From Meeting Notes to Master Sheet: Automating Budget Tracking with Gemini

For finance professionals and project managers, the bridge between a client meeting and a finalized budget spreadsheet is often paved with tedious manual data entry. In a new Google Workspace tutorial, “Killian” demonstrates how Gemini in Sheets can bridge this gap instantly, transforming unstructured meeting notes into a polished financial tracker without typing a single cell of data manually.

The Scenario: Symbol Financial Services

The video introduces “Chloe,” a professional at Symbol Financial Services, who handles outsourced financial operations for clients. She is tasked with creating a monthly expense budget for a client named “Clean Clean,” an eco-friendly home products company.

Normally, this workflow involves:

Opening the client meeting notes (Google Doc).
Manually copying line items (expenses, categories, amounts).
Formatting the spreadsheet with headers, colors, and data validation.
Spending valuable billable hours on setup rather than analysis.

The Gemini Workflow

Chloe bypasses this manual drudgery using Gemini’s ability to reference other files directly within Sheets.

Step 1: The Prompt

Chloe opens a blank Google Sheet and activates the Gemini side panel. Instead of typing data, she types a natural language prompt:

“Create a budget tracker using the expenses here in the meeting notes with Clean and include color coding”

Step 2: The “@” Mention

Crucially, she uses the “@” symbol within the prompt to select the specific Google Doc containing the meeting notes. This grants Gemini access to read the unstructured text inside that document.

Step 3: Instant Generation

Gemini parses the document, identifies the relevant financial data (items, costs, dates), and structures it into a table.

The Result: A “Polished” Tracker in Seconds

The output isn’t just a raw list. The video highlights that Gemini generates a fully formatted table that includes:

Structured Data: Expense categories and amounts extracted correctly from the notes.
Professional Formatting: Headers, bold text, and clean alignment.
Smart Features: Automatic drop-down menus for categories and color coding to differentiate status or expense types.

Why This Matters for Accountants

For Chartered Accountants and financial advisors, this feature represents a significant productivity leap. It allows you to move from “gathering data” to “analyzing data” almost immediately. As the video notes, a task that might normally take an hour can now be completed in just minutes, freeing up time for higher-value advisory work.