Spending by category report

The Spending by category report shows outflows aggregated by category over a window you pick. The default visualization is a treemap — bigger rectangle, more spent. A bar-chart toggle exists for users who prefer linear comparisons.

The math

For every category, sum the negative activity (outflows only) during the window. Inflows to a category — refunds, returns — are subtracted in the table view but excluded from the treemap (treemaps don't render negative areas).

Splits are walked: a $100 transaction split $60 / $40 contributes $60 to one category and $40 to another, not $100 to either.

Windows

• This month, last month, last 3 months, last 12 months, year to date, custom.

The window selector also offers Compare to previous period — adds a smaller bar / rectangle showing the prior window's spending in the same category. Useful for "is dining out trending up or down?" questions.

Grouping

Three grouping levels:

• By category (default) — every leaf category gets its own rectangle.
• By category group — every group is a rectangle; categories within are stacked.
• Top 10 + Other — the top 10 categories by spend get rectangles; everything else collapses into one Other tile.

The top-10 view is the most readable on a phone-sized screen.

What's excluded

• Transfers between your own accounts. Moving $1,000 from checking to savings is not spending; it doesn't appear here.
• Inflows. Spending is outflow-only by definition.
• Credit-card payment activity. The Credit Card Payment category accumulates earmarks, not spending — its activity comes from other categories' spending and doesn't appear as its own line.
• Off-budget transactions in tracking accounts. Spending here is restricted to on-budget activity.

Filters

• Account scope — one account, an account group, or all on-budget accounts. Useful when you want "what did I spend on the Visa this month" specifically.
• Exclude reimbursed — when on, transactions in any category that has at least one offsetting inflow within the window get netted before display. Practical for shared-expense scenarios where you spend then get paid back.

What it's good for

• End-of-month review. What categories ate more than I expected?
• Lifestyle creep detection. Compare-to-previous on a 12-month window: which categories grew the most?
• Category-structure decisions. A category that always shows up under $5 across a year is probably worth merging into a bigger one. A category that consistently dominates Other in the top-10 view is probably worth splitting.

What it's not

• Not a budget vs actual report. The treemap only knows what you spent, not what you assigned. For that comparison, see Budget vs actual.
• Not a payee report. Categories aggregate across many payees. For per-merchant rankings, use the Payee leaderboard.

Drill-in

Click any rectangle to filter the register to that category for the chosen window. Quick path from "Dining out is huge this quarter" to "let me see every transaction that fed that number."