vpodugu/startup-bookkeeper

20 stars Quality 49 Trend 10MIT

A conversational bookkeeping skill for Claude AI — track expenses, invoices, subscriptions, and budgets through natural language. Dashboards, P&L reports, and alerts included. No QuickBooks needed.

Overview

Track expenses, income, invoices, and subscriptions through natural conversation. Get dashboards, P&L reports, and overdue alerts — all without a QuickBooks subscription. Early-stage startups and small businesses need to track their money, but most don't need (or can't justify) a $30+/month accounting platform. What they need is: - A quick way to log expenses as they happen - Visibility into where the money's going - Alerts when invoices are overdue or budgets are blown - A simple P&L to share with co-founders or advisors This Claude skill does all of that through conversation. Say "paid $149 for GitHub" and it's logged, categorized, and persisted. Say "show me my dashboard" and you get an interactive financial overview. No forms, no setup wizards, no subscriptions. Log transactions in natural language — single or batch. Set up subscriptions once — they auto-log each cycle. Upload a photo of a receipt or PDF invoice — Claude reads it and logs the transaction.

README

📒 Startup Bookkeeper

A conversational bookkeeping skill for Claude AI — built for founders who’d rather talk to their books than wrestle with spreadsheets.

Track expenses, income, invoices, and subscriptions through natural conversation. Get dashboards, P&L reports, and overdue alerts — all without a QuickBooks subscription.

Why This Exists

Early-stage startups and small businesses need to track their money, but most don’t need (or can’t justify) a $30+/month accounting platform. What they need is:

A quick way to log expenses as they happen
Visibility into where the money’s going
Alerts when invoices are overdue or budgets are blown
A simple P&L to share with co-founders or advisors

This Claude skill does all of that through conversation. Say “paid $149 for GitHub” and it’s logged, categorized, and persisted. Say “show me my dashboard” and you get an interactive financial overview. No forms, no setup wizards, no subscriptions.

Features

💬 Conversational Expense Tracking

Log transactions in natural language — single or batch.

You: "Paid $149 for GitHub, $29 for Notion, and $200 for AWS"
Claude: "Logged 3 expenses:
  1. $149.00 → SaaS & Software · GitHub
  2. $29.00 → SaaS & Software · Notion
  3. $200.00 → SaaS & Software · AWS
  All dated today. Adjust anything?"

🔄 Recurring Transactions

Set up subscriptions once — they auto-log each cycle.

You: "I pay $29/month for Notion on the 15th"
Claude: "Set up recurring expense: $29.00/month → SaaS & Software · Notion
  Next charge: April 15. Auto-log enabled."

📸 Receipt & Invoice OCR

Upload a photo of a receipt or PDF invoice — Claude reads it and logs the transaction.

You: [uploads receipt image]
Claude: "I read this receipt from Staples dated March 15:
  Office supplies: $47.82 | Tax: $3.83 | Total: $51.65
  Category: Office & Equipment. Log this?"

🌍 Multi-Currency Support

Operating internationally? Log in any currency.

You: "Paid ¥15,000 for the Tokyo hotel"
Claude: "Got it — ¥15,000 JPY. What's the approximate USD equivalent?"

📊 Interactive Dashboard

A full React dashboard with:

Summary cards (income, expenses, net cash flow, receivables, payables)
Expense breakdown by category (donut chart)
Budget vs. actual comparison
Recurring subscriptions overview
Sortable transaction table
Payables & receivables with overdue highlighting
Time period selector (month, quarter, year, all time)
Quick-add form and CSV export

📋 Monthly P&L Reports

Generate a clean profit & loss statement on demand.

You: "Generate my P&L for March"
Claude: [generates structured P&L with revenue, expenses, net income, and notes]

🔔 Proactive Alerts

Claude warns you about:

Overdue invoices (critical)
Budget overruns and warnings at 80% (warning)
Upcoming recurring charges in the next 3 days (info)

Installation

Claude.ai (Skills feature)

Download startup-bookkeeper.skill from Releases
In Claude.ai, go to Settings → Skills
Upload the .skill file
Start a conversation: “Log an expense: $45 for AWS”

Claude Code

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/vpodugu/startup-bookkeeper.git

# Copy to your skills directory
cp -r startup-bookkeeper ~/.claude/skills/

# Or for project-level
cp -r startup-bookkeeper .claude/skills/

Manual Installation

Copy the SKILL.md and references/ folder into your Claude skills directory.

How It Works

Data Persistence

All data is stored in Claude’s artifact window.storage API, which persists across sessions. Storage keys:

Key	Description
`bk:transactions`	All logged transactions
`bk:budgets`	Monthly budget targets by category
`bk:recurring`	Recurring transaction rules
`bk:alerts`	Active and dismissed alerts
`bk:settings`	Base currency, company name, preferences
`bk:categories`	Custom categories (beyond defaults)

Transaction Types

expense — money going out (paid)
income — money coming in (received)
payable — money you owe (bill due)
receivable — money owed to you (invoice sent)

Examples

Logging expenses

"Paid $120 for domain renewal"
"Spent $45.99 on team lunch at Chipotle"
"AWS bill came in at $847 for February"

Managing invoices

"Sent invoice #2045 to Acme Corp for $8,500, due in 30 days"
"Mark the Acme invoice as paid"
"Any overdue invoices?"

Recurring subscriptions

"I pay $29/month for Notion on the 15th"
"Show my recurring subscriptions"
"Cancel the Figma subscription"
"Notion went up to $32/month"

Budgets and reporting

"Set my SaaS budget to $500/month"
"How much did we spend on marketing this quarter?"
"Generate my P&L for last month"
"Show me my dashboard"

Multi-currency

"Paid €350 for conference registration in Berlin"
"Paid £200 for UK hosting"

What This Is Not

This skill is a lightweight tracking tool, not accounting software. It intentionally does not:

❌ Give tax advice or filing guidance
❌ Do double-entry / GAAP-compliant accounting
❌ Process payroll (withholdings, benefits, pay stubs)
❌ Perform live currency conversion (asks you to confirm rates)
❌ Generate auditable financial statements

For those needs, consult a CPA or use dedicated accounting software.

Skill Structure

startup-bookkeeper/
├── SKILL.md                        # Main skill instructions (439 lines)
└── references/
    └── dashboard-spec.md           # Dashboard artifact specification (134 lines)

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Some ideas:

More expense categories for specific industries (healthcare, manufacturing, etc.)
Integration patterns with bank CSV formats (Chase, Bank of America, Mercury, etc.)
Localization — adapt categories and P&L format for non-US markets
Budget templates — pre-built budget profiles for common startup stages (pre-seed, seed, Series A)

Please open an issue first to discuss significant changes.

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

Acknowledgments

Built with the Claude Skill Creator framework. Inspired by the real pain of tracking startup expenses in scattered spreadsheets.

Built by Q3 Learners LLC · Made with Claude

View the full README on GitHub

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Install

npx skillfish add vpodugu/startup-bookkeeper

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