Quick Links
Subscriptions are a great way to make sure you never miss a copy of your favorite publication or launch of a new show. But how many subscriptions do you have, and how on earth do you keep track of them all?
There are several ways to track and manage your subscriptions online, from spreadsheets to online banking apps, and here are seven of the best options.
1The App Store and Google Play
If you’ve purchased your subscriptions from the App Store or Google Play, these are often the best starting points for tracking and managing your payments. You’ll see a list of ongoing subscriptions, and from here, you can cancel anything you no longer want to use.
In addition to your existing subscriptions, you can also view what you’ve been signed up for in the past. If you want to reactivate these plans, you can do that without problems.
2Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets
Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets work pretty much the same when it comes to tracking and managing your subscriptions. In the past, I’ve used these apps to make a simple list of my outgoing payments (e.g. my gym membership and Spotify/Apple Music subscription).
In the second column, I listed the costs for each of these and added up the total. You can use formulas to manually calculate, but I’m not that advanced with spreadsheet apps.
Besides tracking subscriptions, I recommend using Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets to track your expenses elsewhere (e.g. how much you’ll budget for grocery shopping). You can also try several otherapps to manage your money.
Notionis another helpful tool for managing your subscriptions, and it’s where I personally keep all my expenses as a freelancer. You cancreate simple tables in Notionto track all of your subscriptions and add a separate category for the price. After doing that, you can then add a second tab and include the prices for each outgoing cost.
Tracking your subscriptions in Notion isn’t too different from using Google Sheets or Excel. In addition to creating your own pages from scratch, it’s also possible to download budget templates. Thesefree Notion budget templateswill help you keep everything organized.
If you want to track all of your monthly expenses in Notion, you can also read this guide onhow to create a simple budget tracker in Notion.
Download:Notion foriOS|Android(Free, in-app purchases available)
Spendeeis an easy-to-use mobile app that lets you go deeper with managing your subscriptions. It’s one of thebest budgeting apps to get your finances in order. You can set up recurring expenses and create your own labels to keep everything in order. It’s also possible to link your bank account with a Premium subscription.
The best way to use Spendee for tracking and managing subscriptions is by adding recurring expenses. Otherwise, you’re going to find it far too time-consuming to manually enter your subscriptions each time the money goes out of your bank account.
After setting up your subscriptions, you can view your subscription expenses in the Timeline tab. Spendee also lets you see a monthly spending overview for each category. I’d recommend putting all of your income and expenses in Spendee to get a better overview; seeing a minus amount may be disheartening if you only include your subscriptions.
Download:Spendee foriOS|Android(Free, in-app purchases available)
How Much Does Spendee Cost?
If you want to sync your bank account with Spendee and access unlimited wallets and automatic categorization, you’re able to pick Spendee Premium. Spendee Plus doesn’t offer these, but like Premium, you can get unlimited budgets and wallets.
Here’s a breakdown of Spendee’s pricing:
Subscription
Spendee Plus
Spendee Premium
PayPalis a popular payment service for quickly sending and receiving money, and you can also pay for your subscriptions with the app. When using PayPal, it’s possible to view your subscriptions within your account. The best way to do this is via your mobile app.
Follow these instructions to view your PayPal subscriptions:
If you decide that you want to stop a subscription linked to PayPal, you cancancel automatic payments associated with your PayPal account.
Download:PayPal foriOS|Android(Free)
Cashewis another budgeting and expense tracker that closely resembles Spendee. You can add subscriptions by going to+and then selectingSubscription. Here, you’ll also be able to choose how long you want the payment to continue getting marked. After adding your subscription, you’ll see your outgoing payments in theTransactionstab.
If you send a budget in the Cashew app, you’ll see how much money you have left after your subscriptions have been paid. Besides adding specific transactions, you can also add your subscriptions by going to thethree-dot iconand selectingSubscriptions.
Cashew lets you change your currency and view a total spending summary. You can also categorize your subscriptions.
Download:Cashew foriOS|Android(Free, in-app purchases available)
How Much Does Cashew Cost?
Cashew’s free plan is good enough to track your subscriptions, but you’re able to geet unlimited budgets, past budget periods, and unlimited color pickers with Cashew Pro. Monthly, yearly, and lifetime plans are available. Here’s how much they cost:
7Banking Apps
While we’ve covered several third-party apps you’re able to use for tracking and managing your subscriptions, you may not even need to use these. Some banking apps provide an overview of your spending, and you can track any recurring payments you’ve set up directly.
You might also be able to track and manage your subscriptions in a handful of mobile-only banking tools. It’s also sometimes possible to manually set up scheduled payments if you are unable to connect subscriptions automatically.
There’s no particular rule to follow when picking an app to track and manage your subscriptions. Choose whichever is the most convenient for you. In some cases, that might be your banking app—but in other instances, you’re potentially better off using spreadsheets. These tools will, at the very least, get you started.
