The Easy Way to Track Monthly Expenses Using AI (Step-by-Step Guide), by Mark Meloon on YouTube. 7 min 58 s.
- Video length
- 7 min 58 s
- Time to do it
- 30 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Steps
- 9
What you need
Steps
Download the CSV statement for the month from each bank, credit card and payment app such as Venmo. Save them all in one folder so they are easy to find.
Open Claude and create a new Project called Monthly Expenses. In the project instructions, list the columns you want back: date, merchant, amount and category.
Add your Expense Item Map to the project knowledge. This is a plain list of your categories, such as Groceries, Dining Out, Deliveries, Fuel and Bills.
Upload the CSV files into the project chat. Ask Claude to merge them into one table that uses your four columns, and to reply with the table only.
Tell Claude to assign a category from your map to every row, and to flag anything that does not fit instead of guessing.
Ask Claude to remove internal transfers: pairs of rows with the same amount and date where money moved between your own accounts. These would otherwise be counted twice.
Check about ten rows against the original statements. Look for missing transactions, refunds with the wrong sign and categories in the wrong bucket.
Ask Claude to output the cleaned list as CSV. Copy it into your Excel budget template on the transactions sheet.
Refresh the pivot table or chart in the template so the spending breakdown updates. Save the file with the month in the name.
Tips and common mistakes
Mask or delete account numbers before uploading a statement, since the file leaves your computer.
Keep the Expense Item Map to around 10 to 15 categories, or the sorting gets inconsistent.
If one file is very large, clean each account separately and merge the results at the end.
Reuse the same Project next month so Claude keeps your map and instructions.
Questions
Do I need a paid Claude plan?
Projects are available on paid Claude plans. On the free plan you can still do this in a normal chat, but you will paste your Expense Item Map again each month.
Can I use ChatGPT or another chatbot instead?
Yes. The same steps work in any chatbot that accepts file uploads and lets you save custom instructions.
What if a transaction gets the wrong category?
Tell Claude the correct category and ask it to add a rule to the map so the same merchant is sorted correctly next time.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
