Telegram AI Expense Tracker: Track Expenses via Bot to Google Sheets

Expense tracking apps require separate logins and complex interfaces, making it hard to quickly record purchases. Receipt photos get lost in your phone gallery. This workflow creates a Telegram bot where you can send simple messages like 'Coffee $4.50 at Starbucks' and have AI automatically extract the amount, category, merchant, and timestamp into a Google Sheet for easy analysis.

What this workflow does

1. A Telegram Trigger listens for messages sent to your bot.
2. An OpenAI node extracts amount, category, and merchant from the message text.
3. A Code node validates the extracted data and formats it for Sheets.
4. A Google Sheets node appends the expense to your expense tracking spreadsheet.
5. The bot sends a confirmation message back to the user.

Setup guide

1. Import the JSON into n8n (Workflows > Import from File).
2. Connect Telegram, OpenAI, and Google Sheets in their respective nodes.
3. Replace REPLACE_WITH_BOT_TOKEN with your Telegram bot token.
4. Replace REPLACE_WITH_SPREADSHEET with your Google Sheet ID.
5. Create a Google Sheet with columns: Date, Amount, Category, Merchant, Note.
6. Set up your Telegram bot webhook to point to this workflow's Telegram Trigger URL.

FAQ