Understanding a company's expense structure can offer valuable insights into potential cost-reduction opportunities and effective strategies for boosting productivity.   

To generate Spend Analytics, log into the Mesh platform with your Admin, Pro or Auditor profile and navigate to the Analytics page (previously named Reports).     

This is what the page looks like. The following sections will discuss the main features and functionality.

Features/Functionality

1. Filters 

• The Reports module includes basic filters (i.e., Dates, Category, Sub-Category, Employee, Location) and filters named after Custom Fields that were created and enabled for reporting on the Mesh platform. 
• For each filter, you can use the default settings (i.e., all the items are checked/selected) or click on the drop-down list, uncheck the Select All option, and then mark the relevant fields for analysis. 
• When one of the items in the dropdown filter is selected it affects the other filters. For example, if you select Entertainment as a category, the Sub-Category filter will include the relevant fields corresponding to that selection. 
• To reset a filter to its default values (e.g., all selected) click on the 3 dots in the upper right corner of the filter.  

2. Charts/Visuals

• The filters you decide to use affect the charts on the right-hand side. 
• For a given analysis, users can click on a specific part of a chart to further drill down and present data that is relevant to that selection. For example, clicking on a user's name presents his spending by category, and clicking on a category shows a breakdown for the time frame selected (e.g., month, quarter, year) on the chart to the right. 
• When you drill down, the selected part will be highlighted and the other parts will appear but be marked with a lighter color. 
• Clicking on the white area of the chart reverts to the default view (i.e., show all the parts). 
• The upper right part of each chart includes the option to view a summary or export the chart data into a CSV file. 

• The slice-by-option on the upper right side of the screen affects the two top charts. 

The available charts are: 

3. Tabular view of all the expense data 

4. Example

In this example, we selected the Travel and Transportation category, then zoomed in on certain subcategories (e.g., Airlines, Car rentals, Hotels, and taxis), then moved to display the data per quarter for a certain employee (i.e., Dan) for transactions done in person. In the last step, we proceeded with downloading a CSV file of the recorded data. 

Notes:

• The Reports module was not designed to be an operative tool that advises the company's balance, the number of cards created for its employees, or how the number of receipts that are still missing. The Mesh Dashboard and the filtering capabilities on the Transactions page provide insights into those questions.  
• The information regarding the 'Location' is determined by the presence of the card during the transaction, whether it is physically present (CP, with country) or not (CNP, online).