DownloadChart filters
Chart filters are a simple but powerful way to make your summaries more meaningful and different time periods easier to compare.
They’re especially useful when an unusually large or infrequent transaction distorts your weekly, monthly or quarterly charts. By choosing which summaries a transaction appears in, you can keep short-term comparisons representative while still including it in longer-term trends.
They can also come in handy for shared transactions when you and a friend have different ideas about how something should be represented.
When is it useful?
Imagine you normally spend around $3,000–$3,500 per month on rent, food, entertainment, clothing and other everyday expenses.
Then, in May, you pay $1,800 for your annual health insurance.
By default, that payment appears on all charts. Suddenly, May looks much more expensive than April or June – even though your everyday spending hasn’t really changed. Monthly comparisons become less meaningful, making it harder to see whether your regular spending is going up or down, or whether you’re staying within your usual budget.
- Everyday spending
- Annual insurance
Simply edit the insurance transaction and exclude it from Weekly and Monthly charts. Since it’s an annual expense, you can exclude it from Quarterly charts too.
Now your monthly comparison tells a much clearer story. April, May and June continue to reflect the trend in your everyday spending, while your yearly charts still include the full $1,800 insurance payment.
- Everyday spending
- Annual insurance
- Everyday spending
- Annual insurance
Another way
You can always represent larger expenses or income your own way.
Instead of keeping the 1,800 annual insurance payment as a yearly expense, for example, you could split it into 12 parts and record 150 each month, perhaps using a recurring transaction.
Neither approach is inherently better. Chart filters simply let you decide how the original transaction should behave without having to split it manually.
Weekly or Monthly charts
For most everyday transactions, there’s little reason to change the default.
Unless you’re paid weekly, regularly compare your spending week by week or use widgets and charts with a weekly range, excluding everyday transactions from Weekly charts probably won’t make much difference.
A transaction included in a shorter period is automatically included in longer periods too. So if it appears on Weekly charts, it also appears on Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly charts.
The differences become much more meaningful when you start excluding transactions from Monthly or Quarterly charts – particularly large or infrequent expenses and income.
What does “Never” do?
Never works differently from the other options.
It lets you keep a transaction in Commingle while completely excluding it from your financial calculations. The transaction still appears in your transaction list and remains searchable, but it doesn’t affect your charts, summaries, net worth, wallet balances, calendar summaries or balance-related reminders.
This can be useful when you want to keep something purely as a record or memo.
It can also help with shared transactions. If you and a friend can’t agree on how a transaction should be represented, you can set the shared transaction to Never on your side and recreate its financial impact with your own personal transaction instead.
The shared transaction remains as a record, while your own summaries reflect it in the way that makes sense to you.