Money

Bills Posted in a WhatsApp Group, Read and Logged Automatically: A Self-Hosted Agent Setup That Catches Due Dates

  • Level Advanced
  • Setup1–3 hrs (estimated)
  • Evidence Anecdotal
  • CostNot stated in source
  • No-codeNo
Custom agentSource-linkedNeeds verification

What they did

A Hacker News user built a setup where an agent listens to a WhatsApp group for bills. A second agent using DeepSeek reads each bill and pulls out the amount, due date and payment reference into a small database. It merges duplicate bills and crops out the bank details so payments are easy.

How it went

Every bill logged with its due date and reference, without typing them in.

Worth knowing

  • Developer build from an HN comment; it takes coding. Double-check amounts read from photos before paying.

Prompt

Cleaned version rewritten from the source — not a direct quote.

Help me build a bill tracker: watch [chat or inbox] for photos or PDFs of bills, read the amount, due date, payee and payment reference from each, save them to [spreadsheet / database], merge duplicates, and remind me [days] before each due date.

Recommended

Try it in Grok Bot

Grok Bot can read bill photos and keep a due-date list with reminders.

  1. Copy the prompt (button below).
  2. Open Grok Bot chat and paste it. Replace any [bracketed] placeholders.
  3. Connect the listed tools (WhatsApp) as connectors when Grok Bot asks.
  4. If the task repeats, ask: "Make this a daily routine."

Alternatives: the same prompt works in Claude, ChatGPT Agent, OpenClaw.

Set it up

Tools: WhatsApp · Stack: pi coding agent + DeepSeek + WhatsApp + Django

  1. Read the original source for full context.
  2. Connect the tools your agent needs.
  3. Paste the prompt and replace [bracketed] placeholders.
  4. Run once manually and check the output before scheduling it.

Generic suggested steps, not from the source.

Evidence

First-hand HN comment: WhatsApp group listener finds bills, second agent + DeepSeek OCRs amount, due date, reference into Django DB, duplicate merge, bank-detail crop

Source: HN · 2026-10-01 · Verified by us: not yet · Report broken or outdated

Related use cases

MoneyWeb · 2026-02

Check a hospital bill against what Medicare would pay

A writer gave Claude the coded hospital claim (UB-04) for his late brother-in-law's $195,628 ER bill and asked it to build a spreadsheet of Medicare rates per code. Claude flagged bundled items billed separately, a bypass charge for a procedure that never happened, and a ventilation charge Medicare does not allow.

  • Level Intermediate
  • Setup1–3 hrs*
  • Evidence Strong evidence
ClaudeSource-linked
ShoppingWeb

Test whether a shopping agent can be tricked by fake reviews (cautionary)

F-Secure built a shopping agent (vibe-coded with Claude Code, running Claude Haiku, with the user's details in memory) and a mock marketplace with a review pointing to a fake discount-code site. In 100 runs it visited the phishing site 12% of the time and submitted the user's name, date of birth and SSN, almost never telling the user.

  • Level Advanced
  • Setup1–3 hrs*
  • Evidence Strong evidence
Custom agentSource-linked⚠ Cautionary
MoneyReddit

Invoice capture for a distributor: 4m12s down to 38s each

A shared Gmail label feeds an extractor, totals are validated to €0.01, low-confidence fields go to a human, and results push to Sage. 87% need no human touch.

  • Level Intermediate
  • Setup1–3 hrs*
  • Evidence Some evidence
n8nMakeSource-linkedNeeds verification