I often get this question, so I thought a post describing the various way to list existing subscriptions might help.
Let’s start with the rough manner.
As payments online should be dealt electronically, the likely best way is to go through all your credit card transaction summaries.
Here the essential parts are:
- Not to forget the various means of payment you use online (like Paypal for instance)
- Go through a certain period to catch subscriptions over a monthly frequency (1-year time span or more)
It’s a bit of a time killer and will work especially for monthly bills. However, it’s not sure you will identify your yearly subscriptions as you have to translate the transaction on the summary and make the bridge to a service you have purchased. So it is relatively safe and exhaustive but not entirely bulletproof.
Pros: Rather exhaustive if you do not forget the means of payments and go enough back in time
Cons: Not 100% bulletproof, manual process time consuming, no details of the transaction (for instance, an Apple transaction won’t indicate to you which service of Apple you use)
Recommended use: you want to check how you spend your money, you make a first or an annual inventory to review where you stand in terms of subscriptions.
For those who are self-disciplined in this field: if you regularly compare last two months, it can also act as a security concerning the tracking of monthly payments and new subscriptions
Potential improvements: If you can use only one card for online payments, this will give you some benefits like not compiling different summaries. Then you might be able to use your bank application that sometimes tracks recurring payments but not always.
So logically, a quicker way would be to use a banking application that identifies recurring payments.
Here you need to do it for ALL payments you use online.
Have a bank application that identifies recurring payments, which is not always the case.
A bit more subtle but still rough way is to use your password manager if you have any. It can be Apple, Google, or independent providers like Onepassword.
Here you have a collection of logins you use online. See how you can use it? Bingo!
You should go through the list and identify the services you pay for.
Pros: quite exhaustive as it is independent of the means of payments or systems you use
Cons: you should have a password manager, and know how to access its list; the service you pay for must be registered (not so easy like for instance in the case of multiple Apple subscriptions), and it is a bit long to go through the list.
Recommended use: Make a first or an annual inventory to check where you stand regarding subscriptions. A particular good combo with the bank analysis.
A must-do: Check your Google play store or Apple Store accounts.
Pros: Quick, give access to detailed information (for instance, different Apple services)
Cons: Very partial view of subscription as you must have registered via the store (by the way, it is in some cases more expensive)
An additional path: Emails analysis
This method is of particular use in Europe, where all transactions must be invoiced and sent by email. In America, it can provide a check, but it is less powerful.
Here you will have to do research on terms like “invoice”, “$”, “Euros” etc… to identify invoices of providers and check if they are subscriptions.
Pros: Reasonably quick, give you the details of the transaction, good to make an additional check
Cons: not exhaustive at all as some invoices will not appear in the search (not all services are invoiced per email depending on location, you should have kept the emails, and the selection of search terms is critical).
Recommended use: only to make an additional check after you used the other methods. If in countries like Europe, the value of this step is higher.
Conclusions
So here we see the hurdles to reaching a good tracking of subscriptions:
– The need to access the detail of the transactions
– The need to aggregate multiple means of payments
– The need to go back in time if we try to get subscriptions with a long period
– The need to collect from all channels (Apple or Google store, Websites, direct)
We recommend you to use combos of the above solutions.
If you start from scratch, the way we advise you to take is:
If you start from scratch, the way we advise you to take is:
Analysis of bank summaries > Analysis of password managers > check Google and Apple store
So what do we plan at LoopEye to help you?
First, we have launched a manual version where you still have to make this manual collection to get the first overview and then update it regularly.
Once we see you are interested in the service, we plan to release a version with the possibility to connect to your bank accounts to identify automatically recurring payments. This would give you a big support for the collection and the update of the subscriptions.
We crave your feedback, so don’t hesitate to contact us.
The more you support us by spreading the word, the quicker we can release this project.
