Spending statistics

How it works

1. 1

   Open Statistics from the bottom bar. The period starts as the current month: income, spending and the balance, each against the previous period.

2. 2

   The day-by-day columns show when the money left. Below them the same total is split by category, and a ring shows the shares.

3. 3

   Tap a category and it opens down to the shops and transactions it is made of. From there one more tap takes you to the transactions themselves.

4. 4

   Change the period — month, quarter, year or your own dates — and every chart is recounted for it.

What each chart actually shows

The “by day” bars answer when, not what on. That matters more than it sounds: most overspending has no category, it has a date — Friday, the first day after payday, a week on holiday. A flat chart and a chart with three spikes can add up to the same monthly total and still be two very different months.

The category ring answers what on, and deliberately shows shares rather than sums. A share is what you can compare between months when your income has changed: thirty per cent on groceries stays thirty per cent in an expensive month and a cheap one alike.

The comparison with the previous period sits next to every figure, because a sum on its own means nothing. “Spent 24,300” — is that a lot or a little? Only the second figure beside it answers that, which is why it is there and not in a separate report nobody opens.

“Essential and discretionary” — what the split is for

Categories answer what the money went on, but not the question that matters: how much of it you could have not spent at all. Rent and subscriptions are a decision taken long ago; coffee and taxis are a decision taken this week. Only the second kind can be changed, and an ordinary report shows both alike.

So the app cuts the month in half: recurring payments — what repeats month to month at roughly the same amount — and everything else. It finds the recurring ones itself, in your own history, from the merchant and the amount repeating; nothing needs marking.

There is one practical use for it. The discretionary figure is your real room for manoeuvre. If 22,000 out of 30,000 is essential, then economising “a bit on everything” is pointless — the thing to negotiate with is the large part, not the eight thousand that goes on odds and ends anyway.

From the figure that surprised you to the actual purchase

1. 1

   You see a category that has grown against last month — touch it. It opens into the shops and merchants it was made of, sorted by amount.

2. 2

   From there one tap takes you to the transactions themselves: date, amount, note, and the attached receipt if you photographed it. This is the point at which “groceries got more expensive” turns into “two big shops instead of four”.

3. 3

   Change the period to a quarter or a year to see whether it is a one-off jump or a trend. A month is too short a window to tell them apart: one fridge makes “appliances” a record category without anything changing in your habits.

Where the statistics stop

• They show exactly what you recorded. A month with a missing week will look cheap, and the app has no way of knowing — which is why leaving the week empty is more useful than filling it in from memory.
• They do not forecast. There is no “at this rate you will spend so much”: a forecast from two weeks of a month is almost always wrong in a predictable direction while looking like a fact. Budget limits do the warning instead, at 80% and 100%.
• Cash is visible exactly as far as you record it. That is not a limitation of the app but a property of cash, and it is the same for any method of tracking.
• The investments, utilities and debts tabs show what your plan includes; some of them need Plus. An empty tab means you have no records of that kind yet, not that the feature is switched off.