Expense Tracker

A simple Python-based expense tracking tool that helps you log, categorize, and visualize your expenses through an interactive CLI interface.

Features

• Interactive command-line interface
• Track expenses with date, amount, category, and description
• CSV-based storage for easy data portability
• Calculate totals by category
• Visualize expenses through:
  • Pie charts showing expense distribution by category
  • Timeline plots showing expenses over time

Requirements

• Python 3.x
• matplotlib (for visualizations)

Installation & Setup

Windows

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/PierrunoYT/expense-tracker.git
cd expense-tracker

# Create and activate virtual environment
python -m venv venv
.\venv\Scripts\activate

# Install dependencies
pip install matplotlib

macOS

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/PierrunoYT/expense-tracker.git
cd expense-tracker

# Create and activate virtual environment
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

# Install dependencies
pip3 install matplotlib

Linux

# Install Python if needed
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip python3-venv

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/PierrunoYT/expense-tracker.git
cd expense-tracker

# Create and activate virtual environment
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

# Install dependencies
pip3 install matplotlib

Usage

Running the Program

Windows:

.\venv\Scripts\activate
python main.py

macOS/Linux:

source venv/bin/activate
python3 main.py

Interactive Commands

Once running, the following commands are available:

add           - Add a new expense
list          - List all expenses
totals        - Show totals by category
viz pie       - Show pie chart of expenses
viz timeline  - Show timeline of expenses
help          - Show available commands
exit          - Exit the program

Data Storage

The expenses are stored in a CSV file with the following format:

date;amount;category;description
14.01.2025;20;food;test

Programmatic Usage

from expense_tracker import ExpenseTracker
from visualize import plot_expenses_by_category, plot_expenses_timeline

# Create a tracker instance
tracker = ExpenseTracker()

# Add an expense
tracker.add_expense(
    amount=50.00,
    category="Groceries",
    description="Weekly shopping",
    date="14.01.2025"  # Optional, defaults to current date
)

# Get all expenses
expenses = tracker.get_expenses()

# Get totals by category
totals = tracker.get_total_by_category()

# Create visualizations
plot_expenses_by_category(tracker)
plot_expenses_timeline(tracker)

Project Structure

• main.py: Interactive CLI interface
• expense_tracker.py: Core expense tracking functionality
• visualize.py: Visualization functions using matplotlib
• init_expenses.py: Helper script to initialize expenses file
• expenses.csv: Data storage file (auto-generated, git-ignored)

Troubleshooting

Windows

• If you get "python not found", ensure Python is added to your PATH
• Use python instead of python3 for commands

macOS

• Use python3 instead of python for commands
• If matplotlib fails: echo "backend: TkAgg" > ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc

Linux

• If matplotlib fails, install required system packages:

  sudo apt-get install python3-tk

Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'feat: add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.