The Uncategorized Expenses report lists every expense that’s still missing an IRS Schedule C category. It’s the report to run first, before any financial statement, because uncategorized expenses don’t get attributed correctly on the P&L or the Income and Expense Report.

Think of it as a to-do list: anything that shows up here needs a category before your books can be considered closed.

When to run it

  • Before generating P&L or Income & Expense reports — uncategorized rows distort the totals
  • At the end of each month — keeping the list short makes year-end painless
  • Right after a big import — bank statements always come with rows that need a human decision

Opening the report

  1. Open Reports from the sidebar
  2. Find Uncategorized Expenses under Review & Data Quality
  3. Click the card to open the report

Choosing the period

At the top of the report you’ll set:

  • Business — required
  • Bank — pick a single account, or check Consolidate all accounts to include every bank under the business
  • Year — pick the tax year, or switch to Date Range and set From / To for a narrower window (the two are mutually exclusive — pick one)

What the report shows

A single table grouped by month, with one row per uncategorized expense. The columns are:

  • Method — how it was paid (Credit Card, Check, ACH, etc.)
  • Provider
  • Date
  • Amount
  • Description

Each month has a subtotal row underneath its expenses so you can see at a glance how much money is sitting in “needs categorizing” for any given period.

The report deliberately filters out Adjustment and Cash Credit entries — those have their own places in the system and don’t belong in the to-categorize list.

Exporting

  • PDF — printable list, useful for working through it on paper or sending to a colleague
  • Excel — useful when you want to sort, filter, or hand a list to a preparer

How to clear out the list

The Uncategorized Expenses report is read-only — you can’t categorize from this page. Once you’ve identified what needs work, head over to one of the categorization tools:

  • Bulk Updates — when many of the uncategorized rows share the same provider or method, this is the fastest path. Filter by Category = Uncategorized, select rows, and use the Classify action.
  • Manual Entry — when you want to walk through them one at a time and use field locking to fly through similar entries.
  • Entry Workflow → Expenses step — when these were just imported, the workflow is the natural place to classify them with Simple-C’s category suggestions.

Tips

  • Don’t let the list grow. A handful of uncategorized rows are easy to clean up; a year’s worth is painful. Check this report at least monthly.
  • Look for patterns. If the same provider keeps showing up uncategorized, set its default category once via Bulk Updates and the next import will know what to do.
  • Run it again after categorizing. A quick second pass on this report confirms you didn’t miss anything before generating financial statements.