Dashboard Overview
The Analyze tab on the home screen is the dashboard. Where Track is about the paycheck in front of you, Analyze is about the shape of things over time.
This is the reflective half of the app, not the working half.
What's on the dashboard
From top to bottom:
Canvas — a button that opens the canvas for your whole budget, rather than for one paycheck. See Canvas.
Net position and the month tiles — where you stand overall (total saved minus what you still owe), then the headline figures for the current calendar month. See Your Monthly Numbers.
Charts — seven of them, one at a time, with a period control above them. See Reading the Charts.
Breakdowns — Income, Savings, Housing, Expenses and Debt, each opening into its own figures, chart and table. Income is where the paycheck insights live. See Paycheck Insights.
Most things have a small ⓘ beside them that opens a short explanation in the app.
The period control
Above the charts is a three-way control: Month, Paycheck and Year.
Paycheck shows one point per paycheck — the way the app plans your money. This is the honest view. It's where you see that one check absorbs rent and another doesn't.
Month rolls paychecks up into calendar months. Coarser, but it's the unit everyone else uses, and it's what you want when comparing against a bill or a statement.
Year rolls everything up into years, for the long view.
Neither is more correct. Switching between them is often more informative than either alone — a month that looks fine can contain a pay period that was badly stretched.
The control only changes the charts. The tiles at the top always show the current calendar month, and the breakdowns always work by month.
Where the data comes from
Everything here is built from the plan you're tracking on Home — every paycheck in it, past and upcoming.
That plan isn't frozen at the moment you built it. When you change a bill's amount, change a paycheck, or add an expense on Home, the plan is recalculated and the dashboard shows the new figures. Spending you log under a bill line doesn't change that line's amount on the dashboard, but when it runs over the plan the extra comes out of savings, and your savings figures show it.
Marking things paid matters too. The Net position figure and the payoff progress on a debt come from the payments and savings you've marked off in Track.
The dashboard has no independent view of your finances — no bank feed, no statements. It reports what the plan says and what you told it. If a number looks wrong, check the plan on Home first.
When there's nothing to show
If you haven't built a budget, or none is on Home, Analyze shows Nothing to analyze yet with a Get Started! button that opens the Budget Builder. See Creating Your First Budget.
A single chart with too little to draw shows Not enough data yet. Common reasons:
- ›The period you've picked has only one point — Spending Change needs at least two
- ›The budget has nothing in that category (no income that period, or no debt)
Locked views
On the Free plan you get the net position, the Income and Fixed bills tiles, the Net Worth chart by Month, and the figures and paycheck tables inside each breakdown.
Everything else shows a lock. A card under the charts reads 6 more charts, 2 more time ranges with an Upgrade button; locked charts are blurred behind Upgrade Your Plan; and the charts inside the breakdowns are blurred the same way. The extensive analytics are part of Thrive — see What's Included with Thrive.
How often to look
Once a week is plenty, and honestly once a pay period is fine. The dashboard doesn't change much day to day, and checking it constantly turns a planning tool into an anxiety loop. The daily work is in Track; this is for stepping back.