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Track Telegram expenses with Data Tables and monthly reports

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Created by: Faceless Channel OS || trungcln
Faceless Channel OS

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Last update a day ago

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Quick overview

This workflow logs expenses sent as Telegram messages into an n8n Data Table and responds with confirmations, monthly spending reports by category, an undo option, and a help menu, all without external databases or AI services.

How it works

  1. Triggers when your Telegram bot receives a new message.
  2. Parses the message to detect a command (/report, /undo, /help) or extract an expense amount, category (from keywords or a #tag), note, and month.
  3. When an expense is detected, saves a normalized row to the n8n Data Table named expenses and sends a formatted confirmation back in Telegram.
  4. When /report is sent (optionally with YYYY-MM), fetches that month’s rows for the sender’s chat ID from the expenses Data Table, aggregates totals by category, and sends a monthly summary back in Telegram.
  5. When /undo is sent, retrieves the most recent expense row for the sender’s chat ID, deletes it from the expenses Data Table, and posts the undo result in Telegram.
  6. When /help is sent or no amount is found, sends usage examples and available commands back in Telegram.

Setup

  1. Create a Telegram bot with @BotFather and add a Telegram API credential in n8n, then select it on the Telegram Trigger and Telegram send-message nodes.
  2. Create an n8n Data Table named expenses with columns chat_id (string), amount (number), category (string), note (string), month (string), and spent_at (string).
  3. Update the configuration values for currency, locale, timezone, and (optionally) categoryKeywords and smallNumbersAreThousands to match your formatting and categorization needs.
  4. Activate the workflow and ensure your n8n instance is reachable over public HTTPS so Telegram can deliver trigger updates.

Requirements

  • An n8n version with Data Tables (Cloud or self-hosted; tested on n8n 2.30) and a Telegram bot token from @BotFather. No OpenAI key and no external database needed.

Customization

  • Edit categoryKeywords in the "Prepare Configuration Settings" node to match how you talk about money — first match wins, and typing #category in a message always overrides. Set smallNumbersAreThousands to false if "50" should mean 50 rather than 50,000.

Additional info

Amounts are parsed in code, so the workflow runs at $0: it understands 50k, 1.5tr, 2m, 120.000, 1,250,000 and 12.50. Every query is filtered by Telegram chat ID, so several people can share one bot.

Need credit-card statement cycles (what lands on which statement and when it's due), morning due-date reminders, category budgets with alerts, month-over-month reports and CSV export? Search "Expense Tracker PRO" on n8n.io or see my creator page for the PRO version.