--- title: Shopping Is Not a Category | daily.dev description: Bank transactions from online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy only show the payee and total amount, making budget categorization nearly useless. By... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/shopping-is-not-a-category-meaw0poom twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Shopping Is Not a Category | daily.dev og:description: Bank transactions from online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy only show the payee and total amount, making budget categorization nearly useless. By... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/shopping-is-not-a-category-meaw0poom og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/mEAw0pOom.png og:image:alt: Shopping Is Not a Category og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Shopping Is Not a Category **[Chris Banes](https://daily.dev/sources/chrisbanes)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Bank transactions from online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy only show the payee and total amount, making budget categorization nearly useless. By connecting bank transaction data with order confirmation emails using an AI agent (Hermes), purchases can be matched and split into individual line items with meaningful categories. The agent uses Gmail CLI tools to find order emails, fuzzy-matches them to bank charges by amount and date, then splits or recategorizes transactions automatically in Actual Budget. The result transforms a single opaque 'Shopping' entry into granular spending data across categories like Household, Electronics, and Kitchen — without requiring manual review of every order. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How can I automatically split a single Amazon bank transaction into its individual purchased items for budgeting? An AI agent can match bank charges against order confirmation emails using amount and timing as evidence, then split the transaction by item into a budgeting tool like Actual Budget. Because Amazon often sends one email per item but a single combined charge, the approach groups emails by order ID, sums the totals, and fuzzy-matches against the bank charge, succeeding roughly 80% of the time; unclear matches are left uncategorized rather than guessed. _daily.dev surfaces AI agent workflows for developers automating personal finance tracking like this._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Agentic Commerce Is Here. 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Because Amazon often sends one email per item but a single combined charge, the approach groups emails by order ID, sums the totals, and fuzzy-matches against the bank charge, succeeding roughly 80% of the time; unclear matches are left uncategorized rather than guessed. daily.dev surfaces AI agent workflows for developers automating personal finance tracking like this."}}]} ```