How to track spending on Amazon

[Anonymous]

Our monthly outlays are way more than it ought to be and I'd like to see what kinds of categories are costing us the most on our Amazon orders/spending. It seems like I would need to get a "business" account on amazon to be able to monitor this. Is there something I'm missing?

[Anonymous]

You can download all your transactions. I believe you can sort them from there. I do it annually.

[Anonymous]

We have an Amazon credit card just for Amazon purchases (and the 5% rewards that can be used either as Amazon credits or in the Chase portal. But yes, you can download transactions from Amazon, too.

[Anonymous]

Thanks - ok, figured out how to download the spreadsheet. Now trying to find a good way to make a visual representation. The spreadsheet that you can download doesn't translate well to a visual chart - looks like I'll need to make some changes manually - I don't know excel well enough to do this easily or quickly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks - ok, figured out how to download the spreadsheet. Now trying to find a good way to make a visual representation. The spreadsheet that you can download doesn't translate well to a visual chart - looks like I'll need to make some changes manually - I don't know excel well enough to do this easily or quickly.

Why do you need a visual representation? Are you debating with another head of household? (I ask because I work for someone who loves pie charts, the crappiest approach to data viz that ever was)

Anyway, go to the "Insert" tab and you will get options for creating a chart

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks - ok, figured out how to download the spreadsheet. Now trying to find a good way to make a visual representation. The spreadsheet that you can download doesn't translate well to a visual chart - looks like I'll need to make some changes manually - I don't know excel well enough to do this easily or quickly.

Here's how I would do it -- I would create categories and assign each purchase a category. The categories would obviously depend on what it is that you're trying to figure out -- you can keep it as simple as "nice to have" and "need to have" and make a chart out of that, or you can get into the weeds with household goods, clothing, hobbies, etc...