Category pages

Every category and budget group in keel is a drill-down destination. Tap a category row anywhere — your reports, budgets, dashboard breakdown or a coaching insight — and its page opens, answering one question: is this category a problem, and what's driving it?

The page adapts to where you arrived from, so the framing matches what you were just looking at.

How it works

Hero — the month in one read

The top of the page shows the month's total, your typical monthly spend for the category, and a sentence explaining what the number means in context — pacing against your budget if you came from Budgets, or the month against your typical spend otherwise. Arrows step back through previous months.

Comparisons use your typical monthly spend rather than just last month, which is a more stable baseline for spotting genuine change. For regular bills that figure reflects the actual payment and its cadence; for everyday spending it's your median month, so one unusual month doesn't skew it.

Merchant breakdown

The top merchants in the category this month, each with this month's spend, 3-month average and the change between them. When two or more merchants drove a meaningful increase, keel names them: "3 merchants drove this month's increase: Costa +£42, Pret +£28, Starbucks +£18." Merchants appearing for the first time get a NEW pill.

The top 8 are shown; expand to see the rest. Tapping a merchant opens its merchant page.

One exception: for Interest & Finance Charges and Bank Fees & Charges, rows are split per account rather than per merchant. Three credit cards each charging "Interest Charge" are three separate facts about three accounts, not one merchant — so you see "Interest Charge — Amex Platinum" and tapping the row opens that account's page instead.

6-month trend

A chart of the category's monthly spend. It's honest about missing data: a genuine £0-spend month sits at the bottom of the chart, but months where keel has no imported data show as a gap, with an amber dot marking the last fully-covered month and "Not yet synced" on hover. Missing data never reads as "spent nothing".

Budget pacing

If the category has a budget, you'll see how the month is tracking: spend against budget, whether you're ahead or behind pace for this point in the month ("You're £40 ahead of pace"), and a daily allowance for what's left ("£12/day" for the remaining days).

If there's no budget yet, the page offers one-tap creation pre-filled with a realistic suggestion: "Based on your last 3 months, £180/month would be realistic." It's the same suggested figure you'd see on the Budgets screen — one source of truth.

Recent transactions

The latest 10 transactions in the category for the month, with a link to see all of them in the transaction list.

Good to know

• Budget groups drill down too — opening a group shows the combined picture across its child categories.
• Business-flagged transactions are excluded throughout; category pages show household spending only.
• Pacing compares your spend so far against the share of the budget you'd expect to have used by this day of the month — being "behind pace" on spending is a good thing.

FAQ

How do I get to a category page? Tap any category row in your reports, budgets or dashboard breakdown. There's no separate menu — categories are reached from wherever you're already looking at the number.

Why does the page look slightly different depending on where I came from? The opening sentence and back link adapt to the source. From Budgets, the hero leads with pacing; from your reports, it leads with the month against your average. Same data, framed for the question you arrived with.

Why is the merchant list showing accounts instead of merchants? You're on Interest & Finance Charges or Bank Fees & Charges. Interest isn't a shop you pay — it's a fact about an account — so keel splits those rows per account and links them to the account's page.

Why does my trend chart have a gap? keel has no imported data for those months — usually an account that hasn't been imported through that period. A measured £0 sits at the bottom of the chart instead; a gap means "don't know", not "nothing".