An expense tracker spreadsheet that fills itself from your bank export
Most expense templates fail in week two because typing every coffee by hand gets old. Attach a bank or card export and your todo.is agent builds an Excel tracker with your categories, sorts last month's transactions into them and shows where the money went against your budget.
The prompt
- Build me an expense tracker spreadsheet in Excel (.xlsx). Use these categories: [YOUR CATEGORIES]. My monthly budget per category is [BUDGET PER CATEGORY]. Create 3 tabs: Transactions (date, description, amount, category, payment method), Monthly Summary (budget vs actual per category with a difference column and red highlight when over), and Charts (a bar chart of spending by category and a line of total spend by month). I attached [BANK OR CARD EXPORT]: import it, auto-categorize each transaction, and list the ones you are unsure about so I can fix them. Use [CURRENCY]. Add a short note at the top on how to add new rows so the formulas keep working. Email me the file.
What to change
- [YOUR CATEGORIES]: E.g. "rent, groceries, eating out, transport, subscriptions, kids, health, fun, other". Or say "suggest categories from my transactions".
- [BUDGET PER CATEGORY]: E.g. "groceries 450, eating out 150, transport 120". Leave out any you don't budget for.
- [BANK OR CARD EXPORT]: A CSV or Excel export from your bank, or a PDF statement. Remove account numbers first if you like.
- [CURRENCY]: E.g. "USD", "EUR" or "GBP".
Example result
- Expense_Tracker.xlsx, September summary
- Currency: USD · source: checking account CSV, 214 rows
- Monthly Summary tab
- • Rent: budget 1,600 · actual 1,600 · on budget
- • Groceries: budget 450 · actual 512 · 62 over
- • Eating out: budget 150 · actual 207 · 57 over (11 orders from delivery apps)
- • Transport: budget 120 · actual 96 · 24 under
- • Subscriptions: budget 60 · actual 74 · 14 over (a new streaming plan started Sept 3)
- • Kids: budget 200 · actual 168 · 32 under
- • Total: budget 2,780 · actual 2,851 · 71 over
- Transactions tab
- • Columns: Date, Description, Amount, Category (dropdown), Payment method, Note
- • Category uses a dropdown list, so typos don't break the totals
- • Totals use SUMIFS on the Category column, so new rows count as soon as you add them
- Flagged for you
- • AMZN Mktp 49.99: household or kids? Marked "other" for now
- • Venmo J. Ortiz 60.00: shared dinner or rent split?
- • PAYPAL *GAMESTORE 19.99: fun or kids?
- What stands out
- • Delivery apps are the biggest leak: 11 orders, average 18.80 each
- • Groceries run high in weeks with no meal plan
- • Two subscriptions overlap (two music services)
- How to use it next month
- • Paste your new export into the Transactions tab, or send it to your agent and ask it to append and categorize
- • The Summary tab updates on its own
How to do it with todo.is
- Copy the prompt and put in your categories, budgets and currency.
- Paste it on the Today screen in todo.is and attach your bank or card export (CSV, Excel or PDF statement).
- Your agent builds the Excel file, sorts every transaction and lists the few it wasn't sure about.
- Reply with fixes like "Venmo J. Ortiz is rent" and it updates the file and remembers the rule next time.
- Make it monthly: on the 1st, send the new export and ask it to add the month to the same tracker.
Tips for a better result
- Keep categories to 8–12. Too many and you'll spend more time sorting than saving.
- Separate fixed costs (rent, insurance) from flexible ones. Flexible categories are where changes actually happen.
- Treat transfers between your own accounts and card payments as "transfer", not spending, or you'll count them twice.
- Your agent remembers your merchant rules, so next month's import needs fewer fixes.
- Prefer Google Sheets? Ask for the .xlsx and open it in Sheets, or ask for a CSV to import.
expense tracker spreadsheet: FAQ
- What columns should an expense tracker spreadsheet have? At minimum date, description, amount and category. Payment method and a note column help when you review the month or split costs with someone.
- Can it read a PDF bank statement instead of a CSV? Yes. Your agent extracts the transactions from the PDF. Scanned statements need OCR, so check the amounts it flags as unclear.
- Is it safe to upload my bank export? Files stay in your own agent workspace and only your agent uses them. You can delete account numbers from the file before you attach it.
- Does it connect to my bank automatically? No. It works from exports and statements you attach. Many people send a new export once a month as a recurring routine.
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