How to find recurring payments in your bank statement

Download your transactions, not a PDF

A PDF statement is fine for reading, but you cannot sort or filter it. What you want is a transaction export: one row per payment, with the date, the amount and the name of the other party.

Most online banking offers this on the account’s list of transactions. Look for words like “Export”, “Download”, “Download transactions” or “Statements”, choose a date range and then a file format. Some banks only offer exports on their website, not in the app, and business accounts sometimes have more formats than personal ones.

Do the same for every place money leaves the business: each bank account, each company credit card, and payment services such as PayPal, which usually have their own activity download.

Choose the right file format

CSV

A plain text table that opens in any spreadsheet and is offered by almost every bank. The layout differs from bank to bank: columns may be separated by commas or semicolons, amounts may use a decimal comma, and money in and out may be in one column or two.

CAMT.053

An XML statement in the ISO 20022 standard, offered by many European banks. It is not meant to be read by people, but software reads it reliably, because it states the currency and whether each entry is money in or out.

OFX or QFX

A format made for personal finance and accounting software. Some banks call it “Quicken”, “Money” or simply “OFX”. Like CAMT.053, it is easy for software to read and includes the currency.

MT940

An older bank format that some banks still offer. Not every tool reads it, so choose CAMT.053 or CSV if your bank offers them.

Excel (XLS or XLSX)

Fine for working by hand. If you want to use a tool, save it as CSV first.

How many months to export

A payment only looks recurring once you can see it repeat. Export enough history to see each rhythm at least two or three times:

• Weekly and monthly payments: 3 months.
• Payments every 3 months: 7 months.
• Yearly renewals: 13 months, so that last year’s payment and this year’s are both in the file. This is where the expensive surprises often are: domains, software licences, memberships and insurance.

Some banks only let you download a limited period at a time. In that case, download several files and combine them, taking care not to count the overlapping days twice.

What recurring payments look like

In a statement, a subscription rarely has a neat name, and the same supplier can look different from one month to the next. A typical extract:

01.07.2026  SEPA-LASTSCHRIFT FitX Deutschland GmbH Mandat 99881   -19,99
03.07.2026  NETFLIX.COM 866-579-7172                              -13,99
01.08.2026  SEPA-LASTSCHRIFT FitX Deutschland GmbH Mandat 99881   -19,99
03.08.2026  NETFLIX.COM 866-579-7172                              -13,99
15.08.2026  PAYPAL *ADOBE SYSTEMS 35314369001                     -24,59
03.09.2026  NETFLIX.COM 866-579-7172                              -15,99
15.09.2026  PAYPAL *ADOBE SYSTEMS 35314369001                     -24,59

Signs that a payment is a subscription:

• The same supplier, even when the text around the name changes: payment words such as “direct debit” or “card payment”, reference numbers, and prefixes added by payment services such as PayPal, Stripe or Square.
• A similar amount each time. Prices go up now and then, and card payments in a foreign currency change a little with the exchange rate.
• A steady rhythm: about 7, 30, 91 or 365 days apart. Payments can move by a day or two around weekends and bank holidays, and months have different lengths, so look for “about a month”, not the exact same date.
• A direct debit or a repeating card payment. A standing order you set up yourself repeats too, but you probably know about it already.

Watch out for two subscriptions from the same company at different prices, such as two apps charged through the same app store. They are two separate costs.

Finding them by hand in a spreadsheet

1. Open the CSV with your spreadsheet’s import option rather than by double-clicking it, so you can choose the separator (comma or semicolon) and the number format. Check that the amounts are numbers, not text.
2. Keep only payments out: filter the amount column to negative numbers, or use the debit column if your bank has one.
3. Add a column with a clean supplier name. Copy the payee, then remove reference numbers, payment words and payment-service prefixes, so that every payment to the same supplier has exactly the same name.
4. Sort by supplier name, then by date.
5. Count the payments per supplier with a pivot table, or with a formula like the one below, and look at every supplier with two or more payments.
6. For each of them, check the number of days between payments and whether the amount stays about the same.
7. Write the result down: supplier, amount, how often, date of the next payment, who uses it and which card or account pays for it.

=COUNTIF(D:D, D2)    number of payments to the supplier in D2
=A3-A2               days between two payments, with dates in column A

This works, but it takes a while the first time, it has to be repeated every few months, and yearly renewals are the easiest to overlook.

Finding them with a subscription tracker

A subscription tracker does the same steps for you. With our subscription tracker, you upload the CSV, CAMT.053 or OFX file and it:

• keeps only the payments out, and drops income and balances;
• cleans supplier names and recognises about 80 well-known services;
• finds weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly rhythms, allowing for price changes and a missed payment;
• adds up the monthly and yearly cost for each currency;
• asks you about well-known services seen only once, and flags payments that seem to have stopped;
• emails you before each renewal or free trial end.

It cannot see payments from accounts or cards you do not upload, and bills that change a lot from month to month are better added by hand. The step-by-step guide shows how to download and upload your statement.