Expense Summary
The Expense Summary report breaks down your organization's recorded expenses by category, vendor, or time period, and compares spending against any category budgets you've set.
Overview
The Expense Summary report lets you:
- See your Total Expenses for a selected time period
- See your Total Budget when one or more expense categories have a budget configured
- Group expenses by Category, Vendor, or Period
- View a distribution chart showing each group's share of total spend
- Compare actual spending to budget by category (Budget vs Actual)
- Export the category breakdown to CSV
Navigate to the report
Go to Reports → Expenses in the sidebar (/reports/expenses). The Reports section requires the reports.read permission, so the report is available to roles that can view reporting.
Controls
The report header has three controls:
| Control | Options | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Group by | By Category, By Vendor, By Period | Determines how expenses are grouped in the charts and tables |
| Period | Last 30 days, Last 90 days, Last 12 months, Year to date | The date range the report covers. The default is the last 30 days |
| Export CSV | — | Downloads the category breakdown for the selected period as a CSV file |
What the report shows
Summary cards
| Card | Description |
|---|---|
| Total Expenses | The sum of all expenses recorded in the selected period |
| Total Budget | The combined budget of all categories that have a budget set. This card only appears when at least one category has a budget. When a budget exists, a percentage indicator shows how far actual spending is above or below budget |
Expense distribution
An "Expenses by Category / Vendor / Period" chart (matching your selected grouping) lists each group with its amount and percentage of total spend, shown as a progress bar.
Budget vs Actual
When you group By Category and at least one category has a budget, a Budget vs Actual table appears with these columns:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Category | The expense category name |
| Actual | Total spent in that category for the period |
| Budget | The category's configured budget amount (or — if none) |
| Variance | Budget minus actual. A positive value (shown in green) means you're under budget; a negative value (red) means over budget |
| Usage | Actual as a percentage of budget, with a progress bar. Values over 100% are highlighted |
Expense details
A final Expense Details table lists every group with these columns:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Category / Vendor / Period | The group name (matches the selected Group by) |
| Amount | Total spent for that group |
| Transactions | A per-group expense count. The report currently always reports this as 0, so this column does not yet reflect the real number of records |
| % of Total | The group's share of total spend, with a progress bar |
Expenses that have no category assigned appear as Uncategorized; expenses with no vendor appear as No Vendor when grouped by vendor.
Expense categories
Expense categories are not a fixed list — you create them yourself. Each financial category has a type of either Expense or Revenue, an optional color, and an optional budget (amount plus a budget period). Categories drive both the By Category grouping and the Budget vs Actual comparison in this report.
How expenses are recorded
Expenses can enter Ascent in a few ways:
- Manually — an expense record captures an amount, and optionally a description, date, vendor, category, financial account, and a reference (such as a check or receipt number). An expense can also be flagged as reimbursable.
- Recurring expenses — a recurring expense definition generates expense records automatically on its configured frequency.
- Stripe processing fees — when an invoice is paid through Stripe and your Stripe integration has a fee expense account configured, Ascent records the Stripe processing fee as an expense automatically. These fee expenses carry the description Stripe processing fee and use the Stripe charge ID as their reference. Fee recording is best-effort: if it fails, it never blocks or reverses the underlying payment.
All recorded expenses that fall within the selected period are included in this report.
Exporting
Click Export CSV to download the category breakdown for the current period. The file is named expense-summary-<date>.csv and contains a row per category with the amount, percentage of total, budget, and variance, followed by a total row.
Tips
- Set a budget on your expense categories to unlock the Budget vs Actual table and the over/under-budget indicator on the Total Budget card.
- Group By Vendor to see which suppliers account for the most spend, and By Period to track month-over-month trends across the last 12 months.
- Assign a category to every expense so spend doesn't pile up under Uncategorized.
For other financial reporting, see the Reports overview.