DEV Community: Divesh Sankhla

Most expense trackers expect perfect English. But real users type in Hindi, Hinglish, mixed language, and natural conversation. So I built https://vitmora.com to understand the way people actually type.

Divesh Sankhla — Wed, 27 May 2026 06:19:30 +0000

Vitmora | Track Money Like Sending a Message

Track expenses and income like sending a message. Type or speak naturally, and Vitmora organizes your money into structured insights, budgets, and answers you can actually use.

vitmora.com

I Built an AI Expense Tracker That Understands the Way People Actually Type

Divesh Sankhla — Wed, 27 May 2026 06:16:47 +0000

I Built an AI Expense Tracker That Understands the Way People Actually Type

Most expense tracking apps expect users to type in a fixed format.

But real people don’t track expenses like that.

Some people type:

“Paid 100 for petrol”

Some type:

“500 रुपये का पेट्रोल भराया”

Others naturally mix languages:

“Petrol ke liye 300 pay kiya”

And sometimes people combine everything together in a single sentence.

Most expense trackers completely fail at understanding this.

That’s the problem I wanted to solve while building Vitmora.

The Problem With Traditional Expense Tracking

I’ve tried many expense tracking apps over the years.

Most of them were good at charts, dashboards, and reports.

But almost all of them had the same problem:

They expected users to adapt to the app.

You usually have to:

Select category
Enter amount
Choose payment method
Add notes
Fill forms repeatedly

After a few days, it starts feeling like work.

And honestly, most people stop tracking because of that friction.

But there was another problem I kept noticing.

Language.

People Don’t Think About Money in One Language

In countries like India especially, people naturally switch between languages while typing.

Sometimes it’s English.

Sometimes Hindi.

Sometimes Hinglish.

Sometimes regional languages.

And most of the time, it’s mixed naturally.

That’s how people actually communicate.

For example:

“Paid 100 for petrol”
“500 रुपये का पेट्रोल भराया”
“Petrol ke liye 300 pay kiya”
“Swiggy order 450 paid by UPI kal night”

These all mean something very clear to humans.

But most apps struggle to understand them.

That’s where the idea behind Vitmora started.

The Goal Was Simple

I didn’t want users to learn how to use the app.

I wanted the app to understand users naturally.

Instead of structured forms, the experience should feel more like chatting.

Just type normally.

Vitmora should figure out:

amount
category
payment method
merchant/context
intent

automatically.

Building Multilingual Expense Understanding

This turned out to be much harder than it sounds.

Because users don’t type consistently.

For example:

“Petrol ke liye 300 diye”

“Petrol bharaya 500”

“500 ka fuel”

“Bike me petrol 200”

All of these technically describe the same kind of expense.

Then there’s mixed language input.

A single sentence might contain:

English words
Hindi words
regional language
abbreviations
spelling mistakes

And users still expect the app to understand them instantly.

That became one of the biggest product and engineering challenges while building Vitmora.

Understanding Intent Instead of Perfect Grammar

One thing I realized very quickly:

People don’t type for machines.

They type for convenience.

Nobody wants to stop and think:
“Am I formatting this correctly?”

The app should understand intent even if the sentence isn’t perfect.

For example:

User Input	What Vitmora Understands
Paid 100 for petrol	Fuel expense
500 रुपये का पेट्रोल भराया	Fuel expense
Uber ke liye 300 pay kiya	Travel expense
Swiggy order 450 paid by UPI	Food delivery + UPI
Coffee 120 with card	Food & card payment

That flexibility completely changes the feeling of expense tracking.

It starts feeling natural instead of robotic.

The Bigger UX Lesson

While building this, I realized something important:

Most software still expects humans to behave like software.

But real communication is messy.

People switch languages.
Use shortcuts.
Mix sentences.
Misspell words.
Type casually.

And honestly, that’s normal.

Technology should adapt to people — not the other way around.

Quick Demo

I recently recorded a small demo showing how Vitmora understands different styles of expense entries in real time.

Demo Video - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p06VeqzKGNA

Examples used in the demo:

“Paid 100 for petrol”
“500 रुपये का पेट्रोल भराया”
“Petrol ke liye 300 pay kiya”
“J’ai payé 100 pour l’essence”

The goal wasn’t just multilingual support.

The goal was making expense tracking feel effortless.

What’s Next

Vitmora is still evolving, and there’s a lot more I want to improve around:

natural language understanding
multilingual support
smarter categorization
conversational finance tracking
AI-powered insights

But this idea of “track expenses the way people naturally speak” has become one of the core philosophies behind the product.

Because managing money shouldn’t require perfect formatting or perfect English.

It should feel natural.

Thanks for reading.

Would genuinely love feedback from developers, builders, and anyone interested in AI, multilingual UX, or personal finance tools.

You can check out Vitmora here: https://vitmora.com

What If Tracking Money Felt As Easy As Sending a Message?

Divesh Sankhla — Sat, 16 May 2026 05:15:10 +0000

Most finance apps still feel surprisingly complicated.

Open the app.
Tap “Add Expense.”
Choose a category.
Select a payment method.
Add notes.
Save.

It works — but it never feels natural.

And after a few days, most people stop using these apps consistently.

For a long time, I thought expense tracking was a discipline problem.

But the more I explored productivity systems, automation and user workflows, the more I realized something:

It’s often a friction problem.

We already communicate naturally through messages.
We send quick updates instantly.
We interact with AI conversationally every day.

So I kept asking myself:

What if tracking money felt as easy as sending a message?

That question eventually became the foundation for something I’ve been building called Vitmora.

The idea behind Vitmora is simple:
reduce friction between people and financial tracking.

Not by adding more complexity —
but by making the experience feel faster, cleaner and more intuitive.

I’ve been especially interested in how conversational workflows and AI-assisted systems can improve everyday financial interactions.

Because honestly, most personal finance tools today still feel like traditional forms wrapped inside modern UI design.

They may look better visually, but the underlying experience often hasn’t changed much.

While building Vitmora, I started thinking less about “features” and more about user behavior.

Why do people abandon finance apps?

Why does consistency break?

Why do manual workflows feel exhausting over time?

I think a big part of the answer is cognitive load.

The more steps required to log or organize information, the harder it becomes to maintain the habit long term.

That’s where conversational input, automation and smarter workflows become interesting.

Instead of forcing users to adapt to rigid systems, software should adapt better to how people naturally think and communicate.

From a technical side, I’ve also been experimenting with modular architectures using Flask, PostgreSQL and workflow-driven structures while exploring how AI can improve categorization, organization and financial insights.

Still early.
Still learning.
Still building.

One thing I genuinely enjoy about building in public is hearing how other developers, founders and builders think about these problems.

There’s a lot happening right now at the intersection of:

AI
productivity
finance
automation
conversational interfaces

And I think we’re only at the beginning.

If you’re working on similar ideas — or if you’ve thought about how finance apps could feel more natural — I’d genuinely love to hear your perspective.

Currently building at:
https://vitmora.com

Curious:
If you could redesign personal finance apps from scratch today, what would you change first?