Spend insights
The Spend report — what is waiting, what is approved, what has been paid, and where it is going.
Insights answers the question the list cannot: not "where is this request", but "what is happening to our spend".
It is reachable two ways — the Insights tab on the Spend list, and /insights on its own.
The period
A period picker sits at the top right. With nothing chosen, the report covers the last twelve months. Set a period and every tile on the page moves with it — the totals, the chart, the split, the requesters and the projects all read the same filtered set, so two tiles can never disagree.
What it shows
| Tile | Shows |
|---|---|
| Waiting on approval | Total amount and item count still awaiting review or approval — the pipeline that has not been agreed yet. |
| Approved | Amount and count cleared for payment but not yet paid — the commitment already made. |
| Paid | Amount and count actually posted. |
| Spend requested by month | A bar per month of requested amount, over the last twelve months or your chosen period. |
| By workflow | Requested amount split between Payment Requests, Requisitions and Advances. |
| Top requesters | Who is requesting the most, by approved and paid amount, with an item count each. |
| By project | Requests carrying a project reference, by project. |
| Tile | Counts |
|---|---|
| Waiting | Awaiting review + Awaiting approval |
| Approved | Approved |
| Paid | Paid |
Insights does not add anything up in your browser. The totals, the monthly bars and the splits all arrive already computed from the same rows the list reads, so a figure here always ties back to requests you can open.
Reading it well
- Waiting is your approval backlog. A number that only grows means decisions, not requests, are the bottleneck.
- Approved is money already committed and not yet out of the door. It belongs in a cash view, not just a spend one.
- Top requesters is by approved and paid amount, not by what was asked for — it shows where money actually went, not who asks the most.
- By project only shows requests that were linked to a project when they were raised. A thin list here usually means people are not tagging, not that the projects are cheap.
Access
Insights is a report, and it is gated as one.
| Who | Sees |
|---|---|
| Administrators with reporting access | The full report. |
| Anyone without reporting access | A plain message that their role does not include spend analytics, with a pointer to their administrator. |
| Staff | Never. Staff has no access to Reporting of any kind. |
Access is decided where the data lives, not by the screen — so there is no route, link or bookmark that gets around it.
Related
- Track requests — the same data, one row at a time
- Spend — the whole module
- People & Admin reports — the Requisitions report in Reporting