The Expenses Analyzer is the visual counterpart to your tabular reports. Instead of rows and totals, it shows charts and rankings so you can see where the money goes at a glance — by month, by category, by provider, and by individual transaction.
It’s the report to open when you want to understand patterns rather than file a return.
When to use it
- End-of-quarter reviews — to see which categories or providers are climbing
- Client meetings — visual breakdowns are easier to talk through than columns of numbers
- Catching outliers — the Largest Expenses list surfaces the few transactions that move the totals
- Spotting seasonality — the monthly cards make summer/winter swings obvious
Opening the report
- Open Reports from the sidebar.
- Find Expenses Analyzer under the Review & Data Quality section.
- Click the card to open the report.
The Expenses Analyzer is an interactive page — once you pick a business, bank, and year the report draws automatically, and every selection afterwards updates the page without reloading.
Choosing what to analyze
At the top of the page you’ll set three required selectors:
- Business — the business whose expenses you want to analyze.
- Bank — the bank account to report on.
- Year — the calendar year.
These three selectors are shared across many Simple-C screens — picking them here also updates the same Business / Bank / Year context you’ll see elsewhere. If the report area stays blank, make sure all three are filled in.
The moment all three are selected, the report fetches the data and renders the five sections described below.
What the report shows
The page has a wide Expenses by Month strip on top, followed by a two-column layout with the Category Table on the left and three cards stacked on the right — Summary, Frequent Providers, and Largest Expenses. Every section stays in sync: when you drill into a month, the rest of the report filters to that month instantly.
Expenses by Month
A row of 12 clickable month cards (arranged six per row). Each card shows the month name and the total expenses for that month. Click any month to drill down — the Category Table, Frequent Providers, and Largest Expenses all re-filter to just that month. Click the same month again to clear the selection and return to the full-year view. The selected month is highlighted with a colored left border.
Category Table (left column)
A list of every IRS Schedule C category with the total spent in that category, sorted highest first. Each row links to the Expenses Bulk screen so you can jump straight to the transactions behind a number. When you have a month selected, the totals reflect just that month.
Summary card (right column)
A compact card at the top right that shows the Total Expenses for the current selection (year, or month if one is selected). It’s the quick reference number for whatever you’re looking at.
Frequent Providers card (right column)
The top 7 providers by transaction count, showing:
- Number of transactions (in a badge)
- Total expenses with that provider
- Average transaction amount
These are the merchants you spend with most often — usually where bookkeeping shortcuts and provider-merge rules pay off the most.
Largest Expenses card (right column)
The top 10 individual transactions by amount, showing the provider name, the date, and the amount. Big one-off purchases tend to live here — useful for verifying the year’s biggest hits at a glance.
Exporting
The Expenses Analyzer offers a PDF export that captures the on-screen visualization.
- Click Export PDF in the toolbar above the report.
- A PDF is generated in a new tab. If a month is selected at the time you export, the PDF reflects just that month; otherwise it covers the full year.
Excel export is not available for this report — it’s designed for a visual read. For raw data exports, use the Expenses by Category Detailed or Expenses by Provider Detailed reports instead.
Tips for getting useful insights
- Start with the full year, then click into the busiest month for context.
- Look at Frequent Providers, not just Largest Expenses. A small charge that happens 50 times can outweigh a single large one — the Frequent Providers card ranks by count, which surfaces exactly those cases.
- Compare to last year by re-running the report with the prior year selected — patterns become more meaningful with a year-over-year comparison.
- Combine with Uncategorized Expenses. If a category looks suspiciously low, you may have uncategorized rows hiding there — the Category Table labels any uncategorized spend explicitly so you can spot the gap.
- Drill through from a category. Clicking a category row takes you to Expenses Bulk, pre-filtered to that category (and month, if selected) so you can audit the transactions behind the number.