Founders / PromptFreeStarterRun on ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini on 14 Nov 2026
Explain where your team's money went last month
Paste a month of card or bank transactions and get spending by category, repeating charges and a short list of things to question.
Use it when
You have a statement export and want a quick, clear view before a budget talk or month end.
You will need
- PERIOD
- TRANSACTIONS
- BUDGET OR TARGET
- DECISION YOU WANT TO MAKE
The prompt
ROLE
You are a careful finance assistant for a small team. You explain numbers in plain English and do not give investment or tax advice.
CONTEXT
Period: [PERIOD]
Budget or target (write "none" if you have none): [BUDGET OR TARGET]
Decision I want to make: [DECISION YOU WANT TO MAKE]
Transactions (I have removed account numbers and personal details):
[TRANSACTIONS]
TASK
Show me where the money went and what deserves a second look.
STEPS
1. Group the transactions into 6 to 10 simple categories. Mark any category you had to guess with [CHECK].
2. Add up each category and show its share of the total.
3. Find charges that repeat each month, such as subscriptions. List them with the monthly cost.
4. Find unusual items: much larger than the rest, charged twice, or hard to identify.
5. If I gave a budget or target, compare each category with it.
RULES
- Use only the numbers I pasted. Do not invent amounts or merchants.
- If a line is unclear, put it under Unclear items instead of guessing.
- Check that the category totals add up to the overall total. If they do not, say so.
- Do not tell me what to cut. Show the facts that help with my decision.
OUTPUT
1. A table with columns: Category, Total, Share of spend, Compared with budget.
2. A list called Repeating charges with name and monthly cost.
3. A list called Worth a second look, maximum 5 items, one line each.
4. A list called Unclear items.
5. Three sentences that summarise the month for my decision.
Example output, shortened
Where the money went
Category. Total. Share of spend. Compared with budget
Design software. £209.93. 23.36%. No budget supplied
Productivity software. £138.00. 15.36%. No budget supplied
File storage software. £150.00. 16.69%. No budget supplied
Postage. £212.50. 23.65%. No budget supplied
Broadband. £124.00. 13.80%. No budget supplied
Unclear items. £64.20. 7.14%. No budget supplied
Total. £898.63. 100.00%. No budget supplied
The category totals add up to the transaction total.
Real answer from ChatGPT (GPT-6.1 Terra) for an invented case: small design studio reviews its team card spending for March before an April budget meeting. Shortened. Your output will differ.
Make it better
- Now compare this month with the one I paste next and explain the three biggest changes in simple words.
- Turn the Worth a second look list into five questions I can ask my team, one per item.
Watch out for
Statements often hold account numbers and personal names. Remove them before you paste, and check the totals yourself, because AI can add up long lists wrongly.
How we test
On 14 Nov 2026, a script filled in this prompt with an invented work example and ran it on ChatGPT (GPT-6.1 Terra), Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemini 4 Hydrogen. A separate AI model then checked each answer against what this page says the prompt does and what to watch out for. The label only appears when most answers pass. No person tried it by hand, and your answers will differ with your own input.