Summary, Trends and Breakdown are three separate report screens, one persistent scope bar, and a rule that every figure they show opens to the expenses behind it.
Summary opens on a single number — this month's cost or cash out — and immediately surrounds it with the context needed to judge it: where it went, what is already paid for, and who logged it.
$2,840
$1,190 actually left your accounts
| Category | Amount | Share | Txns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Groceries | $610 | 21% | 9 |
| Insurance | $310 | 11% | 2 |
| Utilities | $240 | 8% | 3 |
The hero figure is labelled September so far · true cost on a cost basis, or · cash out on a cash basis, with a sub-line spelling out the other number: on cost basis it reads “actually left your accounts”, on cash basis it reads “of cost allocated to this month”. Underneath it, a tappable line reads “{n} expenses contributing” and opens the full list.
Where it's going lists the top five categories for the month, with columns for the amount, its share of those top categories, and how many transactions made it up, and a link through to the full category list in Breakdown.
Three more cards round out Summary: how far ahead you are already covered, the single largest thing you spent on, and — once more than one person is logging expenses — who logged what.
$4,300
Paid already, covering you through July 2027
| Expense | Date | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Car insurance | Sep 3 | $1,200 |
| Name | Amount | Share | Txns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priya | $1,640 | 58% | 11 |
| Dev | $1,200 | 42% | 5 |
Who logged the expense, not who owes what — this app does not do settlement.
| Name | Amount | Share | Txns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Household | $2,840 | 71% | 14 |
| Goa trip | $1,160 | 29% | 6 |
Already committed is the prepaid balance still ahead of you, with a sub-line naming the last month it covers. Biggest in {Month} ranks expenses by their full amount rather than the slice landing in this month, so a large annual bill shows up as itself even in a month that only carries a fraction of it. Once more than one person has logged an expense, Who spent it appears with the verbatim reminder that it records who logged the expense, not who owes what. Across your groups stays visible even while you are filtered to a single group, because a trip running hot is exactly what a single-group view would otherwise hide.
Trends is one time series with a granularity switch: Week, Month or Year. There is deliberately no Daily view — a month of date-and-amount rows answers a question almost nobody asks.
| Month | Cost | Cash out | Difference | Txns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2026 | $2,410 | $2,410 | +$0 | 16 |
| Aug 2026 | $2,690 | $1,510 | +$1,180 | 18 |
| Sep 2026 | $2,840 | $1,190 | +$1,650 | 14 |
Committed / prepaid ahead
| Month | Cost | Cash out | Difference | Txns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2026 | $390 | $0 | +$390 | 0 |
Month and Year tables share the same five columns: Month / Year, Cost, Cash out, Difference, Txns. The Difference column carries the tooltip “Cost minus cash out for the month”. A divider labelled “Committed / prepaid ahead” separates rows that are still in the future — months already covered by an expense that has been paid or scheduled.
The Week table drops to Week / Cash out / Txns and shows the last 12 weeks, because weeks are cash-only. The footer beneath the month view reads: “Window: {n} months back, 6 ahead. Future months hold coverage from expenses already paid or already scheduled.”
Breakdown has exactly three dimensions — Category, Person and Group — chosen with a segmented control. There is no Account dimension: the field exists on an expense, but nothing here aggregates by it.
| Category | Trend | Total | Monthly avg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Groceries | $3,150 | $525 | |
| Insurance | $1,860 | $310 |
Category rows form a tree: a parent with children can be expanded and collapsed, and its own total already includes everything beneath it. The Trend column is a sparkline of the category across the lookback window, always the same blue as the rest of the app, never colour-coded up or down. The Monthly avg column carries the tooltip “Averages elapsed months only, so future committed months never dilute it.”
Person and Group appear as extra tabs only once they would say something: Person needs more than one person logging expenses, Group needs more than one group in the scope. Every screen ends with the same footer, naming whichever dimension is active: “Tap any category, person or group to see the expenses behind it.”
A single persistent strip — not three separate headers — controls the group, the month, the lookback window, the currency and the Cost/Cash basis, and it lives entirely in the URL.
The group picker includes an “All groups combined” option alongside each individual group. Lookback is a three-way choice of 6m / 12m / 24m. The Cost pill means “what this month cost, with annual bills spread across the months they cover”; Cash means “what actually left your accounts”. Because every one of those choices is encoded in the URL, a report view — this group, this month, this basis — is a link you can send someone and have it open exactly as you left it.
Tap any category, month, year or week figure and a sheet lists the individual expenses behind it, filtered from data the screen already has — so opening it costs nothing extra.
| Expense | Amount |
|---|---|
| Total | $310 |
| Car insurance $100 of $1,200 · spread over 12 months | $100 |
| Home contents $210 of $2,520 · spread over 12 months | $210 |
On a phone the sheet rises from the bottom; on a wider screen it opens as a centred modal. Either way it starts with a Total row, then lists every expense that makes up the figure you tapped. A bill spread across months shows the slice landing here alongside the payment it came from — the row above reads “$100 of $1,200 · spread over 12 months”.
The per-person and per-group rows on Summary and Breakdown do not open this sheet — they are a comparison, not a drill-down. It is specifically category, month, year and week figures that do.
Every past month is compared against a typical recent month and against the same month last year; the current month is compared against the same day of a typical month instead, because a part-month total against a whole month is not a fair fight.
For a past month you see two chips: “vs typical month” and “vs last year”. For the month in progress you see one: “vs day {n} of a typical month”, comparing like with like instead of six days of spending against thirty. Each chip renders as a percentage, or as a signed absolute amount when there is no baseline large enough to divide by.
When there is not enough history to compare honestly, the chip is hidden rather than shown as +0%. A missing chip is a real signal here, not a bug — it means the app would rather say nothing than say something misleading.
From the third day of the current month onward, Summary projects a month-end figure by splitting spending into three kinds, because multiplying a big one-off payment by the days in the month produces a wildly wrong forecast.
The projection holds out anything fixed and already counted for the whole month, holds out anything one-off and counts it exactly once instead of repeating it, and only extrapolates the remaining day-to-day rate forward to the end of the month. A $1,200 insurance payment on the 3rd of the month is counted once, not multiplied by thirty days and divided back down — which is the naive calculation that would otherwise put the projection more than double a typical month.
Reports are read-only, connected, and single-currency by design — each limit is a stated trade-off, not an oversight.
SharedExpense is free and runs in the browser. Sign in to open Summary, Trends and Breakdown against your own spending.