You wake up, brew a fresh cup of coffee, and start your day. You're excited because today is the day you take control of your finances like never before. How? Say hello to DollarBot, your ultimate financial companion. With simple commands, it transforms your financial story into one of motivation, empowerment, and control.
And the best part? DollarBot is your financial sidekick, available exclusively on Telegram. That means no matter where you are, it's there to assist you in recording your expenses seamlessly.
Click here for a video overview!!
DollarBot is a user-friendly Telegram bot designed to simplify your daily expense recording on a local system effortlessly.
With simple commands, this bot allows you to:
π Add/Record a new spending: As you sip that morning coffee, effortlessly log your expenses, no matter how small or significant. Every expense adds up, and DollarBot ensures you don't miss a thing.
π‘ Display your expenditure for the current day/month: With DollarBot, you're never in the dark about your spending. Get real-time insights on your daily and monthly expenses, motivating you to stay on budget and crush your financial goals.
π Show your spending history: Ever wondered where your money disappears to? DollarBot provides a detailed spending history that tells a story of your financial habits. It's a tale of lessons and opportunities for improvement.
ποΈ Delete/Erase all your records: Made an error or just want to start afresh? It's as simple as a command, a chance to correct your narrative without any hassle.
π§ Edit/Change any spending details: Life is full of surprises, and sometimes expenses change. DollarBot adapts with you, offering easy editing options to keep your story accurate.
π Set Your Budget: Take full control of your finances by defining and tracking your budget with DollarBot. It's the proactive step that puts you firmly in the driver's seat of your financial journey.
π Visualize your spending: Numbers can be daunting, but DollarBot transforms them into a captivating visual experience. Use the '/chart' option to see your spending as graphs and pie charts. This punchline to your story helps you spot trends and make smarter financial choices.
π Predict future expenses: Predict your next month's budget based on your current expenditure
weekly analysis
command to provide users with a comprehensive analysis of their expenses on a weekly basis.monthly analysis
command, enabling users to gain insights into their spending patterns over the course of a month.Are you a developer? Click here: For Developers and Future Contributors
Since DollarBot is built on top of Telegram, you'll first need:
https://desktop.telegram.org/
Open up your terminal and let's get started:
git clone https://github.com/aditikilledar/dollar_bot_SE23/
chmod a+x setup.sh
bash setup.sh
There, all done!
The installation is easy for MacOS or on UNIX terminals.
With Windows, you'll need to use a platform to execute UNIX-like commands in order to execute the setup.sh bash script. Once in the platform, use the steps in the MacOS/Unix Section above to setup DollarBot.
We've used Cygwin, but there are more options like WSL that you can explore.
Additionally, find more hints on Cygwin installation here.
Once you've executed setup.sh, and all dependencies have been installed, you can start running DollarBot by following these instructions.
Open the Telegram Desktop Application and sign in. Once inside Telegram, search for "BotFather". Click on "Start", and enter the following command:
/newbot
Follow the instructions on screen and choose a name for your bot (e.g., dollarbot
). After this, select a UNIQUE username for your bot that ends with "bot", for example: dollarbot_<your_nickname>
.
BotFather will now confirm the creation of your bot and provide a TOKEN to access the HTTP API - copy and save this token for future use. Make sure you save this tokenβ don't lose it!
In the repo directory (where you cloned it), run these commands.
(a) grant execution access to a bash script
chmod a+x run.sh
(b) execute the run.sh bash script to start DollarBot
bash run.sh
./run.sh
Note
: It will ask you to paste the API token you received from Telegram while creating your bot (Step 3), so keep that handy.
A successful run will generate a message on your terminal that says "TeleBot: Started polling."
In the Telegram app, search for your newly created bot by entering your UNIQUE username and open the bot you created.
Now, on Telegram, enter the "/start" or "menu" command, and you are all set to track your expenses!
To run the script automatically at startup / reboot, simply add the .run_forever.sh
script to your .bashrc
file, which executes whenever you reboot your system.
Click here for help adding to .bashrc files.
Here's a quick overview of how each of the commands work. Simply enter /
View all the commands Dollarbot offers to manage your expenses
It can be invoked by using /menu
command.
Display the list of commands.
It can be invoked by using /help
command.
Save history as PDF.
It can be invoked by using /pdf
command.
This option is for adding your expenses.
/add
command. This option gives user a graphical representation of their expenditures.
/analytics
command.This option analyzes your recorded spendings and gives you a budget that will accommodate for them.
It can be invoked by using /predict
command.
This option is to give you the detailed summary of your expenditure with Date, time ,category and amount. A quick lookup into your spendings.
It can be invoked by using /history
command.
This option is to Clear/Erase all your records
It can be invoked by using /delete
command.
This option helps you to go back and correct/update the missing details
/edit
command.This option is to set/update/delete the budget.
/budget
command.This option is to send you a email with you expenditures
It can be invoked by using /sendEmail
command.
This option is to add a recurring expense for future months.
It can be invoked by using /add_recurring
command.
This option is to add/delete/edit the categories.
/updateCategory
command.This option is to get the weekly analysis report of the expenditure
It can be invoked by using /weekly
command.
This option is to get the monthly analysis report of the expenditure
It can be invoked by using /monthly
command.
Our implementation has been tracked in a project board which can be viewed here - DollarBot Developer board
Some possible future enhancements are as follows:
We would like to thank Dr. Timothy Menzies for helping us understand the process of building a good Software Engineering project. We would also like to thank the teaching assistants San Gilson, Andre Lustosa, Xueqi (Sherry) Yang, Yasitha Rajapaksha, and Rahul Yedida for their support throughout the project.
This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license. Please check LICENSE for more details.
Harshavardhan Bandaru |
Vyshnavi Adusumeli |
Tejaswini Panati |
For any support, email us at vadusum@ncsu.edu