Flow Explorer
See how money flows between categories and merchants — as a network you can drill into.
TL;DR
Flow Explorer is Module C of the Jijenga Intelligence Suite. Where the Operating Statement shows totals and Velocity Lab shows speed, the Explorer shows the shape of your spending — which categories connect to which merchants, and where the weight is.
What it is
Flow Explorer visualises your transactions as a network of money flows between categories and merchants. Rather than a chart or table, you see a graph: nodes are categories and entities, edges are flows between them, and the width of each connection shows the relative weight of money moving through it.
Navigate here via MORE → INTELLIGENCE → The Explorer.
How to use it
Select your month
Use the month navigation to choose which period to explore. The network updates to show flows for that month's transactions.
Choose your view mode
Toggle between two views:
- Flow — the network graph showing connections between categories and entities, sized by money volume
- Weight — a treemap view showing categories sized by total spend, easier to read at a glance
Tap a node to investigate
Tap any category or merchant node to select it. The Evidence Rail at the bottom of the screen shows the individual transactions that make up that node's flows.
Use explore mode to drill deeper
Toggle explore mode to focus the graph on a selected node and its direct connections — filtering out everything else for a cleaner view.
What to look for
- Thick connections between a category and a single merchant — your spending in that category is concentrated in one place
- Unexpected category connections — merchants appearing under categories that don't match what you thought you bought
- Large treemap blocks in Weight view — the biggest blocks are your biggest cost centres; compare their size to what you expected
- The Evidence Rail — always check the actual transactions under a node before drawing conclusions; one large transaction can look like a pattern when it isn't
Tips
- Use Weight view first for a fast read on where the big money is, then switch to Flow view to understand the structure
- The Explorer works best with 2–3 months of data imported — more transactions mean clearer patterns in the network
- Compare the Explorer with Velocity Lab's Anomaly Detection to confirm whether a category shift is driven by one merchant or spread across many
See also: Operating Statement · Velocity Lab