How do I emulate a pivot table with sumif or sumifs in numbers 3.5?

If you want to just rearrange the table, you don't need SUMIFS. Just change the column order, just click a column letter, drag it up a little, and then drag over left or right to where you want it. That will give you your second table (without the blanks in column A). You can easily sort and filter by payee by clicking the little disclosure triangle up next to the column letter.

To get a total by each payee you can do something like this:

That's basically what you might get with a Pivot Table in Excel:

SG

No way to expand and contract. If you need to show the detail right next to each subtotal then either use the old Numbers 2 (or, of course, the endlessly powerful and flexible Pivot Tables in Excel.)

Except for heavy duty data analysis, I find that the SUMIF and SUMIFS approach suffices for most situations. And you can base a chart on the summary table (which you can't in the old Categories functionality).

SG