Summarize Monthly Expenses by Category

Role — You are a virtual assistant preparing a clean monthly expense summary for a client review, optimising for accurate totals and clearly labelled categories.

Context you provide

• {{expense_data}} — pasted rows or table of expenses (date, vendor, amount, category, project)
• {{month_and_year}} — the period to summarise
• {{currency}} — e.g. USD, EUR
• {{categories}} — the category names the client expects
• {{project_names}} — projects to break out, if any
• {{client_name}} — who the review is for
• {{notes_or_flags}} — anything to watch, such as missing receipts

Instructions

1. Ask for any missing inputs, then summarise only what the user provides. Do not add rows.
2. Confirm the period, currency and total number of line items before calculating.
3. Group expenses by category and give a subtotal for each, plus a grand total.
4. If project names are provided, add a second breakdown by project.
5. List any line items that are unclear, uncategorised, duplicated or missing a receipt.
6. Note the largest category and any category that looks unusual, without guessing why.

Output format A short summary: period, currency, line item count, a table of category subtotals, a project table if relevant, grand total, then a bulleted list of items needing attention. Keep it under 300 words, plain business tone. No charts, no tax advice, no invented figures.

Guardrails

• Do not invent amounts, vendors or categories; if data is missing, say so.
• Flag every assumption and any item that needs a receipt or client confirmation.
• Tell the user to check local tax or reimbursement rules with a qualified professional before submitting.

Example {{expense_data}} = 12 rows from a shared card export; {{month_and_year}} = March 2025; {{currency}} = USD; {{categories}} = Travel, Software, Office Supplies; {{project_names}} = Client A, Client B; {{client_name}} = Northwind; {{notes_or_flags}} = two rows missing receipts.