Expense Tracker

A full-stack MERN application for tracking income and expenses in real time

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Overview

Expense Tracker is a full-stack web application built on the MERN stack that lets you log, categorize, and monitor your income and expenses. Transactions are persisted in MongoDB and the balance updates in real time as you add or remove entries.

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Features

• Transaction Logging — Add transactions with a description and amount
• Income & Expense Split — Separate views for money in and money out
• Real-time Balance — Total balance recalculates instantly on every change
• Global State — Managed with React Context API and a custom reducer
• Persistent Storage — All data stored and retrieved via MongoDB

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Tech Stack

Layer	Tools
Frontend	React, React Hooks, Context API
Backend	Node.js, Express.js
Database	MongoDB
HTTP Client	Axios

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Project Structure

Expense-Tracker/
├── client/                         # React frontend
│   ├── public/
│   │   └── index.html
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/
│       │   ├── AddTransaction.js   # Form to add a new transaction
│       │   ├── Balance.js          # Displays current total balance
│       │   ├── Header.js           # App header
│       │   ├── IncomeExpenses.js   # Income vs expense summary
│       │   ├── Transaction.js      # Single transaction item
│       │   └── TransactionList.js  # Full list of transactions
│       ├── context/
│       │   ├── AppReducer.js       # State reducer logic
│       │   ├── GlobalContext.js    # Context definition
│       │   └── GlobalProvider.js   # Context provider wrapper
│       ├── utils/
│       │   └── format.js           # Currency formatting helpers
│       └── App.js
├── config/
│   ├── config.env                  # Environment variables
│   └── db.js                       # MongoDB connection
├── controllers/
│   └── transactions.js             # Route handler logic
├── models/
│   └── Transaction.js              # Mongoose transaction schema
├── routes/
│   └── transactions.js             # API route definitions
├── server.js                       # Express server entry point
└── package.json

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 14+
• MongoDB instance (local or Atlas)
• npm

Installation & Configuration

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/silentwraith03/Expense-Tracker-MERN.git
   cd Expense-Tracker

2. Install backend dependencies

   npm install

3. Install frontend dependencies

   cd client
   npm install
   cd ..

4. Configure environment variables

   Create config/config.env and add the following:

   MONGO_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
   PORT=5000

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Usage

Command	Description
npm run dev	Run frontend and backend concurrently
npm run server	Run backend only
npm run client	Run frontend only
cd client && npm run build	Build the frontend for production

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Screenshots

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License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.