ExpenseAI

Framing the Problem

What is the problem you are trying to solve? Who does it affect?

Many people is struggling to manage their money effectively. For example, they can not keep track of their income, daily expense, or how much they are saving. This leads to overspending, stress about finances, and difficulty reaching goals like paying rent. Therefore, it will primarily affects everyone who want to manage finances independently for the first time or potentially anyone trying to build better budgeting habits without complex finance tools.

Idea Explanation

What is your idea? How does it fix the problem?

Our idea is that create a website that can help user tracking their budget and spending habits. Our platform solves this is by allowing users to record their income and expenses, categorize their spending, and visualize financial patterns through interactive charts. Moreover, we use Chatgpt API so it can give advice and recommendation for the users about how to effectively use the budget

Implementation

How do all the pieces fit together? Does your frontend make requests to your backend? Where does your database fit in?

Our project is built by using a frontend-backend architecture where each component has specific role but works together seamlessly:

• Frontend : Developed using React, Tailwind CSS, it provides an easy to use interface for users to enter their budget and also categories where they want to spend money on. It also displays visual summaries and charts to help users understand their spending patterns

• Backend: Implemented with Python (Flask), it processes all the requests from the frontend. When user adds or edits financial data, the frontend sends that data to the backend and it will performs calculations such as total expenses, remaining balance, and spending breakdowns by category. it also integrates OpenAI's API to generate personalized advice, helping users make smarter budgeting and spending decisions

Database: the database is stored all the user information, including transaction history, categories, and budget summaries in the CSV file name "budget data" . It will allow users to save and retrieve their data any time, ensuring persistence even after they close the website.

Challenges

What did you struggle with? How did you overcome it?

One of our main challenges was connecting the frontend and backend so that user input from the website could be properly processed and stored by the Python program. At first, we had issues with sending and receiving data between HTML forms and the backend, which caused the transactions not to save correctly. We overcame this by carefully debugging the backend logic, improving how data was red and written to the CSV file, and testing each feature step by step to ensure all inputs were correctly processed and persisted.

Another challenge was managing and visualizing data effectively. it was difficult to display spending charts dynamically based on user input. We solved this by integrating Matplotlib in the backend and updating our frontend to fetch and render charts correctly

Accomplishments

What did you learn? What did you accomplish?

Through this project, we learned how to combine frontend and backend development build a fully functional web application. we gained hands-on experience using Flask to manage data flow between the website and the server.

We also learned how to visualize financial data effectively using libraries like Matplotlib, making it easier for users to understand their spending habits through charts and summaries.

Another major accomplishment was improving our problem-solving and debugging skills. We notices that several errors appear when linking the frontend to the backend and managing the CSV database, btu we learned to troubleshoot efficiently by analyzing error messages and testing different approaches

Next Steps

What are the next steps for your project? How can you improve it?

For the next phase of the project, we plan to enhance data storage by replacing the CSV file with a real database like SQLite or PostgreSQL for better scalability and reliability. We also aim to ad user accounts and authentication so that each user can securely track their own budget and expenses. Additional improvements include more advanced data visualizations for trends over time. AI powered goal tracking, and real-time budget alerts to help users manage their spending more effectively. These upgrades will make the platform more robust, personalize, and user friendly.