- budget tab: tracks category + allocated budget for the month
- expenses tab: tracks date, amount, category, description
- when we spend money, my wife and I text, eg, "13.31 restaurants lunch at chipotle" to a Twilio number. A flask app splits the body of the SMS expecting "X.XX category description", and uses the Google spreadsheets API to add the row to the expenses tab. (Yes, we manually enter every expense, either via SMS or via the spreadsheet. This was a habit we picked up the old YNAB. We could automate this to some extent, but the discipline of having to do something when we spend money has been beneficial).
- I get a confirmation text. My wife gets a text saying "Greg spent $13 on Chipotle. We have $132 left in the lunch category this month."
- Texting "report" to the number kicks back a text with each category and the amount remaining this month.
It's an imperfect system. Some small dollar stuff gets missed. But it's super flexible for reporting since its just a spreadsheet. Because I built it, I actually use it. The confirmation texts have instilled a bit of accountability between the two of us and also serve as a nice reminder during the day of what the other person is doing. ("Hey! Thanks for logging your lunch. How was it?")
Been meaning to write a blog post about it for a while. Will do so if there's interest.