As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly track your spending.

What to actually do

1. Use a tool built for this

   The route this page recommends

2. Do it yourself

   Second choice

   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 banking app or online banking and export the relevant current-account or card transactions as a CSV or spreadsheet.
   2. Remove account numbers, sort codes, addresses and other identifiers that are not needed, while keeping the transaction date, payee, amount and debit or credit information.
   3. Paste the cleaned export into the prompt above and send it to a chatbot, or use DocuClipper to convert a bank or card statement into a spreadsheet before pasting the result.
   4. Answer the chatbot's questions about ambiguous payees and categories, and tell it explicitly how to treat transfers, refunds and cash withdrawals.
   5. Compare the overall total, category totals and every flagged transaction against the original bank statement, then correct the tracker where they do not match.
   6. Save the checked spreadsheet with the period it covers, and repeat the export and comparison when you want to update the tracker.

   Prompt

   I want to track my spending from the transaction data pasted below. Use only the transactions supplied and do not invent, merge or estimate any entries. First, check the columns and identify missing or ambiguous information. Then produce:
   1. A transaction table with date, payee, amount, money in or out, and a short category.
   2. Totals for money out by category and an overall total.
   3. A list of uncategorised or ambiguous transactions, with the reason each needs my decision.
   4. A list of possible recurring payments, clearly labelled as possible rather than confirmed.
   5. Any duplicate-looking transactions or unusual amounts, without claiming that they are errors.
   
   Keep refunds and transfers separate from ordinary spending. Do not provide financial advice, infer my income, or assume that a payment is discretionary. Preserve the original amounts and dates. State which figures I must compare with my bank statement. Ask me questions before assigning a category when the payee is unclear.
   
   Transaction data:
   [PASTE BANK EXPORT HERE]

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

3. Hand it to a person

   The distant third

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