In order to continue learning Salesforce and having my own org to work on things, I set up a dev org to track our finances and utilities.
I started with tracking our income. We have a mix of 1099 and W-2 income, so I started with two record types. This expanded to tracking utilities. I then added a custom object and record-triggered flow to create quarterly tax records when 1099 income gets marked as paid. All of this is tracked in reports and shown on the dashboard. There is a screen flow embedded on the home page that allows my wife to update her 1099 records with the date an invoice is paid, which then triggers the quarterly tax flow to run and create the related child record which then updates the reports and dashboard.
I have plans to add functionality to create donation records based on gross income using a scheduled flow at the end of the month to help automate our charitable donations. And as student loan payments resume, I’ll be adding functionality to keep track of those payments and our progress in paying the remaining loans off.
Below are screenshots of different parts of this org.
Home and Dashboard
The financial dashboard is shown on the home page and includes a screen flow to update unpaid invoices.
Creating Income Records
Income records are created, and relevant fields for W-2 and 1099 income are available. Formulas are used to derive several pieces of information related to income.
Utility Bill Tracking
Each utility bill is tracked with a custom record type, and totals are shown on the dashboard so that we can compare month-over-month spending on each utility.
Automating the System
Several flows run in the org in order to create and update records.
This flow updates the tax quarter on a 1099 record when the record is marked as paid. This ensures that our estimated taxes are paid on time. A formula variable is used to determine the start and end months for each tax quarter, which are not calendar quarters, so that the record is marked with the correct information.
A separate flow is used to create or update the quarterly tax records, which rely on the tax quarter created by the previous flow being accurate.
