Year-End Summary

Overview

Comprehensive annual financial review covering full-year income and expenses, monthly trends, category breakdowns, year-over-year comparisons, and financial highlights. Useful for tax preparation, goal setting, and understanding your overall financial picture.

Wilson Tools Used

• spending_summary — monthly and category-level aggregates for the full year
• transaction_search — find notable transactions, income sources, largest expenses
• anomaly_detect — identify year-level anomalies and trend shifts
• export_transactions — export the full report as Markdown or CSV

Workflow

1. Determine the target year (default: previous calendar year).
2. Use spending_summary for each month of the year to build a monthly trend table.
3. Use spending_summary for the full year grouped by category.
4. If prior year data exists, pull the same data for year-over-year comparison.
5. Use transaction_search to identify:

• Top 10 largest expenses
• All income sources and totals
• Most frequent vendors
• First and last transactions of the year

1. Use anomaly_detect across the full year to find:

• Months with unusually high or low spending
• Categories with significant year-over-year changes

1. Compile the report with sections below.
2. Export as Markdown file.

Report Sections

# Year-End Summary — [Year]

## Annual Overview
| Metric | [Year] | [Prior Year] | Change |
|--------|--------|--------------|--------|
| Total Income | $XX,XXX | $XX,XXX | +/-XX% |
| Total Expenses | $XX,XXX | $XX,XXX | +/-XX% |
| Net Savings | $XX,XXX | $XX,XXX | +/-XX% |
| Savings Rate | XX% | XX% | +/-X pts |

## Monthly Trend
| Month | Income | Expenses | Net |
|-------|--------|----------|-----|
| Jan | ... | ... | ... |
| ... | ... | ... | ... |

## Spending by Category (Full Year)
| Category | Amount | % of Total | vs. Prior Year |
|----------|--------|------------|----------------|
| ... | ... | ... | ... |

## Top 10 Expenses
1. ...

## Income Sources
| Source | Total | Frequency |
|--------|-------|-----------|
| ... | ... | ... |

## Year Highlights
- Highest spending month: [Month] ($X,XXX)
- Lowest spending month: [Month] ($X,XXX)
- Biggest single expense: [Description] ($X,XXX)
- Most frequent vendor: [Vendor] (XX transactions)

Without Wilson

To build a year-end summary in a spreadsheet:

1. Gather data: Export 12 months of transactions from your bank(s) as CSV. Combine into one sheet.
2. Monthly trend pivot table:

• Rows: Month (use =TEXT(A2,"YYYY-MM") to extract)
• Columns: Income vs. Expense (use =IF(C2>0,"Income","Expense"))
• Values: SUM of Amount

1. Category pivot table:

• Rows: Category
• Values: SUM of Amount, COUNT of transactions

1. Year-over-year:

• Keep prior year data in a separate tab
• Use =VLOOKUP to pull prior year category totals next to current year
• Calculate change: =(Current - Prior) / ABS(Prior) * 100

1. Key formulas:

   Annual Income:      =SUMPRODUCT((YEAR(A:A)=2025)*(C:C>0)*C:C)
   Annual Expenses:    =ABS(SUMPRODUCT((YEAR(A:A)=2025)*(C:C<0)*C:C))
   Savings Rate:       =(Income-Expenses)/Income*100
   Highest Month:      Use MAX on monthly totals pivot
   Most Frequent:      =INDEX(B:B,MATCH(MAX(COUNTIF(B:B,B:B)),COUNTIF(B:B,B:B),0))

1. Export: Copy the summary tables into a Google Doc or Word document for your records.

Important Notes

• Year-over-year comparison requires at least partial data from the prior year. If unavailable, that column is omitted.
• Savings rate uses gross income (before taxes) unless you've categorized tax payments separately.
• The report includes all transaction types. Transfers between your own accounts are excluded from income/expense totals if properly categorized.
• This report pairs well with the tax-deduction-tracker skill for tax season preparation.