Expense summary generator: questions and guides
Each guide here answers one question with a practical example, then takes you to the tool to try it yourself. Guides: 15.
Questions
- How to summarise your store expensesHow to gather your store expenses by hand or from a CSV file and see totals per month and per category, without two currencies being added into one wrong number.
- How do I turn my bank statement CSV into a monthly expense summary?A bank export needs prep before import: map the Debit column to Amount by hand, add a currency column if missing, and remove incoming credits so they are not counted.
- I saved my expenses from Excel as CSV and the Arabic categories came out as gibberish or the file was refused. What went wrong?The expense summary reads UTF-8 files only, and Excel's older CSV option does not save Arabic that way. Save as CSV UTF-8, and keep the BOM option on when exporting.
- My spreadsheet dates are day/month/year. How do I convert them to 2026-01-05 style before importing?The expense summary accepts dates as YYYY-MM-DD only and lists anything else by row number. How to convert the date column in Excel first, and why the tool never guesses.
- I paid expenses in USD and AED over three months; which exchange rate should I type to get one total in my home currency?The tool applies the one rate you type for each currency to all its entries and fetches no rates itself. Use the rate your bank charged, or convert month by month.
- Why do my Kuwaiti dinar expenses show three decimals, and why did 1.2345 become 1.235?Each amount is kept in its currency's smallest unit: two decimals for SAR or AED, three for KWD, BHD, OMR and JOD, rounded once per entry before anything is added.
- An ad platform refunded part of a cancelled campaign; how do I record it so my ads total goes down?Enter the refund as its own negative line with the same category, and the ads total drops. What changes if you date it on arrival or use a separate category.
- Is an expense summary tool worth it if I can already build an Excel pivot table?The tool splits currencies automatically, lists unread rows by number and gives a ready PDF; a pivot table is more flexible for grouping, filtering and long-term files.
- Is it safe to load my company bank statement into an online expense summary tool?The file is read, totalled and exported inside your browser, and its contents are not uploaded to any server. It also means nothing is saved, so download before closing.
- How do I get my first-quarter expense total for each currency?The tool totals every row you give it and has no date filter. Feed it January to March only, and the total per currency is your quarter figure, with a line per month.
- Should I send my accountant the expense summary as PDF or CSV?Both files are built from the same table, so they never disagree: PDF is a fixed record to read and file, CSV is for reusing figures. Neither lists individual entries.
- Why does the tool say my amount is not a number when I typed 120 SAR?The amount cell must hold a number only; the currency goes in its own column as a three-letter code. Separators and Arabic digits work; '120 SAR' does not.
- I run two branches in Dubai and Abu Dhabi; how do I see each branch's expenses separately?The tool groups by month and by one category field only. Either run one summary per branch, or put the branch name at the start of each category. What each gives you.
- I picked a reporting currency but the converted total does not appear. What am I missing?A converted total appears only when every currency in your data has a valid rate, and the tool names the currencies still missing one rather than guessing.
- My yearly expense file has more than 2,000 rows and the import was refused. How do I summarise it?Import is tested up to 2,000 rows and 2 MB, and a larger file is refused whole rather than read in part. Split the year by date into halves and summarise each one.