Reports: what each one answers
Free · some sections and the export are Premium
Where the money came in and went out — by category, business against personal, compared with the previous period, and by project. One correction most apps skip: a report shows one currency at a time.
The questions the reports answer
Menu › Reports. The screen is one page of sections, top to bottom, most of them for the period, the currency and the side chosen above them.
- By category — where the money went and where it came from: Expenses by Category and Income by Category, and the Category breakdown, with the subcategories underneath. The dashboard ring is the quick version: tap a slice to see its movements. Category Trend follows one category, or one of its subcategories, across the period.
- Professional vs personal — the two sides next to each other, each with its income, expense and balance; it appears in the Both mode.
- Against the previous period — income, expense and balance of the period beside those of the period just before it. From version 1.7.4 a period of whole months is compared with the same number of whole months before it — This Month in October against September — and any other period with the same number of days just before it.
- By project (Premium) — what a job, a client or a site cost and earned in total, across categories and months, on one card per currency, with the documents still to receive or to pay. It appears once Projects are switched on.
- Customers and suppliers (Premium) — Entity statements (outstanding): what is still open with each customer or supplier; and Top entities by volume: the five with the largest volume of documents. Both count the documents of all time, not only those of the period.
- Cash flow ahead (Premium) — Cashflow forecast: the next 30, 90 and 365 days, counted from today, whatever the period.
- Income vs Expense (Premium) — the two lines across the period, day by day or month by month.
Also free, around these: the Summary (income, expense and balance), the Metrics (savings rate and daily average), Top Expenses and Top transfers, By currency and Account balances. From version 1.7.4 the Daily Average divides the expense by the days already lived in the period — 16 on the 16th of the month — and a period that has ended by all its days. The Customize sections icon at the top hides and shows sections; the Premium ones are listed there with a padlock. From version 1.7.4 a section switched off stays off after the app closes, on that phone.
One currency at a time
A report in euros and a report in dollars are two reports. Summing them into one figure would produce a number that means nothing, and the app will not do it. The dashboard total is the exception, and it says so: every account converted to the default currency at the rates in use — automatic (Premium) or the ones you typed, which always win.
Period, currency and side
The period: This Month, Last Month, Last 3 Months, Last 6 Months, This Year, All time, or Custom, between two dates. The currency, when the book has more than one: one at a time. The side, in the Both mode: PRO · ALL · PER, the same three buttons as on the dashboard. In the exclusive modes only the active side is shown. There is no filter by account or by category: the project is picked inside By project, and the category inside Category Trend.
From version 1.7.4 Reports opens the way it was last left: the sections chosen in Customize sections, the period — with its dates, for Custom —, the currency and PRO · ALL · PER. The choice is kept on this phone only: it survives closing the app and Reset Data, and does not travel to the other devices. A relative period is kept as the period, not as its dates: This Month is always the month of the day the screen is opened. A saved currency that no account or movement uses any more is set aside, and the report falls back to the default currency, as when nothing was saved. In the exclusive modes the side is the mode's; the saved one is kept for when both sides are back.
Exporting a report
The share icon at the top › Export PDF or Export XLS (Premium). From version 1.7.4 the file carries the sections the screen shows, in the same order — the Income vs Expense chart, Category Trend once a category is picked in it, the comparison with the previous period and the cash-flow forecast included — and the sections switched off in Customize sections stay out; amounts and percentages follow the number format of the settings. The XLS also has a sheet per account: the account's statement for the period. From version 1.7.8 that sheet lists every movement of the account in the period, whatever PRO · ALL · PER shows, and its Balance column starts from the account's balance when the period opens and ends at its balance on the period's last day; before, it started from zero, and a category the app comes with appeared as an internal code such as cat_food. When the balance at the start is not zero, the first row says what it is: Balance at period start, dated the period's first day, or — when nothing moved on the account before the period — Initial Balance, dated the day the opening balance counts from (see accounts). An opening balance that counts from a day inside the period comes as a line of its own on that day. The Top transfers sheet has a From Account and a To Account column, and the wallet is called Wallet there and in Account balances, where it read Cash. The account sheets of the XLS in Settings › Export Data are written the same way, first row included. The Entity statements (outstanding) sheet keeps the balance of each customer or supplier, and their documents have a sheet of their own, Documents by entity, with a Paid column; the movements of each project are on Transactions by project. Before version 1.7.8, in half of the app’s languages, English included, the documents were written over the balances. In neither export do two sheets share a name: one that would meet another — an account named like a section, or two accounts whose names start with the same 31 characters, the most a sheet’s name holds — ends in (2), (3)… Then Save to device or Share. For the accountant, the package described in Handing everything to the accountant is the better vehicle: it carries the documents, not just the figures.
Questions
- Why does a report show one currency at a time?
- Adding euros to dollars in one total would give a number that means nothing, and the app refuses to. Pick the currency; the dashboard total, by contrast, converts every account to the default currency at the rates in use.
- Which reports are free?
- Most of them: the summary and metrics, the expense and income rings, Category Trend, the top expenses and transfers, Professional vs personal, the comparison with the previous period, the category breakdown, By currency and Account balances. Premium adds the Income vs Expense chart, By project, Entity statements, Top entities by volume and the Cashflow forecast — and exporting a report to PDF or XLS.
- Can a report be filtered by account or by category?
- No. A report is filtered by period, currency and side. The accounts appear in Account balances and, in the XLS export, on a sheet each; a category is followed in Category Trend.
Related guides
Checked against ZeniCash 1.5.0 on 2026-09-10. Where a feature is Premium, it says so.