Can I just ask for a report by trip, client, or project — and leave out personal expenses?

Yes. You can describe the outcome you want in plain language and ExpenseBot works out the rest — you don't need to know how tags, report filters, or the app's navigation work.

The request that covers the whole workflow:

"Create a report for my Mexico trip, but leave out personal expenses."

What happens, in order

1. It works out the criteria. The trip, the dates, the location — taken from what you said and from expenses you actually have.
2. It shows you the set before touching anything. How many expenses match, the totals in their original currencies, a few representative rows, and exactly which Personal-tagged or personal-category expenses it plans to exclude. If a report already covers some of these, it says so.
3. You confirm. Nothing is grouped, changed, or created until you approve the set you were just shown.
4. It applies the grouping and builds the report from the exact expenses you approved — and tells you the real counts, including any that conflicted or failed. Never "all done" when it was partial.
5. You get the links back: the finished report highlighted in ExpenseBot, Review Expenses, and the Google Sheet.

From there you can carry on in the same conversation:

• "Share it with my accountant." — asks you to confirm the recipient first.
• "Download that report as a PDF."
• "Take me to bill the client for this report." — opens the Bill Client screen.

Other things you can ask

• "What clients, projects, and trips do I already have?"
• "Group my recent Toronto meals under Client Rob."
• "Close out my Vegas trip from August 3 through August 7."
• "Create an August report for Project Harbor, excluding Personal expenses."
• "Help me invite my team to ExpenseBot."

What it will not do

These are deliberate limits, not gaps:

• It won't invent anything. If you ask for a trip with no matching expenses, it tells you — it does not manufacture trip membership or create an empty report to satisfy the wording of your request.
• It won't change anything without asking. The preview always comes first, and an expense that changed after the preview is reported as a conflict rather than overwritten.
• It won't send an invoice. "Take me to bill the client" opens the screen; you decide what happens there.
• It won't email a report on its own. Sharing is always a separate confirmation with the recipient named.
• It won't invite your teammates from the chat. It opens the right screen for your role — Add teammates for new owners, License Manager for existing ones — and you send the invitations.
• It won't add later expenses to a report you already created. A report is a snapshot; if you need newer expenses, make a new one.
• One expense belongs to one group. If a receipt is already on a trip and you ask to put it under a client, it explains the conflict and asks which you want.

Where this works

Anywhere you've connected ExpenseBot to an AI assistant — the Claude connector, the ChatGPT app, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client. See connecting AI assistants for setup.

You can do all of the same things by hand in the dashboard: group expenses in Review Expenses, then create a report from the Reports screen. The conversation is a faster route to the same result, not a different one.