🧠Return to Personal Projects
At the start of last year, 2021. My father had given each family member a supplementary credit card. I was tasked to take note of payments used by this credit card. I was tasked to collate all receipts and expenditures and present them to him every time the family spent a thousand dollars. This was manageable until I realised it took a big chunk of my time every day. There had to be a better way to do this.
I built a google sheet with formulas to collate based on categories. This google was visible to my family and they could access it and add their individual expenses to the sheet.
Not everyone was on board with using it regularly and therefore getting them to be consistent was tough. Eventually, there began to have missing amounts here and there. The sheet was not accurate anymore. So it was back to the drawing board.
I understood that the reason they were not consistent is that google sheets was not readily available on their phones. So most of the time if they had to add an expense, they would wait until the end of the day or when they are in front of a computer before they added it into the google sheet. The problem was not everyone is regularly behind the computer so they tend to forget. I had to find another way for them to add these expenses.
I realised that my family members used telegram a lot and looked up if there was a way I can connect the sheet to a telegram bot. It was possible.
https://t.me/ParemelFloat_bot was created. First, I had to ensure only my family could add the data using the bot to our google sheet. So the code verifies the telegram ID(permanent id is given when you register for an account).
After that, added “/about” & “/help” commands. To explain to my family how to use it.
<aside> đź—Ł To use this bot, all the user had to do was enter the information accordingly. (category[SPACE]amount[SPACE]Remarks*) *Remarks if any. It was not a requirement to write remarks but the amount and category were required.
eg. Food 12 → This would be category=Food, Amount=12, Remarks=Blank
eg. Food 12.2 Dinner → This would be category=Food, Amount=12.20, Remarks=Dinner
</aside>
Upon a successful entry, the following message will show. This would be to assist with any edits. If wrong information was typed, the user can open the google sheet and just change it.
The following is an example of a successful and unsuccessful entry.
Additional Feature: Every time a thousand dollars was spent, my father would receive a message on his bot. Reminding him that a thousand was spent and includes a link to the google sheet for review.