Quick Start

Get Tally running in 3 steps

#1 Install Tally

Choose your platform:

#2 Create a Folder with Your Data

Create a new folder anywhere and add your bank CSV exports:

mkdir my-budget
# Copy your bank/credit card CSV exports into my-budget/

Download transaction exports from your banks and credit cards (usually under "Download" or "Export" in your online banking), then put them in the folder.

#3 Let AI Do the Rest

Open your AI coding assistant in that folder and tell it to use Tally:

cd my-budget
claude  # or cursor, copilot, etc.

Then just say:

"Use tally to categorize my expenses and generate a report"

The AI will:

• Run tally init to set up the configuration
• Inspect your CSVs and configure the data sources
• Categorize all your transactions
• Generate an HTML spending report

#Manual Setup (Optional)

If you prefer to configure things yourself:

tally init ./my-budget
cd my-budget

This creates settings.yaml, config/merchants.rules, and a data/ folder. Edit settings.yaml to configure your CSV files:

title: "2025 Budget"

data_sources:
  - name: Chase
    file: data/chase.csv
    format: "{date:%m/%d/%Y},{description},{amount}"

Use tally inspect data/yourfile.csv to analyze CSV structure and get format suggestions. Then run tally workflow to see next steps.