---
title: "Spending by Category from a Bank CSV | Cedar Ledger"
description: "Paste or drop a bank statement CSV to see spending totalled by category, with a chart, keyword rules and CSV export. The file never leaves your device."
url: https://cedarledger.bond/spending-by-category/
---

# Spending by category

Drop in the CSV your bank lets you download, or paste a few lines, and see where the money went, totalled by category. The file is read by your browser and never uploaded.

## By category

Total spending $2,171.25 25 payments, 2026-10-01 to 2026-10-30 · 2 money-in rows left out

| Category | Total | Share | Payments | Bar |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Housing | $1,150.00 | 53% | 1 |  |
| Groceries | $408.72 | 18.8% | 6 |  |
| Transport | $149.80 | 6.9% | 4 |  |
| Utilities | $140.94 | 6.5% | 3 |  |
| Fun & subscriptions | $67.99 | 3.1% | 3 |  |
| Insurance | $64.10 | 3% | 1 |  |
| Cash & transfers | $60.00 | 2.8% | 1 |  |
| Eating out | $42.50 | 2% | 3 |  |
| Shopping | $23.75 | 1.1% | 1 |  |
| Health | $18.45 | 0.8% | 1 |  |
| Uncategorised | $45.00 | 2.1% | 1 |  |
| Total | $2,171.25 | 100% | 25 |  |

## Payments

Change a payment's category here; the totals follow. These choices are not saved.

## From a statement to category totals

Most online banking and card accounts can download transactions as a CSV file, often under "Export" or "Download transactions". Drop that file on the box, choose it with the button, or paste the rows.

The tool guesses which columns hold the date, description and amount from the header names, or from the values when there is no header; check its guesses under "Columns and amounts". Some files have one signed amount column, others separate money-out and money-in columns. Spending is usually negative in a bank account export and positive on a card statement; rows on the other side, such as pay or refunds, are counted as money in and left out.

Each payment goes to the first category whose keyword starts a word in its description. Edit the rules to match the names on your statement; they are saved in this browser. Anything unmatched lands in Uncategorised, where you can pick a category payment by payment. In the table, each bar is a category's total scaled to the largest one.

For comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Surveys find that housing and transportation are the two largest areas of spending for US households.

**Tip:** if a payment shows a web address you do not recognise, look the domain up with [WebTraceCheck's free DNS and domain lookup](https://webtracecheck.com/dns-lookup) to see the records behind it before you contact your bank about it.

## Sources

- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, [Consumer Expenditure Surveys](https://www.bls.gov/cex/).
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, [Consumer tips for managing spending](https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/201702_cfpb_Consumer-Tips-on-Managing-Spending.pdf) (PDF): tracking spending by category over a week or a month.

## Questions

**Is my bank statement uploaded?**

No. Your browser reads the file and does the sums on your device. Transactions are kept only while the page is open; only your category rules are saved, under the key cedarledger-rules.

**Why are my amounts wrong?**

Check the decimal separator: files from much of Europe write 12,50 for twelve and a half. Also check that the amount column is the payment and not the running balance.

**A payment is in the wrong category. What now?**

The first matching rule wins, so move a more specific line higher, or pick the category for that payment in the list.