How to Track Expenses in 7 Screenshots

My wife and I like using Google Sheets to keep track of our expenses. However, my wife and I hate using spreadsheets on our iPhones. Google Sheets, well, any spreadsheet, is a pain in the boot sequence to use on a touch screen, especially a small touch screen. That pain could be a hindrance to data integrity.

Thanks to Shortcuts in iOS 12, she and I have an easy way to enter expenses into Google Sheets using our small touchscreens. Oh, just a few paragraphs down, you’ll find a link to the Shortcut if you want to take a shortcut and just start right away without reading further.

Because we can enter our expenses during life, and not just in front of our laptops, our spreadsheets are more accurate.

Hey, not ready to jump to iOS 12 from iOS 11? Read here about using Workflow and IFTTT.

I need to alert you to a few caveats and limitations.

This works in 7 steps. It’s really easy and I have already performed all of the tough stuff. Here’s the high levels of each step. You’ll get deeper explanations later in this article.

The first step allows you to enter the amount you want recorded. While you can create and develop your spreadsheet the way you like, I use negative numbers for debits and positive numbers for deposits.

The Entity is one of two things. It could be to whom you’re giving money, such as your favorite burger restaurant. The Entity could be the source of money coming to you, such as your buddy repaying you for the Lyft.

If you track your expenses and income using Categories, you can get all kinds of useful tallies and tables with Google Sheets. We have the three important ones in this Shortcut, but you can add what you like.

Each transaction, or row, in this Google Sheet represents either an income or debit. In a few months you may wonder what a row refers to. So, make a note for yourself.

This step is the most complex, so bear with me. You don’t have to use it, but if you’re a freelancer, you know the Internal Revenue Service likes to see your receipts for expenses. So, to save your receipts, we need to take a photo. Oh, it’s a tall screenshot. Apologies.

Using Shortcut’s “If”, “List”, action, here’s what happens:

In the “Text” Action we combine the variables that we set in the earlier parts of the Shortcut. You may be wondering what that other stuff is around the variables. Because we only have four variables available to us in the IFTTT Webhook service, we have to squeeze a bunch of stuff into a tiny space. But, that squeezed stuff will be unsqueezed when it arrives in the Google Sheet. So, we can still get all of the information we need from the Shortcut into the Google Sheet.

The magic here is that Google Sheets will automatically split the concatenated text into their proper columns. The semicolon is where it will break the concatenated string.

Using the “URL” action, paste in your Webhooks key from your IFTTT Webhooks Service. The shortcut will basically send everything from Step 6 to this URL.

That’s it. The Shortcut is finished and within a few seconds you will see a new row appear in your Google Sheet.

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