Smart Expense Tracker is an AI-powered personal finance management web application designed to help users track their income, expenses, budgets, and financial goals in a smart, intuitive way. It provides real-time insights, predictive analytics, and personalized recommendations to optimize spending and savings.

• Add, edit, and delete income and expense transactions.
• Assign transactions to predefined or custom categories.
• Track payment methods (cash, online, card).

• Set monthly spending limits per category.
• Automatically update spent_amount as transactions are recorded.
• AI-powered suggestions for realistic budget planning.
• Alerts for overspending or approaching budget limits.

• Create and track personal financial goals (e.g., save for a laptop, vacation, emergency fund).
• Monitor progress toward target amounts.
• Predict goal achievement based on income and spending trends.
• Partial or full goal contributions automatically calculated.

• Auto-categorization of transactions using AI/ML.
• Anomaly detection for unusual spending.
• Predictive cash flow and goal achievement.
• Personalized insights and recommendations for saving and budgeting.

• Real-time balance and budget usage display.
• Progress bars for goals and category spending.
• Trend charts for income, expenses, and goal tracking.

1. users – Stores login credentials and user info.
2. profiles – Stores user profile details (bio, avatar, preferences).
3. categories – Income and expense categories.
4. transactions – All financial transactions.
5. budgets – Monthly budget limits and spent amounts per category.
6. goals – Personal savings goals with progress tracking.

Triggers & Automation:

• Automatically create a profile for new users.
• Automatically create default categories for new profiles.
• Automatically update spent_amount in budgets as transactions are added or modified.

• Node.js >= 16
• MySQL >= 8.0
• npm or yarn

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/your-username/smart-expense-tracker.git
   cd smart-expense-tracker

2. Install dependencies:

npm install

3. Set up MySQL database and run the provided schema scripts.
4. Create .env file for environment variables (DB credentials, JWT secret).
5. Start the backend server:

npm run dev

6. Start the frontend:

  cd client
  npm install
  npm start