The recurring ask — "can you send me last month's expenses?" — is a scheduled scenario, not a calendar reminder. This recipe builds the report and hands back its URL.
The workflow shape
- Trigger — a schedule (month end, quarter end), or an on-demand request from a form or Slack message so someone can ask for an ad-hoc period.
- Resolve the scope — dates, and optionally a client, project, trip group, or tag. Drive group and category choices from the dropdowns populated live from your own account rather than free text.
- Create Expense Report — the action returns the report and its URL.
- Notify the requester — Slack, email, or a reply on the original message, with the report URL and the period it covers.
Run your checks before the create step, not after
If the scenario has upstream conditions — every capture for the period reached a terminal state, no items still sitting in Action Needed — put them ahead of the report step. A report generated over an incomplete period looks finished and is not, which is worse than a report that did not run.
The division of labour
ExpenseBot supplies structured expense data and Gmail receipt capture to Make workflows — extraction, duplicate detection, review, and the spreadsheet record. Make handles external triggers, routing, reminders, and notifications.
The boundary
Downstream accounting systems remain the accounting source of truth. A report is a package of reviewed records with their source documents — it hands off cleanly to an accountant or into QuickBooks Online, Xero, and the other supported destinations, but it does not replace the books. Your expense records live in a Google Sheet in your own Drive, and the report is generated from them rather than from a separate copy.
Scheduled scenarios should treat writes as reviewed steps, not unattended bulk operations — a report that goes straight to a client or an accountant is exactly the kind of output worth looking at before it is sent.
Where to build it
- Choose the right connection for your AI
- Connect ExpenseBot to Zapier's MCP Client — beta, usable today
- Does ExpenseBot work with Make.com? — native app submitted and in review
- Grouping first: client, project, and trip expense entry