See where your money goes each month

---
name: "track-spending-bank-exports-agents-handbook-method"
description: "Use when you need to See where your money goes each month. Track spending from bank exports in a local dashboard"
---

# Track spending from bank exports in a local dashboard

Job: [See where your money goes each month](https://aiagents.org/canai/track-spending-bank-exports-agents-handbook)

## Need

- AI agent

## Steps

1. Export the same months from every account. Download CSV files for the same date range from every checking, savings and card account. Put them in one new folder. Note the total money in and out for each account and month from your statements. Check: One folder holds one CSV per account, and you have a short list of statement totals.
2. Load the files with code and check the totals. Paste the prompt. The agent writes a script and prints row counts, date ranges and sums for each file. Compare them with your statements. Different banks use different columns and sign rules (some show spending as negative numbers, some in a separate column), so this is where errors show up. Check: The printed sums for each file match your statements.
3. Remove transfers and card payments. A card payment from your checking account and the card purchases it pays for are the same money. Approve the list of lines that the agent marks as not spending. Check: The list holds only moves between your own accounts and refunds, and no real purchases.
4. Write your own category rules. Edit the rules file that the agent proposes. A payee to category map that you own works better than letting the model guess each line. One tester reports that without rules, the model put most lines under "other" and labelled bank fees as fuel. Check: The 30 biggest payees each have a category you agree with.
5. Build the dashboard and read the uncategorised list. The agent applies the rules and builds a local HTML file. Read the "Uncategorised" list and add rules for anything big. Ask the agent to rerun. Check: The dashboard opens in your browser, the check totals at the top match your statements, and uncategorised spending is small.
6. Rerun it each month. Drop next month's CSVs into the folder and run the script, or ask the agent to run it. Add rules for new payees. Check: The new month appears in the charts and the totals still match.
7. Optional: The playbook's prompt is listed separately in our prompts.
8. Note: Steps quoted from the Agents Handbook (CC BY 4.0). Your bank files stay in one folder on your computer, and the totals are checked against your statements.

## Credit

Method author Agents Handbook editors (CC BY 4.0)
Source: https://agentshandbook.com/p/build-a-spending-dashboard-from-bank-csv-exports