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I run two branches in Dubai and Abu Dhabi; how do I see each branch's expenses separately?

The tool has no notion of a branch: it groups by month and by one category field. That leaves two approaches: a separate summary for each branch's entries, or the branch name at the start of the category, such as 'Dubai - Rent' and 'Abu Dhabi - Rent'. The first gives you each branch's total ready-made; the second puts both branches side by side in one report.

Published · 3 min read

Approach one: a summary per branch

We entered March expenses for the Dubai branch alone in the Expense summary generator tool: rent 8000 and salaries 12000 AED. The total came to 20,000.00 AED. We pressed 'Reset' and entered Abu Dhabi: rent 6500 and salaries 9000, which gave 15,500.00 AED.

  • Upside: each branch's total is a ready figure at the top of its summary, with short, clean categories.
  • Downside: two separate files, and comparing the branches means putting them side by side.
  • Suits you if each branch has a manager who gets their own summary, or its own expense file.

Approach two: branch name in the category

We entered all four expenses together with the categories 'Dubai - Rent', 'Dubai - Salaries', 'Abu Dhabi - Rent' and 'Abu Dhabi - Salaries'. The tool sorts categories alphabetically, so each branch's lines came out next to each other:

  • Abu Dhabi - Rent: 6,500.00 AED, and Abu Dhabi - Salaries: 9,000.00 AED.
  • Dubai - Rent: 8,000.00 AED, and Dubai - Salaries: 12,000.00 AED.
  • Total per currency: 35,500.00 AED from 4 entries.

Now every line for both branches is in one report, and you can compare Dubai's rent with Abu Dhabi's at a glance. But no line gives you Dubai's total alone; the total shown covers both branches. Nor is there a combined rent line, since rent is now two different categories.

How to choose

  1. If your question is 'how much did each branch spend?', approach one is quicker.
  2. If it is 'where do the two branches differ?', approach two is clearer.
  3. If you need both, use approach two for the monthly report and approach one when you need one branch's total.

Details that prevent mistakes

Write the prefix identically on every entry, with the same spaces and hyphen, because 'Dubai - Rent' and 'Dubai-Rent' are different categories. Capital letters do not matter, since 'Rent' and 'rent' are grouped together, but every other character does. If your file has one column for branch and another for category, build a new column in Excel that joins them, then map it to Category when importing. And if one branch trades in another currency, each currency stays on its own line and is never added in.

Common questions

Can I use the note column for the branch name?

You can type it there, but the tool does not group by note, so it will not show in the totals.

Do I need 'Reset' between the branches?

Yes, with approach one, so the first branch's entries do not stay in the second summary. Download the first summary before you reset.