Expense Over Time

Shows a chart with the Expenses per interval developing over time

A bar chart of the selected expense accounts' totals in each step between two dates, one bar group per step. Use it to see how your spending moves from week to week or month to month. report.exportCsv returns its data as CSV. In GnuCash: Reports ▸ Income & Expense ▸ Expense Chart.

The options that matter are Accounts/Accounts, General/Start Date and End Date, General/Step Size, and Display/Show Average, which averages over a longer period.

Examples

Example: with a copy of the reports/category-multi example book open as book.gnucash, at 2024-03-15T12:00:00Z.

JSON-RPC

Request:

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"report.run","params":{"report":"Expense Over Time","options":{"Accounts":{"Accounts":["a0000000000000000000000000000001"]},"General":{"Start Date":{"absolute":"2024-03-01"},"End Date":{"absolute":"2024-03-31"},"Step Size":"WeekDelta"}}}}

Response:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "result": {
    "title": "",
    "sections": [
      {
        "blocks": [
          {
            "kind": "chart",
            "type": "bar",
            "title": [
              "Expense Over Time",
              "03/01/24 to 03/31/24"
            ],
            "…": "…"
          },
          "…"
        ],
        "…": "…"
      },
      "…"
    ],
    "…": "…"
  }
}

Command line

red-ale exec --book book.gnucash report.run '{"report":"Expense Over Time","options":{"Accounts":{"Accounts":["a0000000000000000000000000000001"]},"General":{"Start Date":{"absolute":"2024-03-01"},"End Date":{"absolute":"2024-03-31"},"Step Size":"WeekDelta"}}}'

It prints:

{
  "title": "",
  "sections": [
    {
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "chart",
          "type": "bar",
          "title": [
            "Expense Over Time",
            "03/01/24 to 03/31/24"
          ],
          "…": "…"
        },
        "…"
      ],
      "…": "…"
    },
    "…"
  ],
  "…": "…"
}

MCP tool call

Tool call:

{"name":"report.run","arguments":{"report":"Expense Over Time","options":{"Accounts":{"Accounts":["a0000000000000000000000000000001"]},"General":{"Start Date":{"absolute":"2024-03-01"},"End Date":{"absolute":"2024-03-31"},"Step Size":"WeekDelta"}}}}

Result:

{
  "structuredContent": {
    "title": "",
    "sections": [
      {
        "blocks": [
          {
            "kind": "chart",
            "type": "bar",
            "title": [
              "Expense Over Time",
              "03/01/24 to 03/31/24"
            ],
            "…": "…"
          },
          "…"
        ],
        "…": "…"
      },
      "…"
    ],
    "…": "…"
  }
}

Template GUID: b1f15b2052c149df93e698fe85a81ea6 · Script: standard/category-barchart.rhai

Options

Accounts

Accounts (accountList, default []): Report on these accounts, if chosen account level allows.
Levels of Subaccounts (multichoice, default 2): Maximum number of levels in the account tree displayed.

Display

Show long account names (boolean, default false): Show the full account name in legend?
Chart Type (multichoice, default "barchart"): Select which chart type to use.
Use Stacked Charts (boolean, default true): Show charts as stacked charts?
Maximum Bars (numberRange, default 8): Maximum number of stacks in the chart.
Show table (boolean, default false): Display a table of the selected data.
Percentage chart (boolean, default false): Display account contributions as a percentage of the total value for the period.
Plot Width (plotSize, default {"percent":100}): Width of plot, 10 - 100 in percent, above in pixels.
Plot Height (plotSize, default {"percent":100}): Height of plot, 10 - 100 in percent, above in pixels.
Sort Method (multichoice, default "amount"): Choose the method for sorting accounts.
Show a grouped (indexed) tooltip (boolean, default false): Show all items, along the x-axis, in a grouped tooltip. Otherwise - only a single entry, as per coursor's nearest proximity.
Show only non-zero values in a tooltip (boolean, default true): Show only non-zero values in a tooltip.

General

Report name (string, default "Expense Over Time"): Enter a descriptive name for this report.
Stylesheet (multichoice, default "Default"): Select a stylesheet for the report.
Add options summary (multichoice, default "never"): Add summary of options.
Start Date (date, default {"relative":"start-accounting-period"}): Start of reporting period.
End Date (date, default {"relative":"end-accounting-period"}): End of reporting period.
Step Size (multichoice, default "MonthDelta"): The amount of time between data points.
Report's currency (currency, default "CURRENCY::USD"): Select the currency to display the values of this report in.
Price Source (multichoice, default "weighted-average"): The source of price information.
Show Average (multichoice, default "None"): Select whether the amounts should be shown over the full time period or rather as the average e.g. per month.