---
title: "Insights"
description: "Compare periods, break costs down by category, recipient or tag and follow where the money goes."
canonical_url: "https://getfiga.com/help/insights/"
---

# Insights

Compare periods, break costs down by category, recipient or tag and follow where the money goes.

Insights looks at any period, past, current or coming, and explains it: how costs moved over time, what they consist of, who they go to and what changed compared with another period.

## Choose a period

Use **Choose period** to pick the range, and **Previous period** or **Next period** to step through. The page tells you what kind of period it is:

-   **Past period**: recorded costs.
-   **Ongoing period**: recorded costs plus what is planned for the remaining days.
-   **Future period**: known plans from your schedules.

## Compare with another period

Turn on **Compare** and choose **Same period last year**, **Previous month** or the same number of previous days. Comparisons line up the same calendar days, so a month is compared with a whole month.

## Read the sections

-   **Costs over time**: a chart of the period, with the comparison laid over it. **View data table** shows the exact numbers.
-   **What it consists of**: costs grouped by category, tag, recipient or type, sorted by cost, name or number of entries. Open a row to see its expenses, or add it as a filter for the whole page.
-   **Who it goes to**: how categories connect to recipients, each entry counted once.
-   **What changed**: which groups contributed most to the difference between the two periods.
-   **Recurring amount changes**: recurring bills whose amount changed in the period. See [Amount history](https://getfiga.com/help/amount-history).

**How to read missing data**

A period with no entries does not mean nothing was spent, only that nothing was recorded. Periods that include future days contain plans, so their change is not a finished trend.