How to Structure Your Notion Finance Database for the Best Analytics

If you want clean finance analytics in NotionStats (income vs expense, spending by category, payment method breakdowns, and net worth over time), your Notion database needs a few key properties with the right types and conventions.

If you want to skip setup, you can duplicate my ready-to-use NotionFinance template and customize it.

Table of Contents

• Database Schema (Copy This)
• Data Entry Rules That Keep Analytics Accurate
• Troubleshooting / FAQ

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Database Schema (Copy This)

Create one Notion database named Finance Database and add these properties.

• Required
  • Name: Title (optional, but nice for readability)
  • Date: Date
  • Amount: Number (positive for income, negative for expense)
• Recommended (for breakdown charts)
  • Category: Select (e.g., Rent, Groceries, Salary, Subscriptions)
  • Payment Type: Select (e.g., Cash, Debit, Credit Card, Bank Transfer)
  • Subcategory: Select (optional, e.g., Groceries → Produce)

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Data Entry Rules That Keep Analytics Accurate

These are the most common reasons finance analytics look wrong.

• Keep Amount signed
  • Don’t store expenses as positive numbers.
• Use Select for grouping fields
  • Category/Payment Type/Subcategory should be Select to avoid typos creating “duplicate categories”.

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If you’re new to NotionStats setup, start here: Guide to adding analytics to your Notion.

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Troubleshooting / FAQ

My income vs expense chart looks inverted

Check Amount sign. Income must be positive and expenses must be negative.

Category charts are messy / duplicated

Make sure Category is a Select property and you’re consistently using the same options.

Net worth over time has gaps

Make sure every transaction row has a valid Date. Date-based charts can’t bucket rows without dates.