Expense Ledger

A private account of income & outflow.

A deliberately small, single-user personal finance tracker. Record income and expenses — both categorized — and watch a quiet editorial dashboard keep your books balanced. Built with Flask + SQLite, styled with a real Tailwind CSS build step. No accounts, no login, no cloud. Just open it and write in the ledger.

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Features

• Dashboard — income, outflow, and balance at a glance, a Where it Went category donut, and your most recent entries.
• General Ledger — the complete record of every transaction, filterable by income / outflow.
• Categories — manage your own income and expense categories. Defaults are seeded on first run; categories in use can't be deleted.
• Locale-aware currency — amounts render as proper Indian Rupees (₹1,23,456.78) via Babel/CLDR.
• PRG + flash messages — every action redirects with a clear success/error note.

Screenshots

Dashboard

Summary cards, a spend-by-category breakdown, an inline Record an Entry form, and recent entries — all on one page.

General Ledger

The full transaction history, filterable by income or outflow.

Categories

Income and expense categories, side by side, each with its own add form.

Tech Stack

Layer	Choice
Backend	Flask 3
Database	SQLite via Flask-SQLAlchemy
Currency	Babel (CLDR en_IN formatting)
Styling	Tailwind CSS 3 (npm build step, not CDN)
Fonts	Fraunces · Hanken Grotesk · IBM Plex Mono

Getting Started

1. Python environment

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate          # Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Build the CSS

npm install
npm run build:css                 # or: npm run watch:css (rebuilds on change)

3. Run

python app.py

Visit http://127.0.0.1:5000. The SQLite database (instance/expense.db) and default categories are created automatically on first run.

Tip: during development, run npm run watch:css in one terminal and python app.py in another.

Data Model

Two tables keep the whole thing honest:

• Category — name, type (income | expense). A category belongs to one kind, so the entry form only offers relevant choices. (name + type are unique.)
• Transaction — type, amount, category_id (required), description, date.

On first launch the app seeds:

• Income — Salary, Pocket Money, Other
• Expense — Food, Transport, Bills, Shopping, Other

Routes

Method	Path	Purpose
GET	/	Dashboard (totals, breakdown, recent 10)
GET	/transactions	Full ledger (?type=income|expense)
POST	/transactions/add	Add an income or expense
POST	/transactions/<id>/delete	Delete a transaction
GET	/categories	Manage categories
POST	/categories/add	Create a category
POST	/categories/<id>/delete	Delete a category (blocked if in use)

Project Structure

simple_expense/
├── app.py                  # Flask app, models, routes (single file — it's small)
├── requirements.txt
├── package.json            # Tailwind build scripts
├── tailwind.config.js
├── templates/
│   ├── base.html           # masthead, nav, flash messages
│   ├── index.html          # dashboard
│   ├── transactions.html   # general ledger
│   ├── categories.html     # category management
│   └── _tx_table.html      # shared transaction table partial
├── static/
│   ├── src/input.css       # @tailwind directives
│   └── css/output.css      # built CSS (gitignored)
└── instance/expense.db     # SQLite database (created at runtime, gitignored)

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Balanced books, quiet mind.