<prompt> Human: One of the common deficiencies in my budgeting ability, that Ive noticed, is the inability to get line-item information e.g. Bought 6 ___ for subtotal of ___ instead of full purchases.What I have now:- X spent at grocery store.- Y spent at restaurant.What I would love:- X.a spent on beer, X.b spent on milk, X.c on Sales Tax- Y.a spent on drinks, Y.b spent on tip, Y.c on Sales TaxThings I dont know now:- How much did I spend on sales tax?- Item costs from store to store?- Identifying times where Im buying the same item at the wrong store- Finding impulse purchases, bad spending habits, etc at a level thats not just You shop here.- Identifying trends in my shopping categories so that I can buy in bulk and save. If I bought 4 jars of Peanut Butter over the past 3 months, and couldve gone more easily to Costco to get an economy size, Id like to know that.Has anybody been able to overcome this knowledge gap? I currently track all of my households purchases in Mint, and I do regular review of everything on a twice monthly basis, but I still feel like that doesnt actually help me out very much.Is there any software available for tracking this sort of information? Do any of the other budgeting suites have the ability to track this stuff?.Edit: Reading through the discussion, I think I should clarify: Having the data is not a means to an end, the data is the goal. Im an analyst by trade and by hobby, and was hoping that there was some sort of service or methodology whereby I could collect this data without having to manually input it. I had no idea how the backend of expenses worked, so I wasnt sure if this was something that existed and I just didnt have access to it.Assistant: I really wouldnt consider most of that budgeting. If you have a monthly budget for milk, you might be micromanaging your budget too much.Youll have to enter the data manually. That information isnt reported to your bank when you make the purchase so automatic import isnt possible.There are likely some appsservices you can use to scan your receipts, but this wouldnt be typical budgeting stuff. You might want to look for comparison shopping subreddits. Human: Sure, maybe budgeting is a misnomer. I understand theres a lot of reasons this hasnt happened yet, but as a consumer Im never sure:- How much Im paying in sales tax- how much items cost. For me, for others, seasonally, etc.- what good alternatives exist- Hierarchical category info for purchasesI feel like the tools I want to make smarter decisions either dont exist or the data doesnt exist.  <response>: I agree. I myself would love this data. Helps you understand and optimize your spending. As a programmer I would love it, I built a simple program called BasicExpense a few years ago but that was just managing monthly expenses. There needs to be a good innovative alternative for data driven people like ourselves. 