Expense Categorization

Automatically classify business expenses into accounting categories, assign department cost centers, and flag tax-deductible items from raw transaction data. This skill processes credit card statements, bank feeds, and expense reports to produce clean, categorized output suitable for bookkeeping, tax preparation, and spend analytics.

Workflow

1. Receive Expense Data Accept transaction data as CSV, bank statement text, or structured records. Required fields: date, amount, and description or merchant name. Optional fields: card last four digits, employee name, department, receipt notes. Normalize date formats and currency to a consistent standard.

2. Parse Description and Merchant Extract the merchant name from the transaction descriptor, stripping out authorization codes, location suffixes, and card network prefixes. Map common merchant name variations to canonical names (e.g., "AMZN MKTP US" → "Amazon", "GOOGLE *GSUITE" → "Google Workspace"). Use the merchant category code (MCC) when available as a secondary signal.

3. Classify Expense Category Assign each transaction to a primary category based on merchant identity, MCC, description keywords, and amount patterns. Standard categories: Travel & Lodging, Meals & Entertainment, Software & SaaS, Office Supplies, Professional Services, Advertising, Utilities, Insurance, Shipping & Postage, Equipment, Training & Education, Miscellaneous.

4. Assign Department and Cost Center Route each expense to the appropriate department based on the cardholder, project codes in the description, or pre-configured rules. Apply default department assignments for known merchants (e.g., AWS charges → Engineering, HubSpot → Marketing).

5. Flag Tax-Deductible Items