iOS-transaction-shortcut

Premise

Guide on using the iOS shortcut automation feature to capture transactions

iOS 17.2 introduced the capability to attach automation events to a Transaction. Relevant info about a Transaction can be captured, including:

1. Transaction
2. Card or Pass (e.g. Apple Card)
3. Merchant (e.g. Whole Foods Market)
4. Amount (e.g. $32.04)
5. Name

You can also include identifying metadata such as:

1. Current Date
2. Device Details Device Detail OS Device Type Device hostname Name

When used in concert, this information can be captured and used to generate a running transaction log. This information can supplement a budgeting application with "manual" entry for applications that may not support a direct integration, such as the Apple Card.

Configure the iOS transaction automation

Open Shortcuts > Automation > + to add new Scroll down to Transaction Select the card(s) that you want to monitor Select Run Immediately Select Next

Select New Blank Automation Select + Add Action Search for the option to Run Script Over SSH

Format the script

This requires a lot of messing around with the nuances of the iOS keyboard and interface. What you're looking to accomplish is like this screenshot:

You can choose to add or remove parameters as needed, but I would recommend to add as many as possible so that it's easier to uniquely identify a transaction.

The important thing here is to add single quotes surrounding each item. This will avoid a few issues:

1. We are using a bash script to parse the input, which accepts spaces as an argument separator. 's will join the arguments together so that Whole Foods Market will show up as one argument instead of 3: Whole, Foods, and Market.
2. The Amount variable is sent with a dollar sign, which is a variable identifier in bash. It needs to be captured and escaped for database interactions.