Charts
A chart can be drawn above the account tree. Choose it from the Chart menu in the toolbar, or View ▸ Chart. Each report remembers its own choice; No Chart gives all the room to the tree.
| Report | Charts |
|---|---|
| Income Statement | Income & Expenses · Money Flow · Treemap · Sunburst |
| Balance Sheet | Net Worth Over Time · Allocation by Commodity · Treemap · Sunburst |
| Trial Balance | None |
Things every chart shares
Section titled “Things every chart shares”- Expand Chart — the ⤢ button, View ▸ Expand Chart or ⇧⌘E — lets the chart take the whole window. Esc or the same button brings the accounts back.
- A chart draws one currency: the one you are converting to, otherwise your first operating currency. Amounts in other currencies are not mixed in.
- Charts follow the period, the filter and the conversion.
- Hover over any bar, point, band or slice for its exact figure. The figures in tooltips and labels are the exact ones from Beancount; only percentages are rounded.
- Colours were tested for colour-blind readers in light and dark mode, and no chart relies on colour alone: there is always a label, a legend, a fixed order or a tooltip.
Income & Expenses
Section titled “Income & Expenses”Your money per interval: income (green), expenses (red) and, optionally, net profit (blue) — what was left each month. It needs columns. With No Columns it asks you to pick monthly, quarterly or yearly.
Use it to spot the expensive months and whether you are saving steadily.
One account
Section titled “One account”The chart can show a single account instead of everything, such as Expenses:Food or just Expenses:Food:Restaurants, period by period. A parent includes all its subaccounts. To pick one:
- ⌘-click an income or expense account in the table, or right-click it and choose Show in Chart.
- Select a row and choose View ▸ Chart ▸ Show Selected Account in Chart (⌥⌘K).
- Click the magnifying glass above the chart and search for it. Type part of the name and press Return to take the first match.
The account’s row in the table gets a small chart symbol. Above the chart, breadcrumbs show where you are: All › Expenses › Food › Restaurants. Click a step to go up to that parent, or All (or View ▸ Chart ▸ Show All in Chart) to see everything again.
The account stays when you change the period or the filter. If it has nothing in the new period, the chart says so instead of switching to another one. The treemap and the sunburst share the same choice: picking Expenses:Food also zooms them into Food, and clicking a category there picks it here.
Chart types
Section titled “Chart types”The control at the top right of the chart draws the same figures in four ways. The whole report and a single account each remember their own type.
| Type | Everything | One account |
|---|---|---|
| Bars | Income, expenses and net profit side by side | One bar per period |
| Lines | One line per series. Easier to follow the trend over many periods | One line |
| Stacked | Expenses split by top-level category (Food, Home…) next to a grey income bar for reference | Each bar split into its subaccounts, so you can see what went up |
| Cumulative | Running totals of income and expenses since the start of the period. The gap between them is what you have saved so far | The running total: “how much have I spent on this so far this year” |
- In Stacked, colours follow the subaccounts in alphabetical order, like the treemap, so a category keeps its colour. Postings on the parent itself appear as “Name (direct)”. An account with no subaccounts is drawn as bars, and a note says so.
- The tooltip gives each exact amount and the change from the previous period (rounded to one decimal). In Stacked it lists the total and then the largest subaccounts.
Options
Section titled “Options”At the bottom of the Chart menu (toolbar or View ▸ Chart):
- Show Net Profit hides or shows the net profit series. It does not apply to Stacked.
- Show Average draws a dashed line at the average per period, and gives the exact figure above the chart. Empty periods count: an account used in one month of twelve averages over twelve. It is not drawn on Cumulative, where a per-period average means nothing.
Money Flow
Section titled “Money Flow”Where the money came from and where it went, as flowing bands — a Sankey diagram: income sources on the left, a trunk in the middle, expense categories on the right, and Savings — what was not spent.
- Two levels per side:
Expenses:Homeand thenHome:Electricity,Home:Rent… - Accounts that are only a passage (one child, nothing of their own) are merged into one label, such as
Work:Salary. - Very small subaccounts (under about 0.4 % of the total) are not broken down, to keep the diagram readable.
- An expense category with a negative total — more refunds than purchases — is money coming in, so it is drawn on the income side. That way the diagram always balances, and Savings equals the report’s Net Profit.
- If you spent more than you earned, a Deficit band appears on the income side, in place of Savings.
- Hover a band or a node for its exact amount and its share of the total, the same way the treemap and the sunburst do. The trunk is the total, so it shows no percentage.
It reads best over a full year. With a filter that only leaves expenses, everything comes out of Deficit; a treemap suits that case better.
Treemap and Sunburst
Section titled “Treemap and Sunburst”Both show parts of a whole, with hierarchy: what fraction of your expenses is housing, and within housing what fraction is rent. The treemap uses nested rectangles; the sunburst uses concentric rings, the top level in the centre.
- A segmented control above the chart chooses the section: Income or Expenses in the Income Statement; Assets, Liabilities or Equity in the Balance Sheet.
- Click a category to zoom into it. A ‹ All Expenses button appears to go back, with the name of the account you are in.
- Colours go by top-level category in alphabetical order, not by size, so Food keeps its colour when you change the period.
- These charts cannot draw negative amounts. Accounts with a negative total are left out, and a note says how many: “2 accounts with a negative total not drawn”.
- If an account has postings of its own as well as subaccounts, its own part appears as “Name (direct)”.
Net Worth Over Time
Section titled “Net Worth Over Time”A line with Assets plus Liabilities at the end of each interval across the period. It is the Balance Sheet in motion, and the quickest answer to “am I better off than a year ago?”. Hover to read the net worth on any date.
Its last point equals Assets + Liabilities in the report below, under the same conversion. With Units selected it falls back to your operating currency, since a single line needs a single unit.
Allocation by Commodity
Section titled “Allocation by Commodity”How your Assets are split by commodity — euros, dollars, each fund, each coin — valued in one currency at the end of the period. The bars add up to the Assets total of the Balance Sheet.
If a commodity has no price into that currency it cannot be valued, and a note lists it: “No price into EUR for: XYZ. Not shown.” Add a price directive to include it.
For the detail of each investment, go to Portfolio.