How it finds subscriptions
- Cleans up the merchant name. A statement line like PURCHASE AUTHORIZED ON 09/12 NETFLIX.COM 866-579-7172 CA becomes “Netflix.com”: bank prefixes, payment-processor tags, order codes, phone numbers and states are stripped.
- Groups charges by merchant and amount. Two different amounts from the same merchant are treated as two subscriptions — that is how app-store charges are told apart.
- Checks the rhythm. A group counts as recurring only if the gaps between charges are steady: weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly or yearly. One skipped month is tolerated; a scatter of dates is not.
- Flags what changed. A price increase is shown as old → new. A charge that stopped is marked as looking cancelled and left out of the total.
How to get a statement the tracker can read
In your bank's or card's website, open the account's transaction list and look for “Download”, “Export” or a download icon; pick CSV or Excel and a date range of at least three months. Mobile apps often offer only PDF — the website usually has the table export. Run each card and account separately, or paste them one after another: subscriptions are often spread across several cards.
What a statement cannot tell you
A statement is the one place where every subscription eventually lands, but it is not the whole picture. It will not show:
- Which app is behind an Apple or Google charge — check the subscriptions list on the phone.
- Free trials that have not billed yet — search your inbox for “trial” and “renewal”.
- Subscriptions on a card you did not export — an old card, a partner's card, PayPal.
- Annual plans, unless the file covers more than a year.
The full checklist — statements, app stores, PayPal, Amazon and your inbox — is in How to find all my subscriptions.
What to do with the list
Sort it in your head into three piles: use every week, use sometimes, forgot it existed. Cancel the third pile today, in the same place that bills you — app-store subscriptions in the app store, everything else on the service's own site. For the middle pile, check whether a cheaper tier or an annual plan would do. Then look at next month's statement to make sure the cancelled charges really stopped.
To keep an eye on spending beyond subscriptions, the same statement can go into Tratobor: it sorts every expense by category and shows where the month went.