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Expense Tracker via Quick Messages

Example prompt: "When I send a Slack message to a channel called #expenses, parse the amount and category from my message, add it to a Google Sheet with a running total, and send me a weekly summary every Friday."

How to automate expense tracking with GloriaMundo

The Problem

Tracking personal expenses is one of those habits that everyone knows they should have but few actually maintain. Dedicated budgeting apps require you to open yet another app, navigate to the right screen, and enter structured data. Most people start strong for a week, then stop. The friction of switching context to log a £3 coffee or a £15 lunch means that small purchases go unrecorded, and by the end of the month you have no clear picture of where your money went.

How GloriaMundo Solves It

We build two workflows that work together. The first is triggered by messages to a designated Slack channel. You type something quick and natural — "lunch 8.50" or "taxi home 14" — and an LLM step parses the freeform text into a structured record: amount, category, date, and a short description. A code step normalises the currency and assigns a category if you did not specify one. An integration step appends the entry to a Google Sheet with columns for date, description, category, and amount. Glass Box preview shows you exactly how each message will be parsed before any data is written.

The second workflow runs on a Friday schedule. It reads the week's entries from the sheet, compiles a category breakdown and total, and sends you a summary as a Slack direct message.

Example Workflow Steps

Workflow 1 — Log each expense

  1. Trigger (integration): New message posted to the #expenses Slack channel.
  2. Step 1 (llm): Parse the message text into structured fields — amount, category (food, transport, entertainment, etc.), and description.
  3. Step 2 (code): Normalise the amount and assign a default category if none was specified.
  4. Step 3 (integration): Append a new row to a Google Sheet with the date, description, category, and amount.

Workflow 2 — Weekly summary

  1. Trigger (scheduled): Runs every Friday evening.
  2. Step 1 (integration): Read this week's expense entries from the Google Sheet.
  3. Step 2 (code): Compile a category breakdown and calculate weekly totals.
  4. Step 3 (integration): Send the weekly summary as a Slack direct message.

Integrations Used

  • Slack — trigger channel for logging expenses and delivery channel for weekly summaries
  • Google Sheets — persistent ledger of all expense entries

Who This Is For

Anyone who wants to track daily spending without opening a dedicated budgeting app. Particularly useful for freelancers keeping an informal record of business expenses, or anyone trying to understand where their discretionary spending goes each month.

Time & Cost Saved

Logging an expense takes about 2 seconds (a quick Slack message) instead of 30-60 seconds in a budgeting app. More importantly, the low friction means you actually do it consistently. The weekly summary replaces a manual spreadsheet review that most people skip entirely. The workflows use integration, LLM, and code steps, costing a few credits per logged expense.