Find the subscriptions hiding in your email receipts

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Replace the [brackets] with your details, then paste this into your assistant.

Make a monthly recurring-charge review from [redacted receipt export, transaction export and renewal notices] for [period]. My priorities are [what matters, budget goal and protected essentials]. Known service use is [usage notes or unknown]. Start with at most [three months of records and 25 recurring services]; explain any material gaps before drawing conclusions.

Build or update a private ledger in [approved location]. For each suspected recurring service, record the merchant, service, charge dates, amounts, currency, supported billing interval, next renewal if documented and a source file/page/row reference. Distinguish confirmed recurrence from a hypothesis. A single receipt is not proof of a subscription. Match receipts to transactions without counting them twice; keep pending charges, refunds, reimbursements and one-off purchases separate. Flag ambiguous merchant names for my confirmation. Retain only the fields needed for this review, not full account or card numbers.

Compare equivalent plans and billing periods with the previous record. For apparent price hikes, show old and new amounts, dates, arithmetic and source evidence. Separate tax, currency, quantity, tier and introductory-discount changes from a true recurring base-price increase. Do not normalize an uncertain annual or monthly charge as though its interval were known. Show documented recurring costs and estimated annualized costs in separate columns, with formulas and assumptions.

Give each service a proposed keep, investigate, downgrade or cancel decision. Tie the recommendation to my stated priorities, actual usage evidence, duplication and switching or cancellation costs. Missing usage data means ask, not unused. Protect the essentials I named. For each proposed change, state what I might lose, documented notice requirements or fees, the question still unresolved and a potential net saving; estimated savings are not money already saved. Link any externally checked provider terms to the provider’s official page and date them. Do not invent cancellation steps when current terms are unavailable.

Return a one-page review: changed charges since last time; up to five decisions worth my attention; evidence and arithmetic; and missing information. Keep the full recurring-service inventory attached so unchanged costs remain visible. Record my eventual decisions separately from the agent’s recommendations, and carry unresolved questions into the next month without marking them completed.

Do the first review here. Before monthly automation, confirm the review date and timezone, exact records you may read, private ledger location and delivery destination. Verify that the schedule and access actually work; otherwise give me an export checklist and a manual monthly prompt. Never infer that you can see my accounts. Do not cancel or downgrade anything, transfer money, change payment methods, contact providers or enroll in alternatives without my explicit approval for that exact action.

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