University of Kwazulu-Natal

Building A Simple Csv Based Expense Tracker In Python Step By Step

Bonisiwe Shabane
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building a simple csv based expense tracker in python step by step

Managing personal finances is a skill and building your own tool to do it? That’s empowering. In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through how to create a command-line based Expense Tracker in Python that stores and analyzes expenses using a CSV file. This project is part of my hands-on learning journey to grow more confident in Python and command-line tools. It’s beginner-friendly, practical, and something you can actually use or expand into a larger app. We start by writing a function to add user input to the CSV:

You can view the full project and code here:👉 GitHub Link to Your Repository This project is a great way to get comfortable using Python in a practical way. You’ll understand how to work with real data, write clean code, and build useful tools—skills that form the backbone of software development. Imagine that you’re sipping a hot latte from Starbucks on your way to work. You quickly swipe your card, and the receipt gets lost in your bag. Later in the day, you pay for an Uber ride, order lunch, and buy airtime.

By evening, you know you’ve spent money, but you can’t say precisely how much, or where most of it went. That’s the challenge with personal finance. Traditional expense trackers exist, but most require you to manually enter every detail, select categories, and run reports. After a while, you stop keeping track because it feels like more work than it’s worth. But what if your tracker were smart? What if it could:

Automatically understand that “Dominos Pizza” should be categorized under Food & Drinks. Summarize your weekly spending in plain English, like: “This week, you spent $32,000 on transportation, $15,000 on food, and $8,000 on shopping.” Tracking expenses manually is tedious. As a developer, you can automate it with just a few lines of code! This tutorial walks you through creating a simple budget tracker in Python (with a JavaScript alternative at the end). Step 1: Set Up Your Python Environment You’ll need:

pip install pandas (We’ll use pandas for data handling—it’s like Excel for Python!) Step 2: Create & Load Your Budget Data Create a budget.csv file: csv Date,Category,Amount 2024-01-01,Groceries,50.00 2024-01-03,Transport,20.00 Managing personal finances can often feel like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. With a bit of Python knowledge, you can build a custom expense tracker that fits your specific needs perfectly. This guide will walk you through creating a simple yet powerful command-line expense tracker using Python’s pandas library, one of the most popular and versatile tools for data manipulation and analysis.

While there are countless budgeting apps available, creating your own tracker offers unique advantages. You have complete control over your data, ensuring privacy. You can customise categories and reports exactly how you want them. Most importantly, it’s a fantastic practical project to enhance your Python programming skills. First, you’ll need to install the necessary library. We’ll be using pandas for handling our expense data.

Open your terminal or command prompt and run the following command: This command downloads and installs the pandas library, which we will use to store, manipulate, and analyse our expense data in a tabular format (like a spreadsheet). Let’s break down the process into manageable steps. We’ll create a script that allows us to add new expenses, view a summary, and save the data to a file.

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