Subscriptions
Track recurring bills, understand monthly and annual cost, review what is essential, and see upcoming charges in the forecast.
Last updated 2026-09-08
A subscription is a recurring bill or service you've committed to: streaming, a phone plan, memberships, insurance, domain renewals. The Subscriptions register keeps them in one list with what each costs, how often it bills, and when it charges next. Open it from Subscriptions in the navigation.
A subscription entry is a tracking record, nothing more. It never moves money, never pays anything, and never creates spending on its own.
What subscriptions help you answer
Keep an entry for anything that renews on its own — monthly bills like Netflix or a phone plan, annual renewals like a Costco membership or a domain name, trials you don't want to forget, and services you're considering cancelling. The list then answers questions like:
- What do my recurring commitments cost per month — and per year?
- What is charging next, and when?
- Which of these are essential, and which could go?
- Which services am I still actually using?
- Which trials are about to turn into paid plans?
Just as important is what a subscription is not. It has no connection to your bank, and it can't pay, process, or cancel anything. It isn't proof that a charge happened — only a real transaction shows that. And it never posts spending to your records by itself: spending comes from posted transactions you enter or import.
Add a subscription manually
- Open Subscriptions from the Forecast page and choose to add a subscription.
- Name it and, if you like, add the provider — "Netflix", "Rogers", "Costco".
- Enter the amount and currency exactly as the service bills it. For a Costco membership that's the yearly fee, not a monthly figure — the monthly view is calculated for you.
- Pick the billing frequency. A custom frequency lets you set every-N-days for unusual cycles.
- Set the next charge date so the forecast knows when it renews. You can also record when the subscription started.
- Optionally pick the payment account and a category, so the charges are classified consistently.
- Mark how essential it is (see below).
- Optionally paste the service's cancellation or account-management link. It must be a secure address starting with https:// — anything else won't be shown as a clickable link.
- Save. The subscription joins your cost summaries immediately.
Understand billing frequency
Subscriptions can bill weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, or on a custom every-N-days cycle. Pick whatever the service actually does: Netflix and a phone bill are monthly, insurance is often quarterly, a Costco membership and a domain renewal are annual.
The frequency drives two things: when the next charges are expected to land, and how the cost is normalized so different billing rhythms can be compared fairly — which is what the next section is about.
Understand monthly equivalent and annual cost
The monthly equivalent is each subscription's cost expressed as a normalized monthly number, regardless of how it actually bills. It's calculated from how many times a year the subscription charges: a $120-per-year domain renewal works out to $10 a month, insurance at $300 a quarter works out to $100 a month, and a $10-a-week service works out to about $43 a month — more than $40, because a year has 52 weeks, not 48.
The annualized cost is the same idea pointed the other way: the amount times the number of charges per year, giving a yearly cost estimate. Together they let you compare a weekly, monthly, and annual service side by side, and see what the whole list really costs.
If a subscription bills in a different currency than your base currency, an approximate base-currency equivalent is shown using the most recent exchange rate you've entered, clearly labelled as approximate.
Mark essentiality
Essentiality is your own judgment about each service. It doesn't change any calculation — it exists to make reviews fast:
| Level | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Essential | You'd keep it no matter what — a phone bill, home insurance. |
| Useful | Earning its keep. You'd notice if it were gone. |
| Optional | Nice to have. When you're looking for savings, start here — the streaming service you rarely open lives in this row. |
| Unknown | Haven't decided yet. A fine default until you've formed an opinion. |
Track trials and cancellations
Every subscription has a status: active, trial, review, paused, or cancelled. Active means it's a live commitment. Trial marks a free or discounted period — give it the conversion date as its next charge date, and you'll see exactly when the gym trial is about to become a paid monthly membership. When it converts, switch it to active and set the real amount; if you cancel in time, mark it cancelled instead.
Review is a flag to yourself: reconsider this one. Paused covers services on hold. Cancelled keeps the entry and its history without treating it as a live cost — don't delete a service you cancelled; mark it cancelled so past charges keep their context.
The cancellation or review link you stored opens the service's own cancel or account page. Only secure https:// links are rendered as clickable; an invalid or non-secure address is shown as plain text, not a link. TallyFolio itself never cancels a service for you — the link is a shortcut to where you can.
A last-used date on each subscription helps the honesty of reviews: a service you haven't opened in six months makes its own argument.
What happens in forecast
Subscriptions marked active feed the forecast: each one's upcoming charges are calculated on the fly from its next charge date, billing frequency, and amount, as committed obligations. Nothing is written to your ledger ahead of time and there is no button to press — a subscription never creates transaction rows.
Cancelling or pausing a subscription, or giving it an end date, removes every projected charge after that point straight away. Trial, review, paused, and cancelled subscriptions don't create forecast charges.
The Forecast page's Upcoming tab lists those same dated charges.
What happens in reports
What a subscription actually cost you shows up wherever its real charges do: in the dashboard grid under whatever category the charge was given, and in the Reports Spending and Merchants tabs. Historical costs are never reconstructed from a subscription's current amount — only real posted transactions count.
Those real charges come from transactions you enter by hand or import from a statement. A subscription's projected charges never count in reports.
Common mistakes
- Expecting a subscription to create transactions. It never does — its upcoming charges are projected in the forecast, and real spending comes from posted transactions you enter or import.
- Forgetting to update the amount after a price increase. Reports show the real charges either way, but your cost summaries and forecast keep using the old tracked amount until you update it.
- Leaving a cancelled service marked active. The forecast keeps projecting its charges. Mark it cancelled — and keep the entry for its history.
- Reading the monthly equivalent as the billed amount. A $120 annual renewal shows as $10 a month in summaries, but the card gets charged $120 once a year.
- Entering a plain http:// cancellation link and wondering why it isn't clickable. Only secure https:// links are rendered as links.
FAQ
Why did my subscription not create a transaction?
Can I cancel a service from TallyFolio?
Why is the monthly cost different from the billed amount?
How does TallyFolio know something might be a subscription?
What happens when I mark a subscription cancelled?
Where this lives in the app
Related articles
- Subscriptions, planned expenses, and the forecast
How subscriptions and planned expenses feed the forecast, and how they relate to the real transactions in your ledger.
- Forecast
See projected cash over the next 30, 60, or 90 days under three scenarios, plus what your credit-card statements are heading toward.
- Reports
Historical, read-only analysis of spending and merchants over any period you choose.
- Transactions
Every money movement in TallyFolio is a transaction. Learn the types, the statuses, and how to keep them categorized.