Detected Subscriptions

DayZero automatically mines your bank outflows for recurring charges — SaaS tools, memberships, insurance, and other subscriptions — on the Recurring tab of Transactions. It groups charges by vendor, infers the billing cadence, and estimates true monthly spend (capped to what the data actually supports). See your total monthly burn at a glance, predict the next charge, and set a budget so overruns get caught before they grow.

Key capabilities

• Automatic detection from bank outflows (income/customer counterparties are excluded)
• Cadence inference across weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual patterns
• Estimated monthly cost per subscription, clamped by an evidence cap so it never overstates spend
• Next expected charge date with an overdue indicator
• Per-subscription confidence score and occurrence count
• Summary strip: Monthly Cost, period Total, Recurring Detected count, and a Monthly Budget with over-limit alert
• Recurring Spend Over Time bar chart and a Top 5 Most Expensive breakdown
• Adjustable lookback (3 months to 2 years) and sort options
• Editable overrides — custom name, amount, frequency, and notes
• Dismiss ("Not Recurring") to remove a vendor; restore is supported
• Category tag carried from your counterparty registry

How it works

Detection runs over your bank outflows in the lookback window, groups them by vendor, validates a consistent amount and cadence, then rolls everything into a monthly total compared against your budget.

flowchart TD
  bank["Bank outflows (lookback window)"] --> group["Group by vendor"]
  group --> validate{"Consistent amount + cadence?"}
  validate -->|"No"| skip["Skip (irregular)"]
  validate -->|"Yes"| est["Estimate monthly (evidence-capped)"]
  est --> rollup["Monthly spend rollup"]
  rollup --> over{"Over budget?"}
  over -->|"Yes"| alert["Over-budget alert"]

How to use it

1. Open Transactions and click the Recurring tab (/books/transactions?tab=recurring) — detected subscriptions load automatically.
2. Adjust the lookback (3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years) and sort (most expensive, most charges, highest confidence, most recent, frequency).
3. Review each vendor's frequency, charge count, estimated monthly cost, period total, next expected date, and confidence bar.
4. Set a Monthly Budget with the gear control — you'll get an over-budget alert (and the amount over) when total monthly spend exceeds it.
5. Expand a subscription to override its display name, monthly cost, frequency, or notes, then Save Changes.
6. Click Not Recurring to dismiss a vendor that shouldn't be tracked (e.g. a series that has ended).

Pro tips

• Review subscriptions quarterly — it's common to find forgotten SaaS tools or duplicate services to cancel.
• The Top 5 Most Expensive view shows each vendor's share of total spend — start cuts there for the biggest impact.
• An overdue next-charge date can mean a cancelled service or a missed/late charge worth verifying.
• Widen the lookback to 1–2 years to catch quarterly and annual renewals that a 3-month window would miss.
• Use the monthly rollup as your real software/recurring-cost line for budgeting and forecasting.
• If a known subscription is missing, it likely has too few charges or an inconsistent amount — overrides only adjust detected vendors, they don't create new ones.

In-depth guide

Detection logic

A vendor's outflows must clear several gates to count as a subscription. Customer/income counterparties are excluded entirely, since this view is for recurring spend only.

If no cadence bucket matches, the vendor is treated as irregular and skipped.

Frequency buckets and monthly estimate

Estimated monthly cost is the average charge times the multiplier, then clamped by an evidence cap — the total observed spend divided by the months actually observed — so a few clustered charges can't extrapolate into an unrealistically high monthly figure. Amounts are integer cents throughout.

Confidence, next charge, and overrides

• Confidence: rises with the number of charges and the consistency of amounts — more occurrences and tighter amounts score higher.
• Next expected date: the last charge plus the nominal interval; the UI rolls it forward and flags it overdue if it's in the past.
• Overrides: set a custom name, monthly amount, frequency, or note per vendor — these take precedence over the detected values without changing the underlying transactions.

Lookback, sorting, budget, and spend history

• Lookback: defaults to 180 days and is adjustable from 3 months to 2 years.
• Sort options: cost (asc/desc), occurrences, confidence, recency, and frequency.
• Monthly Budget: a single limit; when total estimated monthly spend exceeds it, the summary flags over budget by the difference.
• Recurring Spend Over Time: a chart that rolls detected subscriptions into a per-month total across the window.

Start free and find the subscriptions quietly draining your cash.