Personal Expense Tracker

A CLI-based personal expense tracker built with Python. Manage your daily expenses, view reports, and export data — all from the terminal.

Features

• Dashboard – Quick overview of total spending, entry count, average, top category, and recent entries.
• Add Expense – Record new expenses with amount, category, description, and date.
• Edit Expense – Update any field of an existing expense by ID.
• Delete Expense – Remove an expense after confirmation.
• Search Expenses – Filter by keyword, category, and date range.
• Monthly Summary – View total spent and a category breakdown for a given month and year.
• Category Breakdown – See what percentage of your spending goes to each category.
• Export Report – Save expenses as a CSV or text file.

Project Structure

expense-tracker/
├── main.py          # Entry point and interactive menu
├── utils.py         # CRUD operations, file I/O, validation
├── reports.py       # Monthly summary, category breakdown, export
├── expenses.json    # Data store (auto-created on first use)
└── README.md        # This file

Requirements

• Python 3.7+

No external dependencies — uses only the standard library (json, csv, datetime, os, collections).

Usage

cd expense-tracker/
python main.py

Menu Options

Option	Description
1	Dashboard – see financial overview
2	Add a new expense
3	Edit an existing expense (by ID)
4	Delete an expense (by ID)
5	Search expenses by keyword, category, or date
6	Monthly summary with category breakdown
7	Full category breakdown with percentages
8	Export expenses to CSV or text file
0	Exit

Example Categories

• Food
• Transport
• Internet
• Entertainment
• Rent
• Utilities

Data Storage

All data is saved to expenses.json in JSON format:

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "amount": 25.50,
    "category": "Food",
    "description": "Lunch at cafe",
    "date": "2026-07-06"
  }
]

Error Handling

• Invalid amounts, dates, and IDs are caught with descriptive messages.
• Corrupted or missing JSON files are handled gracefully (returns empty list).
• All user-facing errors are displayed without crashing the app.

Concepts Demonstrated

• JSON file reading/writing
• datetime parsing and formatting
• Functions, modules, and imports
• Exception handling (try/except)
• Lists and dictionaries
• String formatting and alignment
• File management (CSV/text export)
• Project organization