How a recurring transaction works
A subscription here is an ordinary transaction with a repeat. You add it like any other expense, income or transfer and set the repeat right under the date.
- Open a new transaction and fill it in as usual: amount, category, account — say 12.99, Subscriptions, Card.
- Tap Repeat: Never under the date and choose every day, week, month, quarter or year. Custom… gives every N days, weeks or months and lets you pick days of the week.
- Set an end if there is one: never, on a date, or after a number of times — handy for a 12-month contract.
- Save. This transaction becomes the first day of the series; the next ones are recorded on their day, around 08:00 in your time zone.
Nothing is written in advance: a payment appears only when its day comes, so your balance and charts never show money that hasn't moved yet. A series set on the 31st lands on the last day of shorter months.
What to track as a series
- Subscriptions: streaming, music, cloud storage, the gym, a phone plan.
- Bills: rent on the 1st, insurance every quarter, a yearly licence or domain.
- Income: salary on the 25th, a monthly allowance, rent you receive.
- Transfers: 200 to savings every month. A transfer between your own accounts is never counted as spending.
If the series really started earlier — the gym since March, say — the app asks whether to add the past payments too. Yes, add them fills in the missed days, No, just this one starts from here and the rest follow the schedule.
What your subscriptions cost a month
Analytics has a Recurring card: roughly how much your active series take every month, how much regular income comes in, and the top categories behind it. Weekly and yearly series are counted per month too, so everything sits in one number. Paused and finished series are left out, and so are transfers.
The full list is under More → Recurring: each series with its amount, schedule and next date, paused ones with the reason. In your history, transactions from a series carry a small ↻, so a subscription is easy to spot among one-off purchases.
Change one payment, or the whole series
Prices go up, one bill comes in higher than usual. When you edit a transaction from a series, the app asks how far the change should go:
- This one only — one month's bill was different; the rest of the series stays as it is.
- This and following — the new price from now on; earlier payments keep the old amount.
- The whole series — fix a wrong category in every transaction of the series, past ones too.
Deleting asks the same question, and every action comes with Undo.
Pause or stop a subscription
- Pause — nothing is recorded while the series is paused, and missed days are not filled in when you resume. Good for a gym membership you freeze for the summer.
- Delete series — no new payments; the transactions already recorded stay in your history.
- Automatic pause — if the series' account or category is deleted or archived, the series pauses itself and tells you what to fix.
Stopping a series here doesn't cancel the subscription with the provider: HonestExpenses only keeps your records and has no access to your bank or your other accounts. Seeing the monthly total in one place is usually what gets the cancelling done.
Just say “every month”
With AI, a repeat can be said out loud. “Netflix 12.99 every month” or “salary 2400 on the 25th every month until the end of the year” comes back as a draft marked ↻ with its schedule; you check it and save. More in logging expenses by voice. A receipt photo never sets a repeat — you add it in the draft if you need one.
If you use the Telegram bot, it tells you when a series records something — “↻ Recorded: Rent” — with an Undo button right below.
The AI assistant answers “how much do my subscriptions cost a month?” from the same numbers and can pause or stop a series for you — only after you tap Confirm.
Questions
Does the app find my subscriptions automatically?
No. There is no bank connection, so it never sees your card. You add each series once — by hand or by voice — and from then on it records itself.
When exactly is a recurring payment recorded?
On its day, around 08:00 in your time zone. Nothing is recorded in advance, so your balance only shows payments whose day has come.
Can I change a subscription's price from next month on?
Yes. Edit the next payment and choose This and following: the new amount applies from there, and earlier payments keep theirs.
What happens to my history if I delete a series?
No new payments are recorded. Transactions that were already recorded stay where they are, unless you delete them too.
Is the subscription tracker free?
You can start for free. A new account gets 7 days of Pro with 20 AI actions, and Lifetime is a single payment of 19 $ with everything unlocked for good.