The Explorer

The Explorer is for the question nobody anticipated. The app’s own description of it:

Build your own analysis. Group by any dimension, switch the chart, and show cost as a rate — then save it as a View.

Where The Ledger is a table you group, the Explorer is a chart you shape. Same underlying rows, different working style.

The three controls

Group by any dimension. Anything the Ledger can group by, the Explorer can — plus combinations the preset breakdowns don’t offer.

Switch the chart. The same numbers as bars, lines or a breakdown. Worth flicking between: a trend that looks flat as bars often isn’t as a line.

Show cost as a rate. This is the one people miss. Instead of total spend, divide it by something that matters to your business — Per customer, per active user, per request. Total spend going up while cost per customer goes down is a good month; the total alone can’t tell you that.

Saving your work

The Explorer expects you to build something worth keeping.

• Save current as… names the analysis.
• Update ”…” overwrites it after you’ve tweaked it.
• Reset to default starts over.
• Saved views lists everything you’ve kept.

Views are yours and per-report. The page address follows the view you’re on, so a link you copy opens on the same analysis.

When to use it, and when not to

Use the Explorer for exploratory work, for anything expressed as a rate, and for a recurring report you’ll want again next month.

Use the Ledger when you need to reconcile a number to the bill line by line, or drill from a total to a single resource. It’s the better tool for tracing.

Filters

Every global filter applies, plus your cost basis — so an Explorer view scoped to one cost group and one provider stays scoped when you come back to it.

If you’re building a rate, be deliberate about the Period: a per-customer figure over seven days and the same figure over a quarter are different measurements, and only one of them is stable enough to put in a report.