# Reports

> Net worth, income and expenses, spending by category, cash flow, a balance sheet and a trial balance, for any dates, by week, month, quarter or year.

From Simple Balance: https://smpl.money/docs/reports/. Updated 2026-10-25.


**Reports** shows your money six ways for any dates you pick: what your
accounts hold (**Net worth** and **Balance sheet**), what came in and went out
(**Income and expenses**), where it went by category (**Categories**), how cash
moved through your everyday accounts (**Cash flow**), and a check that the
books add up (**Trial balance**). Each currency is reported on its own, and
nothing on the page changes anything.

## Open a report and pick the dates

1. Open **Reports** in the sidebar. It starts on **Net worth**.
2. Pick a report from the tabs along the top: **Net worth**,
   **Income and expenses**, **Categories**, **Cash flow**, **Balance sheet** or
   **Trial balance**.
3. Set the dates with the **Viewing** bar. It starts on **This month**, and
   **All time** starts from the earliest date in your books.
4. Under **Options**, choose a **Group by** and whether to
   **Include archived accounts**.

The dates, the grouping and the archived setting are all in the page address,
so a bookmark or a link opens the same report, and switching tabs keeps them.
Figures stop at today in your own timezone, whatever end date you pick.
[Finding your way around](https://smpl.money/docs/finding-your-way-around/) covers the date bar.

![A net worth report with a separate table for each currency: checking, savings and a credit card totaled in dollars, and below it a euro account totaled in euros. No combined number appears anywhere.](https://smpl.money/screenshots/reports-light.webp)

_The money in this picture is made up. It's the real product, filled with
example spending._

## The six reports

| Report                  | The question it answers                         | Rows                                        | Grouped by default |
| ----------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- | ------------------ |
| **Net worth**           | What did my accounts hold, period by period?    | Each account, then **Total held**           | Monthly            |
| **Income and expenses** | Did more come in than went out?                 | **Income**, **Expenses**, then **Net**      | Monthly            |
| **Categories**          | Where did the money go, and where from?         | Each category, then **Total filed**         | One column         |
| **Cash flow**           | How did cash move through my everyday accounts? | Up to seven kinds of movement, then **Net** | Monthly            |
| **Balance sheet**       | What does each account hold on one date?        | Each account, then **Total held**           | One column         |
| **Trial balance**       | Do the books add up?                            | Every account, then **Total held**          | One column         |

### Net worth

"What your accounts held at the end of each period." One row for each
account, in alphabetical order, and **Total held** at the bottom: what you own
minus what you owe. Credit cards and loans count as negative. The last column,
**Closing**, is what each account held at the end of your dates. With more than
one column, a line chart is drawn above the table.
[What is net worth?](https://smpl.money/learn/net-worth/) explains why it's worth watching.

### Income and expenses

"What came in and what went out over each period." Two rows, **Income** and
**Expenses**, with expenses shown as negative, and **Net** at the bottom: what
you kept, or how much you overspent. The **Total** column adds up the periods.
A refund lowers **Expenses**, and a transfer between your own accounts is in
neither row. Grouped by month, it's drawn as bars.

### Categories

"Where the money went and where it came from, by what you filed it under." One
row for each category with money in your dates, spending and income categories
alike. Spending and income both count as positive amounts here, and a refund
lowers its category's figure. The biggest is first and **Uncategorized** is
last.

- A category used both ways, such as one set to **Income or expense**, shows as
  two rows, like "Side work (income)" and "Side work (expense)".
  **Uncategorized** can show twice the same way.
- **Total filed** adds up every row on screen, income and spending together, so
  it isn't what you kept. **Income and expenses** answers that.
- It's one column by default. Group it by month to see each category over time,
  drawn as bars.
- This is the only report where you can
  [leave a category out of the view](https://smpl.money/docs/reports/#leave-a-category-out-of-the-view).

### Cash flow

"Movements in and out of the accounts you can spend from, by where the money
came from and went to." It counts only **Checking**, **Savings** and **Cash**
accounts, and sorts each movement by the account on the other side of it:

| Row                           | What lands in it                                                                         |
| ----------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Earning and spending**      | Pay, purchases, bills and refunds: money that came in as income or went out as spending. |
| **Investing**                 | Money to or from investment, crypto and other asset accounts.                            |
| **Borrowing and repaying**    | Money to or from credit cards, loans and other debts, such as paying a card bill.        |
| **Between your own accounts** | Transfers between two of your checking, savings and cash accounts.                       |
| **Currency exchange**         | The other side of moving money between two currencies.                                   |
| **Opening balances**          | The starting balances of these accounts.                                                 |
| **Other**                     | Anything that fits none of the rows above.                                               |

Money coming in is positive and money going out is negative, and **Net** is how
much these accounts went up or down. Archiving an account isn't counted as
money moving.

The page says why this won't match **Income and expenses**: "Cash flow will not
match income and expenses, and the gap is widest if you use a credit card. A
card purchase is an expense the day you make it; the cash leaves when you pay
the bill, in a different period and under borrowing and repaying. Both figures
are right." [How to budget with a credit card](https://smpl.money/learn/budget-with-a-credit-card/)
goes into that gap.

### Balance sheet

"What every account holds, as of one date." The same accounts as
**Net worth**, in one column headed with the date it's as of: the end of your
dates, or today if that's earlier. Group it by month or year to see it over
time.

### Trial balance

"Every account including the ledger's own counter-accounts. It totals zero when
the books are whole." Every entry in Simple Balance is recorded on two sides,
and this report lists both: your accounts, plus the accounts on the other side
of your entries, which are **Income**, **Expenses**, **Opening Balances** and
**Currency Exchange**. Each currency has its own set, and each of these appears
once something uses it.

**Total held** at the bottom should be zero. Archived accounts are always
listed here, whatever the checkbox says.
[How deposits, withdrawals and transfers work](https://smpl.money/docs/accounts-and-transactions/)
explains the two sides.
On your own copy, it's also the check [Backups](https://smpl.money/docs/backups/) uses after a
restore.

## Group by and charts

**Group by**, under **Options**, decides the columns:

- **Default grouping**: each report's own, from the table above.
- **One column**: the whole date range at once.
- **Weekly**, **Monthly**, **Quarterly** or **Yearly**: one column per period.
  Weeks start on Monday.

With more than one column, a chart appears above the table: a line for
**Net worth**, **Balance sheet** and **Trial balance**, and bars for the other
three. Each column is headed by its first day, and the first and last columns
are cut to your dates, so a range starting on the 16th starts its first column
on the 16th. With one column, the heading is the date a balance is as of, or
the start and end dates for the other reports.

The last column is **Closing** on the three balance reports, which is what each
account held at the end, and **Total** on the others, which adds up the
columns.

A report can draw at most 600 columns. Weekly over twelve years is too many,
and the page says "That range needs more than 600 week columns, which is the
most a report will draw. Ask for a coarser bucket or a shorter range." Pick a
longer grouping or shorter dates.

## Archived accounts

**Include archived accounts** starts off, and it means something different on
each kind of report. The page says which under the options.

- **Net worth** and **Balance sheet**: off, an archived account that held
  nothing during your dates isn't listed, but what it held before it was
  archived is still in the figures. On, every archived account is listed.
  Either way, an archived account has "(archived)" after its name.
- **Trial balance**: every account is always listed.
- **Income and expenses**, **Categories** and **Cash flow**: off, what was
  earned and spent through archived accounts is left out. On, it's counted.

Budgets work the other way: they count spending through archived accounts
unless you turn it off. [Budgets](https://smpl.money/docs/budgets/#the-two-checkboxes) says why.

## More than one currency

Each currency gets its own panel, headed with its code, like **USD**, and
"As of" the last day counted. Your default currency comes first. Nothing is
ever added across currencies, because there are no exchange rates to add them
with. [More than one currency](https://smpl.money/docs/multiple-currencies/) covers the rest.

## Leave a category out of the view

One huge category, like rent or a tax bill, can flatten every other bar on the
chart. On **Categories**, you can set it aside for a moment:

1. Press the **⋯** button on the category's row.
2. Choose **Exclude from this view**.

The row and its part of the chart go, and the totals are worked out again from
the rows still on screen. A line above the report says "Left out of this view:"
and names each one. Press a name to put it back, or **Put all back** for all of
them.

This changes nothing stored. Switching to another report or leaving the page
forgets it, and an AI assistant you've connected still sees every category.

## From a figure to what's behind it

- **An account's name**, on **Net worth** and **Balance sheet**, opens that
  account's page for the same dates. **Show register** there lists every entry
  with the balance before and after it, which is where to look when a balance
  is wrong. [Accounts](https://smpl.money/docs/accounts/) has more.
- **A category's name**, on **Categories**, opens that category's page for the
  same dates. **Uncategorized** doesn't link anywhere: find those on
  [Transactions](https://smpl.money/docs/transactions/).
- **What changed and when** is on **Activity**.
  [Activity history](https://smpl.money/docs/activity-history/) covers it.

## When a report is empty

With nothing to show for your dates, the page says
**Nothing in this view to report** and suggests turning on
**Include archived accounts**, in case the money went through an account you've
archived. With that box on, it says **Nothing to report yet** instead. Either
way it offers **Add a transaction**. Dates that start after today show nothing,
because that money hasn't moved yet.