The Spending Breakdown tab offers a comprehensive view of where your money is going. It helps you categorize, analyze, and track your spending trends to make smarter financial decisions. Let’s walk through its key components and how you can use them to control costs and optimize expenses:
1. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
This shows the total cost of producing or purchasing the goods or services your business sells.
Why It’s Useful:
Helps you calculate gross profit margins.
Offers insights into how much of your revenue is consumed by production costs.
2. Payroll Spending
Tracks your total payroll expenses, including salaries, wages, and employee benefits.
Why It’s Useful:
Allows you to evaluate labor costs as a percentage of total expenses.
Helpful for assessing whether your workforce expenses align with your revenue.
3. Operating Expenses
Includes non-COGS operational costs such as utilities, rent, and administrative expenses.
Why It’s Useful:
Identifies recurring operational costs that could be optimized.
Separates these from production costs to simplify expense analysis.
4. Other
Captures all miscellaneous expenses that don’t fit into the primary categories above.
Why It’s Useful:
Helps account for every dollar spent, ensuring no hidden costs.
Great for catching irregular or one-off expenses that might require closer scrutiny.
5. Total Spending and Pie Chart
Summarizes your spending for the selected date range and visualizes its breakdown into categories like COGS, Operating Expenses, Payroll, and Other.
Why It’s Useful:
Gives a quick snapshot of your financial priorities.
Identifies the largest spending categories at a glance.
Pro Tip: Hover over the pie chart segments to see exact percentages for each category.
6. Top Vendors
Lists the vendors your business spends the most with, ranked by total spend.
Why It’s Useful:
Highlights key vendor relationships and their financial impact.
Helps you negotiate better terms with high-spend vendors.
Pro Tip: Click View All Vendors for a detailed report of your vendor transactions.
7. Top Transactions
Displays the most significant individual transactions within the selected period, sorted by amount.
Why It’s Useful:
Offers transparency into large expenses.
Enables you to verify high-value transactions.
Pro Tip: Click View All Transactions to dive deeper into your financial history.
8. Spending by Category
Breaks down spending over the months within the selected date range, categorized by expense type (e.g., Manufacturing, Accounting Fees, Travel).
Why It’s Useful:
Shows monthly trends, helping you identify seasonal or recurring patterns.
Facilitates budget planning by clarifying how categories fluctuate over time.
Pro Tip: Monitor categories with sudden spikes to detect unexpected or unnecessary expenses.
9. Total Spending by Month
At the bottom, a filled line graph visualizes total monthly spending trends over the selected period.
Why It’s Useful:
Quickly reveals which months had higher or lower expenses.
Enables you to correlate spending spikes with specific projects, events, or operational changes.
Pro Tip: Use this graph to forecast future spending and align budgets with predictable patterns.
Final Tips
Adjust Date Range: Use the date selector to refine your view for specific periods like quarters or fiscal years.
Focus on Optimization: Pair this tab with the Vendor Trends tab to find areas where renegotiation or expense trimming can save costs.
Regular Review: Check this tab monthly to ensure your spending aligns with your business strategy.
The Spending Breakdown tab transforms your raw expense data into actionable insights, helping you understand your spending habits and make informed adjustments. Take control of your finances today!