One line per subscription
The format is Service | Amount | Billing day | monthly or yearly. The amount reads as a number, so 15.49 and $15.49 both work. For anything billed every month the billing day is just the day of the month — 15. For anything billed once a year, give the month and the day, like 3-11 for March 11th, and the next charge date can be worked out properly. The last column takes the word monthly or yearly; leave it blank and monthly is assumed. Tabs work instead of vertical bars, so a block pasted from a spreadsheet reads fine.
Anything billing after the 28th gets shown on the last day of a month that is too short for it, which is what most services do. A line the format cannot read is skipped and listed at the bottom rather than quietly dropped from the total.
The annual figure is the real one
Monthly and yearly subscriptions cannot be compared until they are on the same footing, and there are two ways to put them there. This one annualizes: a monthly charge counted twelve times, a yearly charge counted once. Every figure is whole cents, so the annual column adds up to the annual total exactly.
The monthly figure is the annual total divided by twelve, rounded once. The per-row monthly column is each row's own annual figure divided by twelve and rounded, which exists so you can look at a $263.88 annual subscription and a $15.49 monthly one in the same glance. Those rounded row figures can miss the monthly total by a cent or two, because the total is derived from the exact annual sum rather than from adding up the rounded column. If a penny matters to you, use the annual column — it is the one that reconciles.
Neither monthly figure is what actually leaves your account in any particular month. That is only the rows whose billing date falls inside it, which is why the sorted table exists.
Reading the billing-day table
Sorting by day of the month shows the shape of the outflow. Most people find their charges cluster in the first ten days, and if money is tight at a particular point in the month, moving a couple of billing dates does more good than cancelling anything. Many services will change the billing date if you ask, or it moves on its own when you resubscribe.
The days-remaining column is counted from the date in the Today field, and anything inside your imminent window is highlighted. That window is the practical one: it is the difference between deciding to cancel something and having actually done it before the charge lands.
Two boxes for two different decisions
The barely-used box is for flagging. Names you put there get marked in the table and totalled separately, without changing anything. It is where a service goes when you suspect you should drop it but have not decided.
The cancel box does the arithmetic. Anything named there is pulled out of the total, and you get the annual saving, the monthly equivalent, and what the remaining total would be. Nothing is actually cancelled — this only shows you the number. Names match loosely, so typing part of a service name catches it, and you can put the same name in both boxes.
Two things to know about the saving. On a yearly subscription it does not appear until that service's next billing date has come and gone, so cancelling in April a subscription that renews in November changes nothing about this year. And the period you have already paid for is usually not refunded — most services let you keep using it until the term ends. Which means the honest version of the saving on a yearly line is next year's saving.
When to cancel and when not to
Annual cost is the wrong sole criterion. The expensive one you open daily earns its place; the cheap one you have not touched since spring does not, regardless of how small the number is. What the annual column is good for is stopping you from dismissing a charge as trivial: $11.99 a month is $143.88 a year, and that is the figure to weigh against how often you actually used it.
Before you cancel, check two things. Whether the price is grandfathered, because leaving and returning can mean paying the current rate rather than the one you signed up at. And whether a family or bundled plan already covers it — quite a lot of duplicated subscriptions are two people in one house paying separately for the same service.
Free trials belong in the list too. Enter the date the paid billing starts as the billing day and the amount it will become. The days-remaining column then counts down to the day it stops being free, which is the only reliable way to catch it in time.
Nothing is saved
The whole thing runs in your browser tab. Your service names and amounts are not uploaded, not logged, and not remembered — reload the page and it is gone. Copy the text output into a note before you leave, and next time paste it back: it is written in the same format the box reads, so updating a couple of prices and re-running it takes a minute. Or print the checklist, which has a tick box beside every line for going through your card statement.
Questions people ask
How do I enter a subscription split between several people?
Enter what you personally pay, if what you want to see is your own outgoings — a family plan at $19.99 split four ways goes in as 5.00. If instead you pay the whole charge and collect from the others afterwards, enter the full amount, because that is what actually leaves your account. Either convention works as long as you use the same one throughout the list. For working out who owes you what, receipt split handles the division.
Should free trials go in the list?
Yes, and they are arguably the most useful lines in it. Enter the date the paid billing begins as the billing day, and the amount it becomes when it does. The days-remaining column then counts down to that date, which is the whole point — nearly every trial rolls into a paid subscription automatically, and the ones people get caught by are the ones they meant to cancel and forgot. Putting the name in the barely-used box as well makes it stand out.
Is the list saved for next time?
No. Everything is worked out in this browser tab and a reload clears it. Copy the text output into a note and paste it back next time — it comes out in the same format the box reads in, so you only need to update the prices that changed. The printed checklist has a tick box beside each line, which is the version to have next to you when you go through a card statement line by line.