Expenses Tracker — Methodology Handbook

The Expenses Tracker turns everyday money movements into a clear picture of where your money comes from and where it goes. Log income and expenses, categorise them, set a monthly budget per category, import a bank statement or scan a receipt — and the dashboard keeps your cash flow up to date automatically. It's free, private, and needs no signup to try.

👉 Open the tracker: calculatorai.app/expenses

1. What it tracks

Each row in the ledger is one transaction — either money in or money out:

Type — Expense (money out) or Income (money in). This single switch drives every total: cash flow is simply income minus expenses.
Amount — always a positive number; the type decides the sign. Pick the currency per transaction (defaults to your account currency).
Category — one of the built-in categories, or your own free-text label. Choosing Other reveals a box where you can name the category yourself (e.g. "Pet", "Charity", "Bonus"), and it's remembered from then on.
Merchant / source — who you paid, or where the income came from.
Date — the date the money actually moved (not when you logged it). This is the date the ledger sorts and groups by.
Description & notes — optional free text for what it was for.
Source badge — a small icon shows when a transaction came from a CSV import or a scanned receipt rather than being typed by hand.

2. The dashboard

The Dashboard tab summarises the current calendar month:

Income this month — the sum of all income-type rows dated this month.
Spent this month — the sum of all expense-type rows this month, with a percentage change versus last month so you can see if spending is creeping up.
Net this month — income minus spending. Green when you're saving, red when you're in the red.
Cash flow — the last six months as side-by-side income and expense bars, so trends are obvious at a glance.
Top categories — this month's spending per category, largest first, each with a progress bar. If you've set a budget for a category, the bar fills against that budget and turns red when you go over.

3. Budgets

On the Budgets tab you can set a monthly spending cap for any expense category. Each category shows this month's spend against its limit as a live progress bar — green while you're within budget, red once you cross it. Budgets are optional and independent per category; leave a category without a limit and it simply tracks the running total.

You can plan a whole budget at once with the Budget Calculator (see §6): enter your income, split it across categories using the 50/30/20 method, and send the recommended limits straight back into the tracker as your budgets.

4. Adding transactions

There are four ways to get transactions in:

4a. Manual entry

The Add transaction button opens a form: choose expense or income, enter the amount and currency, pick a category, add the merchant, date and an optional description. Editing an existing transaction opens the same form pre-filled.

4b. CSV import (with AI)

Upload any bank or spreadsheet export (.csv). The importer reads the file and an AI assistant proposes which column is the date, the amount, the description and so on — you review and adjust the mapping, see a live preview of the parsed rows, then import. Amounts are parsed forgivingly (currency symbols, thousands separators, parentheses or trailing-minus negatives all work), and dates are recognised across common formats.

When auto-categorisation is enabled, each imported expense is sorted into the best-fitting category from its merchant and description — turning a raw bank dump into a categorised ledger in one step.

4c. Receipt scanning

Photograph or upload a receipt and it's read automatically: the merchant, final total, date and a suggested category are extracted and drop into a pre-filled Add form for you to confirm and save.

4d. From a calculator

Calculators such as the Tip / Bill Split calculator can send a computed amount straight into a new transaction — see §6.

5. Sample data & privacy

On a brand-new account the tracker is seeded with a small sample ledger so it isn't empty on day one and every chart has something to show. It's clearly labelled, and a single Clear sample button removes only the example rows — never anything you've added. Anonymous visitors see the same sample as a read-only demo.

Your ledger is private to your account. Deleting a transaction is reversible — rows are hidden rather than erased immediately.

6. Built-in calculators

The Expenses Tracker is wired to the calculator library so you never copy-paste numbers between the two:

Budget Calculator (50/30/20) — opens seeded with your real monthly income; plan category amounts, then apply them back as your budgets in one click.
Tip / Bill Split — open it from the amount field, split a bill or add a tip, and the total flows back into the transaction amount.

A calculator menu in the header lists every linked calculator. The same works in reverse: while using one of these calculators you'll see an Add to Expenses Tracker button, so a quick calculation becomes a logged transaction.

7. Free vs Pro

Logging transactions, setting budgets and the dashboard are free and unlimited. The heavier automation — AI auto-categorisation on CSV import and receipt scanning — is part of Pro. You can try the tracker fully before deciding.

The Expenses Tracker is one of several trackers on CalculatorAI. Browse them all at calculatorai.app/trackers.