Het verbruiksoverzicht vergelijkt deze maand met de vorige maand.

Dutch makes compound nouns by joining them into a single word much more often than English does.

So:

• verbruik = consumption / usage
• overzicht = overview

Together, verbruiksoverzicht means a kind of overview: a consumption overview or usage summary.

A useful rule: in Dutch compounds, the last part is the main noun, and the earlier part(s) describe it.

Because the gender of a Dutch compound is determined by its final noun.

The final noun here is overzicht, and overzicht is a het-word. So the whole compound is also a het-word:

• het overzicht
• het verbruiksoverzicht

This is a very common pattern in Dutch compounds.

Because this is a present-tense main clause with a third-person singular subject.

The subject is het verbruiksoverzicht, which is singular, so the verb takes the singular present form:

• infinitive: vergelijken
• stem: vergelijk
• 3rd person singular: vergelijkt

So:

• Ik vergelijk
• jij vergelijkt
• het verbruiksoverzicht vergelijkt

Because the normal Dutch pattern is:

iets vergelijken met iets anders

So Dutch says:

• X vergelijkt Y met Z
• literally: X compares Y with Z

That is why the sentence has:

• deze maand
• met de vorige maand

English learners sometimes expect something like between, but with vergelijken, Dutch normally uses met.

Here it is one of the things being compared.

So the structure is:

• the subject: Het verbruiksoverzicht
• the verb: vergelijkt
• first item: deze maand
• second item: met de vorige maand

So deze maand does not mean during this month here. It means this month as an object of comparison.

That is an important distinction, because in other sentences deze maand can absolutely be a time expression.

Because maand is a de-word.

For singular nouns:

• deze is used with de-words
• dit is used with het-words

So:

• deze maand
• deze auto
• dit overzicht
• dit huis

Since maand takes de, the correct form is deze maand.

In this sentence, de vorige maand is natural because it is a definite noun phrase inside the comparison.

You will also often see vorige maand without de, especially when it is used as a time expression:

• Ik was vorige maand ziek.

That is very common.

But in a comparison like this, de vorige maand sounds clear and natural because it refers to a specific month as the second comparison item.

Usually vorige maand is the better choice for the month immediately before this one.

Laatste maand can sometimes be understood, but it is less standard here and can also suggest the final month in a sequence rather than simply the previous month.

So for calendar time, Dutch normally prefers:

• vorige maand = last month / previous month

Yes. This is very normal in technical, business, reporting, or interface language.

Dutch, like English, often lets a report, overview, app, or graph be the grammatical subject:

• Het rapport toont...
• De grafiek laat zien...
• Het verbruiksoverzicht vergelijkt...

So even though an overview is not a person, the sentence is still perfectly natural.

If you wanted a more impersonal version, you could also say:

• In het verbruiksoverzicht wordt deze maand met de vorige maand vergeleken.

That is more passive and formal.

This is standard Dutch main-clause word order:

1. subject: Het verbruiksoverzicht
2. finite verb: vergelijkt
3. rest of the sentence: deze maand met de vorige maand

So the pattern is:

Subject + finite verb + rest

That is why the verb comes early in the sentence. In a normal Dutch main clause, the finite verb is in second position.