Look beyond the largest number

Category breakdowns show where spending or income belongs. Open a category to inspect its trend and the transactions behind it, including larger entries and merchants. Reports also surface recurring patterns in merchant spending, so several small purchases can become visible together.

If you already use tags, the tag breakdown offers another view of those records. Creating new tags is a Pro or eligible-founder feature in 1.1; reading existing tagged records and their reports remains available without an active paid plan.

Review a month in four steps

  1. Open Reports, select Expenses and choose Month. Pick the month you want to review.
  2. Open a category that stands out. Check the underlying entries before deciding whether the total reflects a change in spending or a categorization mistake.
  3. Switch to Income to inspect recorded receipts, then Cash Flow to compare income, spending and net for the same period.
  4. Use what you learned to update a category budget or correct an entry in Transactions.

Reports provide a useful review routine even when you only record a few transactions each week. Looking at the entries behind a number is more informative than reacting to a chart on its own.

Read totals in context

Reports are built from the records you have added or imported. They cannot include a missing cash purchase, an unimported statement or income you have only estimated. An income plan is a budget assumption; it does not become recorded income until a transaction exists.

The selected period, account and category context can change what you are looking at. Check those details if two screens appear to disagree. Refund-style entries can also affect net totals, so inspect the underlying activity instead of expecting every view to equal a simple sum of outgoing payments.

Existing reports remain free in 1.1, including the ability to view your records after Pro ends. For your own analysis outside Penniva, create a free transaction CSV from Data & Privacy. That spreadsheet export is separate from a full backup.