AI-Powered Expense Tracker via Telegram to Google Sheets

Transform your expense tracking from a tedious manual process into an effortless automated system. This AI-powered n8n workflow lets you send invoices, voice notes, or text messages to your Telegram bot and automatically logs all expense data to Google Sheets with intelligent categorization and payment method selection.

What this workflow does

Simply send any expense data to your Telegram bot and watch the magic happen. The workflow automatically detects your input type - whether it's a photo of a receipt, PDF invoice, voice note, or typed text. For documents and images, it uses OpenAI Vision (GPT-4o-mini) to read and extract data from receipts. Voice notes are transcribed using OpenAI's transcription service, understanding natural language like "spent 50 on milk at Zepto today" in any language.

All inputs are processed by OpenAI GPT-5, which intelligently extracts vendor information, dates, items, categories, and prices into structured JSON format. The system is specifically optimized for Indian invoices and recognizes popular vendors like Zomato, Zepto, BigBasket, and Amazon with automatic item categorization.

After processing, the bot provides a copyable summary for review and correction, then presents inline keyboard buttons to select your payment method (Credit Card, UPI, Cash, etc.) before logging everything to your Google Sheets with monthly sheet routing.

Use cases

• Personal expense management - track grocery bills with 50+ items in seconds instead of spending an hour on manual entry
• Small business expense tracking with multilingual invoice support
• Real-time expense logging during shopping or dining with voice notes
• Automated categorization of recurring purchases from popular Indian e-commerce platforms

Technical details

This n8n template utilizes Telegram bot integration for input capture, OpenAI nodes for document processing and transcription, HTTP request nodes for API communications, and Google Sheets integration for data storage. The workflow includes conditional logic nodes (if), data transformation nodes (set, code), and organizational elements (sticky notes) for a complete automation solution.