# How do I see total spending by merchant?

> The Merchants insight in CounselPro bundles the many ways one business appears on statements into one merchant, so you get a real total, not scattered rows.

The same business rarely appears the same way twice on a bank statement. One store might show up as "STARBUCKS #123," "Starbucks Coffee," and "SBUX," splitting one real total across three rows. The **Merchants** insight fixes that.

## What does the Merchants insight show?

Open the [Insights tab](https://www.counselpro.ai/docs/generate-insights) and go to **Merchants**. CounselPro bundles the spelling variations of a business into one merchant, then shows:

- **Top merchants**, a bar chart ranking businesses by total money in or out
- **Frequency vs amount**, a scatter view of how often versus how much
- A **Merchants** table you can sort and scan

Click any bar, point, or row to open that merchant and see every transaction behind the total, including the different name variations that were bundled together. You can [recategorize or edit](https://www.counselpro.ai/docs/recategorize-a-transaction) those transactions right from there.

> _Screen: The Merchants table bundles a business's name variants into one row, so its real total isn't split across spellings._

## Why are different store names grouped into one merchant?

Because they are the same business. CounselPro cleans up each name, strips off transaction prefixes like "ACH debit" or "payment to," and then groups names that are close enough to be the same store. That is what turns four scattered spellings into one honest total.

> **Note:** If CounselPro groups two businesses you consider separate, or splits one you consider the same, open the merchant to see the underlying rows and edit those transactions right from the merchant detail.

To total spending a different way, the [Categories insight](https://www.counselpro.ai/docs/spending-by-category) groups by category instead of by business, and [Daystrom](https://www.counselpro.ai/docs/category/analysis-agent) can total any payee you name.

Source: https://www.counselpro.ai/docs/spending-by-merchant