How I Made an Automated Notion Finance Tracker (w/ sync + template)

I use Notion for almost everything — for me, it’s a habit tracker, project management tool, and now, the place where all my finances live.

I’ve used a lot of different apps to track my finances over the last few years — Mint.com, Personal Capital, Simplifi, and Copilot, to name a few. None have been as easy or as customizable as Notion.

Today, I’ll show you how to set up an automated finance tracking tool in Notion that automatically syncs your transactions with your bank accounts. Here’s what mine looks like:

If you’re just interested in the template, feel free to jump ahead to the end!

Step 1: Figure out what you want to track 💡

I’m currently self-employed and live with my partner.

For my specific needs, I want to track:

• Personal vs business expenses
• Receipts for certain expenses (business, trips with friends, etc.)
• Shared expenses (groceries with my partner, concert tickets with friends)
• Any notes I have for remembering what I bought

I also want to track basic transaction information:

• Which bank account is associated with which transaction
• The date of the transaction
• The amount the transaction was for
• The category of the transaction

Step 2: Set up Notion

1. Create a free account on Notion
2. Create a database by selecting the “Table” option

Step 3: Add your properties! 📓

This is the step where you choose what you want to track! I personally use the following 8 properties to track my finances, but feel free to add or remove columns as you see fit.

• Date
• Transaction Name
• Amount
• Category
• Account
• Tags
• Notes
• Receipt

Let’s start with the Date property. The Date property is used to track when the transaction occurred.

1. Click on the “+” column to the right of the table you just created.
2. Change the name of the column to “Date”
3. Select “Property Type” and pick Date.

For all the other properties, you’ll want to follow the steps above, except the property types will be different:

Transaction Name is used to track the name of the transaction, as provided by the merchant. The Property Type for this should be set to Title.

Amount is used to track how much the transaction was for. The Property Type for this should be set to Number. You should also click “Format Number” in order to format the amount to your currency. In my case, it’s US Dollar.

Category is used to track which credit card categories this transaction belongs to. The property type should be set to Multi-Select, because a transaction can have multiple categories.

Account is used to track which bank account of the transaction. The property type should be set to Select, because a transaction can only come from 1 bank account.

Those are all the basic properties associated with any bank account transaction. For my specific needs, I also track:

1. Tags, which I use to organize transactions into different groups. Some of my tags include:

• Personal — for any expenses that are my own, that I want to mark as “Reviewed.”
• Business — for any expenses that are related to my own business.
• Venmo — for any expenses that I need to request money for. For example, I split my phone bill with my sisters, so each month I’ll need to remember to request them money for their share.
• Partner — for any expenses I split with my partner, including meals, groceries, and gas for my car.

The Tags property type should be Multi-Select, because a transaction can have multiple tags associated with it.

2. Notes, which I use to jot down any information related to that transaction. This is useful for business expenses or remembering what you bought a certain day.

The Notes property type should be Text.

3. Receipts, which I use to upload any receipts (images or PDFs) for that transaction.

The Receipts property type should be Files and media.

At this point, you should have a table with columns that looks like this:

In the last step, I’ll show you how to link your bank accounts to your Notion database, so that your transactions sync automatically.

Step 4: Automatically sync your financial transactions from your bank accounts 🔄

In order to have my Notion database automatically update whenever there are new transactions, I built a tool called Finotion.

With Finotion, you sign on to your bank accounts via Plaid, link your database via Notion, and voilà — your financial transactions are added automatically to your Notion database! 🎉

It looks like this:

I hope this has been helpful! I’d love to hear how others manage their finances too — let me know down below!