Telegram Receipt AI Expense Tracker (Gemini + Google Sheets)

Turn Telegram receipt photos into clean expense rows—automatically

This n8n workflow captures receipt images you send to your Telegram bot, uses Google Gemini to extract the expense details as structured JSON, and logs them into a Google Sheets “Expenses” sheet—while detecting duplicates by Telegram message ID and sending you a confirmation (or duplicate warning) right in Telegram.

What this workflow does

• Listens for new Telegram messages sent to your bot.
• Checks for a receipt photo in the incoming payload and normalizes the message for processing.
• If no photo is attached, it replies in Telegram asking the user to upload a clear receipt image.
• If a photo is attached, it downloads the image from Telegram and sends it to Google Gemini (via an AI agent) to extract receipt fields as JSON.
• Parses and validates extracted data, including a confidence score; receipts with missing or uncertain key fields are flagged for review.
• Prevents duplicate logging by searching the Telegram message ID in the Google Sheets “Expenses” sheet.
• If duplicate: sends a duplicate notice via Telegram. If not: appends the expense to Google Sheets and sends back a formatted summary.

Use cases

• Personal or team expense tracking by simply forwarding receipt photos to Telegram.
• SaaS operators logging travel, office, and vendor receipts without manual spreadsheet entry.
• Automation engineers building a reliable receipt pipeline with AI extraction and duplicate protection.

Technical details

• Telegram trigger for new bot messages and Telegram replies.
• Google Gemini (Google PaLM) via an n8n-nodes-langchainagent AI agent for receipt-to-JSON extraction.
• Google Sheets integration to store expenses in the “Expenses” sheet and check message ID duplicates.
• Uses n8n logic nodes such as if and code for validation, parsing, and flow control.
• Setup includes Telegram bot credentials (BotFather), Gemini API credentials, and Google Sheets OAuth2.