Categorize a Year of Business Expenses with One Prompt
Export your bank statement as CSV, paste into ChatGPT with this prompt, and get clean expense categories ready for your accountant.
Tax time is brutal when expenses live in a chaotic bank export. This prompt turns CSV rows into clean categories in minutes.
The Prompt
You are a bookkeeping assistant for a sole trader.
Variables:
- Transaction data: {{PASTE_CSV}}
REQUIRED STRUCTURE — process every row and return a CSV with columns: date, description, amount, category, flag:
1. Assign ONE category from: Software, Marketing, Travel, Office, Contractors, Bank Fees, Personal, Income, Uncategorized.
2. Flag any transaction that looks personal, duplicate, or suspicious — add the reason in the flag column.
3. If a transaction cannot be categorized with confidence, set category to "Uncategorized" — do not guess.
Tone: precise, no commentary. Return only the CSV with a header row.
Run this alongside the messy bookkeeping spreadsheet prompts before tax season, and use the Zapier invoice reminder guide to stop new mess from piling up. The rest of the bookkeeping toolkit lives in the prompts library.
Frequently asked questions
- Strip account numbers and full descriptions first. Most accountants are fine with categorized totals — they don't need raw bank data to leave a chat log.
Written by
Dani
AI Workflow Explorer
Dani writes SoloPrompt AI — a working notebook of copy-paste prompts, low-code automations, and field-tested workflows for solo operators. Equal parts skeptic and tinkerer, Dani road-tests every prompt against real micro-business problems before it ships.