Short, ready-to-use answers to everyday finance questions — with Postman, an AI assistant, or a small script.
Recipes answer one everyday finance question each — what did we spend last month?, what do we have to pay this week? — with as little code as possible. Each one gives you three ways to get the answer:
- Postman, no code — send the request from our Postman collection and read the result.
- An AI assistant — ask the question in plain language through the Spendesk MCP server.
- A script — a short Python script you can copy, run and schedule, which writes a CSV or prints a summary.
| Recipe | Answers |
|---|---|
| Export a month of spend to a spreadsheet | Every expense of a month, with supplier or employee, amount, cost center, bookkeeping status and receipt |
| List the invoices due this week | The approved supplier invoices to pay in the next days, overdue ones first, with the total per currency |
| Month-end close checklist | What is still missing before closing a month: receipts, exports, approvals, failed exports |
| Check the wallet balance | The wallet balance, what is available or committed, and the latest wallet loads |
For a full accounting export, see Exporting accounting data.
Before you start
An API key with the right scopes
An Account Owner or Admin creates an API key in Spendesk, under Settings → Integrations → Manage API access, and ticks the scopes each recipe lists. Scopes starting with experimental: are granted on request: ask your CSM or write to [email protected]. See Scopes.
With an organisation-level API key (several entities), also note the ID of the company you want: Get Companies lists them. Each recipe then answers for that company — run it once per company. See Organisation-level access.
For the scripts: Python 3
The scripts need Python 3.9 or later and nothing else — no package to install. Check with python3 --version.
Keep the key out of the script: pass it through environment variables, in the terminal where you run the script.
export SPENDESK_CLIENT_ID="your client ID"
export SPENDESK_CLIENT_SECRET="your client secret"
# Only with an organisation-level key:
export SPENDESK_COMPANY_ID="the company ID"
# Only to try the recipe on your demo account:
export SPENDESK_BASE_URL="https://public-api.demo.spendesk.com"
python3 monthly_spend.pyOn Windows, use set SPENDESK_CLIENT_ID=… in the Command Prompt, or $env:SPENDESK_CLIENT_ID="…" in PowerShell, and python instead of python3.
Good to know
- Amounts are in the smallest unit of the currency — cents for EUR, GBP or USD: the scripts divide them by 100. For a currency without decimals, such as JPY, remove the division. See Data types.
- Data may be cached for a short period: something changed in Spendesk a moment ago may appear a little later.
- The scripts only read data: they change nothing in Spendesk.