As of 13 August 2026, AI can separate your personal and business expenses.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your business bank and card accounts and export the relevant transactions as CSV or spreadsheet files, keeping the date, description, amount and account columns.
   2. Gather receipts, invoices and payment notes for transactions whose business purpose is not clear, and mark any item that was partly personal or paid from a personal account.
   3. Write down your business structure, accounting period, VAT registration status, business activity and known mixed-use items.
   4. Paste the prompt into a chatbot, replace the bracketed fields with your details, and paste the transaction data below it.
   5. Compare the returned table with the original bank export row by row, checking that every amount appears once and that transfers, refunds and duplicates have not been treated as ordinary expenses.
   6. Open the receipts and invoices for every business item and needs-review item, add the missing evidence or explanation, then ask the chatbot to update only those rows without changing supplied figures.
   7. Send the final transaction list and unresolved items to your bookkeeper or accountant before using the categories in accounts, VAT records or an HMRC filing.

   Prompt

   Separate the transactions in the data below into three categories: business, personal and needs review. This is for a UK business.
   
   Business structure: [sole trader, partnership or limited company]
   Accounting period: [start date to end date]
   VAT registered: [yes or no]
   Business activity: [brief description]
   Known mixed-use items: [list any, or say none]
   
   Use the transaction descriptions, dates, amounts and any notes I provide. Do not invent missing facts, tax rules, receipts or business purposes. Do not decide that an item is tax-deductible or advise me which expenses to claim. Flag anything where the business purpose, private element, VAT treatment or supporting evidence is unclear.
   
   Return a table with these columns: date, merchant or description, amount, category, confidence, reason, information needed, and source row. Preserve the original amount and currency. Keep personal transactions out of the business category. Put transfers between my own accounts, drawings, wages, dividends, loan movements, refunds and duplicate-looking entries in needs review unless the supplied information clearly identifies them. At the end, give totals for business, personal and needs review based only on the supplied rows, then list the rows I should ask an accountant about. Not professional advice.
   
   Data:
   [paste a CSV, spreadsheet extract or transaction list here]

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.