↓
Read for Summary  →  loads all rows
        ↓
Build Summary
  →  detects "february" in message
  →  filters rows by February (current year)
  →  calculates total, breakdown by category, daily avg
        ↓
Returns formatted report

📊 Sample Summary Output

📊 March 2026 Report

💳 Total: ₹8,450
📝 Entries: 12
📈 Daily avg: ₹470
🔝 Top: 🍕 Food & Dining

Breakdown:
🍕 Food & Dining: ₹3,200 (38%)
🚗 Transport: ₹1,800 (21%)
💡 Bills & Utilities: ₹1,200 (14%)
🛍️ Shopping: ₹1,050 (12%)
🎬 Entertainment: ₹800 (9%)
🏥 Health: ₹400 (5%)

📂 Auto-Detected Categories

Emoji	Category	Example keywords
🍕	Food & Dining	lunch, dinner, restaurant, zomato, swiggy, grocery
🚗	Transport	uber, ola, petrol, metro, flight, car wash, parking
🛍️	Shopping	amazon, flipkart, clothes, electronics, shoes
💡	Bills & Utilities	electricity, wifi, rent, recharge, emi, gas
🎬	Entertainment	netflix, movie, spotify, concert, gaming
🏥	Health	medicine, doctor, gym, pharmacy, hospital
💼	Business	office, software, domain, hosting, tools
📚	Education	course, books, tuition, udemy, fees
💰	Other	anything that doesn't match above

⚙️ Workflow Nodes

Node	Type	Purpose
When chat message received	Chat Trigger	Entry point
Detect Intent	Code	Classify: expense / summary / help
Intent Switch	Switch	Route to correct path
Read All Expenses	Google Sheets	Load rows (alwaysOutputData: true)
Prepare Data	Code	Compute month total, handle empty sheet
AI Parse Expense	LLM Chain	Extract fields using Claude Haiku
Claude Haiku	Anthropic Model	AI model for parsing
Parse & Total	Code	Validate, derive month, compute total
Is Valid Expense?	IF	Check amount > 0
Save Expense to Sheet	Google Sheets	Append new row
Reply Saved	Code	Format confirmation message
Reply Invalid	Code	Request amount from user
Read for Summary	Google Sheets	Load all rows for report
Build Summary	Code	Filter by month, compute breakdown
Send Help	Code	Return command reference

🔧 Customisation Ideas

Add a budget alert — warn when monthly total exceeds a set limit
Telegram integration — replace chat trigger with Telegram bot
WhatsApp integration — use Twilio WhatsApp as the input channel
Weekly digest — add a Schedule Trigger for automatic weekly reports
Multi-user — store user ID with each row to support team expense tracking
Export to PDF — generate monthly expense report as a PDF

⚠️ Important Notes

The Read All Expenses node has Always Output Data enabled — this is required so the flow works on an empty sheet
Month is derived from the parsed date, not today's date — so past-dated entries file correctly
The Total column stores the running month total at the time of each entry — it does not update retroactively if you delete rows

📦 Requirements Summary

n8n (cloud or self-hosted)
Anthropic API key (Claude Haiku — very low token usage)
Google account with Sheets access

Built with n8n · Claude Haiku · Google Sheets By Nirav Gajera