4 Min Read | Published: December 12, 2023 | Updated: July 19, 2024
How to use the Expenses tab in
American Express Business BlueprintTM
The Expenses tab, located under “Insights” on the top left side of the Business Blueprint dashboard, shows business expenses across your select American Express products and linked external bank and card accounts. This way, it’s easy to track your spend, spot trends, and strategically plan payments for your next business expense.
On the Expenses tab you’ll find three unique views to help you understand your business expenses:
Stacked Bar Graph. This shows your total expenses from your Amex and external business checking and card accounts in one chart
Summarized Account Expenses. View your expense totals grouped by business checking and card as well as individual accounts.
Expenses by Category. Highlights your top five expense areas and categorizes all of your expenses.
This guide explains how you can use Business Blueprint to view and interpret your expenses.
After logging into your Business Blueprint dashboard, click “Insights” on the top left side of the page. Then select the “Expenses” tab from the navigation bar below.
Your expense data for the past 12 months will be displayed by month as stacked bar charts. The light blue portion of the bar represents expenses paid through your linked business checking account(s) and the darker blue shows spending via linked business credit card(s).
By hovering over any of the monthly bar charts, a tooltip box will appear showing the numerical breakdown of your expenses for that month. To view information for a different month, hover your cursor over the bar.
For illustrative purposes only
By default, your expense data is displayed by month, with the past 12 months visible. Alternatively, you can choose a yearly view of your data from the first drop-down box above the graph.
You can also adjust for different increments by selecting options from the second drop-down box, allowing you to view the past 12 months, and previous calendar years.
To view details for a different period, simply hover your cursor over the bar.
For illustrative purposes only
For illustrative purposes only
Beneath the chart section you will see the “Expenses by account” section. Here you can view expense data across all your linked accounts. The filtering options on the page will impact the expense data in this section.
Accounts are grouped into two buckets: Business Checking and Business Card. Within each bucket you will see a list of the linked accounts, as well as their contribution to your total expenses for the selected period.
For illustrative purposes only
To view account expense data for a different period, simply click on the corresponding bar in the chart above and the information will update.
Beneath the “Expenses by Account” section is “Expenses by category,” highlighting the top five categories of your expenses, such as travel, sales, and entertainment. The filtering options on the page will also affect the data in this section.
This allows you to identify the biggest cost drivers for your business over a selected period of time. You can expand the list to view all categories by clicking “Show all categories” at the bottom of the list.
For additional details, simply click on any of the categories and you’ll be taken to the Transactions tab where you can see an itemized breakdown of these expenses.
For illustrative purposes only
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American Express Business Blueprint™ is the small business digital experience that allows a customer to view on one digital dashboard summary account information for the following American Express small business products: American Express® Business Cards, American Express® Business Line of Credit, and American Express® Business Checking. The customer can also choose to link their third-party issued business bank accounts and business credit cards to Business Blueprint. Not all third party accounts or cards can be connected to Business Blueprint. Business Blueprint allows the customer to view data insights and track their business cash flow and expenses by viewing reports that American Express prepares using the customer’s linked account information. Business Blueprint provides a 30-day bank account balance projection, using the daily balances from the customer’s linked bank accounts from the last 90 days. To be used in the account balance projection, the customer’s bank account must have at least 90 days of data available. While the cash flow management service from Business Blueprint is currently free, each of the business products from American Express that are visible in Business Blueprint has its own fees, eligibility criteria, application process and approval requirements. The Business Blueprint service (including any data insights provided to the customer) does not constitute legal, tax, financial or accounting advice, and is not a substitute for obtaining competent personalized advice from a licensed professional. You should seek professional advice before making any decision that could affect the financial health of your business. American Express makes no representations as to the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of the reports, projections, data or account information that are available to the customer from Business Blueprint.
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