# Subscription Audit > Finds the recurring charges (subscriptions) hiding in a bank or credit-card CSV, tells you the true monthly and yearly cost, and flags the ones that look forgotten — a free trial that started charging, or a service that quietly kept billing after you stopped using it. Reads a statement you exported yourself; no bank login, no third-party service, fully offline and deterministic. - Skill: `trac3r00/subscription-audit` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add trac3r00/subscription-audit` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/trac3r00/subscription-audit/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Data & Analytics - License: MIT - Author: trac3r00 (https://skillmd.com/u/trac3r00) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/trac3r00/subscription-audit --- # Subscription Audit Re-read a year of statements the way no human bothers to. ## Overview Subscriptions are engineered to be invisible. Each charge is small, they land on different days, the merchant name is `ADOBE *CREATIVE CLOUD 800-833` instead of "Adobe", and nobody sits down to re-read twelve months of a bank statement by hand. So the free trial that started charging, the gym you stopped going to, the app you used once — they just keep billing. `subscription_audit.py` is the re-reader. Feed it a CSV you exported from your bank or card and it: - **finds the recurring charges** by clustering repeat payments to the same merchant at a regular cadence (weekly / monthly / quarterly / yearly), while ignoring one-off spending like groceries, gas, or a flight; - **normalizes messy merchant names** (`AMZN Mktp US*RT4G9` → `amazon`, store numbers and auth codes stripped) so the same service groups together; - **reports the true cost** — monthly and annualized — across everything it found; - **flags review candidates**: a subscription whose expected next charge is well overdue (`STALE`), or one whose first non-zero charge was substantially smaller than later charges (`trial→paid`). No bank login, no Plaid, no cloud. It reads a file you already have, is pure standard library, and is deterministic — the same statement always gives the same answer. A ruler for your recurring spend, not a budgeting app. ## When to use - **The monthly "where does it go?" question.** Export a statement, run the tool, see the whole subscription stack ranked by cost in one screen. - **A cancellation sweep.** The `STALE` and `trial→paid` flags are your cut list — the tool even totals what cancelling the stale ones saves per year. - **A budget guardrail on a schedule.** Run it monthly with `--budget N`; it exits non-zero when detected recurring spend creeps past your line, so a cron job or CI step can ping you when subscription creep sets in. Not for: categorizing one-off spending, forecasting, or replacing a real budgeting app. It answers exactly one question — *what am I paying for on repeat?* ## The method 1. **Export a statement.** From your bank or card, download transactions as CSV (any date range; the more months, the better the cadence detection). Most exports have a date, a description/merchant, and an amount column — the tool sniffs these by header name or by content, so you usually need no flags. 2. **Run it.** ```bash python scripts/subscription_audit.py statement.csv # or pipe it: cat card.csv | python scripts/subscription_audit.py - ``` 3. **Read the stack.** Subscriptions are listed heaviest-first with their monthly cost, per-charge amount, cadence, and last-seen date. The footer gives the total monthly and yearly burn. 4. **Review the flags.** `⚠ STALE` means no charge appears within the configured interval; `trial→paid` means the first non-zero charge was smaller than later charges. The summary estimates the yearly cost of the stale entries. Confirm each charge with the provider before cancelling it. 5. **Put it on a leash.** Add `--budget 80` to fail (exit 1) when recurring spend passes $80/mo, and drop that into a monthly cron so creep gets caught early. Useful flags: `--json` (machine-readable, for a cron/agent to consume), `--min-charges N` (how many hits before a merchant counts as recurring; default 3), `--stale-days N` (grace period past the expected next charge before flagging), `--currency €` (display symbol). ## Anti-patterns - **Feeding it two months and expecting miracles.** Cadence detection needs at least three hits of a merchant. A short statement will under-report — export a longer range. - **Trusting `STALE` as "already cancelled".** Stale means *no recent charge in this file* — it might be an annual plan that just isn't due, or a charge outside your export window. It's a prompt to check, not proof it's dead. - **Treating the monthly total as your whole budget.** This is recurring spend only; it deliberately ignores groceries, gas, and one-offs. It's not a full budget. - **Cancelling on the merchant string alone.** `github` and `github sponsors` may be two different things collapsed by name normalization — glance at the example description before you cancel. ## Example ``` $ python scripts/subscription_audit.py statement.csv --budget 100 --stale-days 20 Subscription audit ====================================================================== monthly each cadence last merchant ---------------------------------------------------------------------- $ 54.99 $ 54.99 monthly 2026-06-15 adobe creative cloud $ 15.49 $ 15.49 monthly 2026-06-03 netflix $ 10.99 $ 10.99 monthly 2026-07-05 spotify usa ny $ 10.00 $ 10.00 monthly 2026-03-28 planet fitness ⚠ STALE $ 4.00 $ 4.00 monthly 2026-04-18 github ⚠ STALE ---------------------------------------------------------------------- $ 95.47 monthly across 5 subscriptions (≈ $1,146/yr) ⚠ 2 look forgotten (no charge in a while): cutting them saves $14.00/mo (≈ $168/yr). · planet fitness — last seen 2026-03-28 (99d ago), $10.00/mo · github — last seen 2026-04-18 (78d ago), $4.00/mo budget $100.00/mo → OK ($95.47 detected) ``` Groceries, gas, a flight, and an Amazon order in the same statement were correctly ignored — only the things that recur on a rhythm were surfaced.