Subscriptions,every charge in view.

Subscription tracker

How to keep track of subscriptions

Subscriptions are built to be forgotten. Keeping track of them means making them visible again.

Why subscriptions slip out of view

A subscription is designed to need nothing from you after the first click. The card is saved, the charge is automatic, and the receipt lands in a folder nobody opens. Each one is small enough not to question: €10 here, €14 there.

The problem is the total, not any single charge. Six subscriptions between €10 and €15 a month come to €60 to €90 a month, or €720 to €1,080 a year. Few people would agree to that as one bill, but it is easy to agree to it in six parts.

Find every subscription you pay

Make the list first. Go through these places:

• Card statements: three months of them, looking for the same merchant each month.
• App stores: the subscriptions page in your Apple or Google account lists what is billed through the store.
• Email: search for "receipt", "renewal", "your plan" and "trial".
• Shared plans: family and household plans that one person pays for everyone.
• Bundles: services added to your phone or internet bill, which never show up as a separate charge.

Figa does not connect to your bank or card, so it does not find subscriptions for you. You add each one once, and nothing reads your accounts.

Decide what each one is worth

With the list in front of you, ask two questions of every line: when did I last use it, and would I sign up again today at this price? Anything that fails both is a candidate to cancel.

Yearly plans are often cheaper than paying monthly, but they lock you in for twelve months and charge everything at once. They suit what you use all year. For anything seasonal, monthly is easier to stop.

Free trials: note the charge date, not the service

A trial is a subscription with a delay. What matters is the day it turns into a charge. Add the trial right away with the date of the first charge and its price, not when you remember it later.

Figa reminds you a set number of days before a bill is due, by email and in the app. The lead time is one setting in your notification settings for all bills, so choose enough days to cancel in time. If you cancel, delete the bill in Figa. If you keep it, it is already planned.

Subscriptions billed in another currency

Many apps and services bill in US dollars. The amount you pay in euros then changes a little every month, with the exchange rate. Your bank may also add a conversion fee, which is not part of the rate.

In Figa, add each subscription in the currency it is billed in. Figa converts it to the workspace base currency for totals, using European Central Bank reference rates, and shows the rate it used. When no rate is published for the day yet, it uses the last known one and marks it Estimated.

Pause, end or keep

Not every change means cancelling. For a gym over the summer, select Pause, choose the first occurrence to leave out and when it comes back, or Until I resume manually. For a subscription you cancelled, select End series and choose the last occurrence. Resume cannot undo an end, so if it might come back, pause instead.

Both change only the plan in Figa. Cancel or pause with the provider as well. When a price goes up, edit the bill and choose This and future occurrences: the coming months use the new price, and earlier ones keep what you paid.