How to cancel unused subscriptions: a checklist for small businesses

Find every subscription

You cannot cancel what you do not know about. Check every place a subscription can be paid from:

• Business bank accounts: look for direct debits and repeating card payments.
• Company credit and debit cards, including cards held by employees.
• Expense claims: tools that staff pay for themselves and claim back every month.
• Personal cards used “just this once” to start a business tool.
• App stores: subscriptions bought on a phone are billed by Apple or Google and show under their name, not the app’s.
• PayPal and other payment services, which often show only their own name on your bank statement.
• Add-ons billed through another platform, such as apps in your shop or website platform, which appear on that platform’s invoice.
• Your inbox: search for “receipt”, “invoice”, “renewal”, “your subscription” and “trial”.

For each one, write down the name, the cost, how often it is charged, the next renewal date, who uses it, who owns the login, and which card or account pays.

Decide what to keep

Go through the list with the people who use the tools. For each subscription, ask:

• Has anyone used it in the last month? In the last three?
• Who would notice if it stopped tomorrow?
• Are we paying for two tools that do the same job, such as two video-call services, two file storage services or two design tools?
• Would a smaller plan, fewer seats or a free plan be enough?
• Is it tied to a contract with a minimum term or a notice period?
• Is there data in it that we need to keep?

Then give each one a decision: keep, downgrade, cancel, or review before the next renewal. Make one person responsible for carrying out each decision.

Cancel before the renewal date

1. Check the renewal date and any notice period, in your account with the supplier or in their terms. Some contracts must be cancelled weeks before they renew.
2. Export or download any data you need: files, contacts, invoices, reports.
3. Cancel in the billing or subscription settings of the account, logged in as the account owner. For app store subscriptions, cancel in the app store, not in the app; deleting the app does not cancel it.
4. Keep the confirmation email or a screenshot of the cancellation page.
5. Check your next statement to make sure the charge has stopped.

Watch free trials

• When you start a trial, note the end date, the price that follows, and whether it then renews monthly or yearly.
• Set a reminder a few days before the trial ends, not on the day itself.
• If you only want the trial, consider cancelling straight away. Some services let you keep using it until the end of the trial after you cancel; others end access at once, so check first.
• Use a company email address for business trials, so they do not get lost when someone leaves.

Annual or monthly billing

Annual plans are usually cheaper per month, but you pay up front and are committed for the year. Monthly plans cost more over a year but are easy to stop.

• Pay yearly only for tools the business uses every week and will still need in a year.
• Start new tools on monthly billing and switch once you are sure.
• Compare the yearly price with 12 times the monthly price, and check whether the yearly price goes up after the first year.
• Put every yearly renewal date in a calendar with a reminder a month before. Do not count on the supplier to warn you.
• Before a yearly renewal, check whether you still need the same plan and the same number of seats. With some suppliers, you can only downgrade at renewal.

Shared logins and seats

Many business tools charge per user, often called a seat. Seats are easy to add and easy to forget.

• Compare the number of paid seats with the people who actually log in. Many admin pages show when each user last logged in.
• Remove seats for people who have left, freelancers whose project is over, and old test accounts.
• Add “remove from all tools” to your checklist for people leaving the business.
• Avoid sharing one login between several people. It can break the supplier’s terms, makes it hard to see who uses what, and is a security risk.
• Make sure every account is owned by a company email address that someone can still reach, so you can change the plan or cancel when the person who signed up leaves.

Make it a habit

• Every month: look through last month’s statements for new or higher charges.
• Every quarter: go through the full list and the questions above.
• Before each yearly renewal: decide whether to renew, downgrade or cancel.

Our subscription tracker can do the first part for you. Upload a bank or card statement and it lists your recurring payments with monthly and yearly totals, lets you mark what you have cancelled, warns you if a cancelled subscription charges again, and emails you a few days before each renewal or free trial end.