Subscriptions · EscBooks Help

Tracking a subscription

Subscriptions, under Spending in the sidebar, is always there. It keeps the software, hosting, insurance and other services you pay for on a schedule: what they cost a month and a year, and what renews next. Click Add Subscription, or from anywhere press Esc for the Command Menu and choose Add Subscription. The dialog's fields:

Website: the service's address, like figma.com. Leave the field (or press Enter) and EscBooks fetches the site's icon and name: the icon appears beside it, and Service fills in if it's empty.
Service: its name, which you can change. It's the only field you must fill in.
Plan / tier: Pro, Team, Business Standard.
Type of service: Software, Hosting & Domains, Cloud Storage, Email & Communication, Design & Creative, Marketing, Finance & Accounting, Insurance, Security, Hardware & Equipment, Learning, Operations or Other. It groups the page's By Type of Service.
Status: Active, Paused or Cancelled (see Pausing and cancelling below).
Cost: what one billing period costs. A free plan can be $0.
Billed: Monthly, Quarterly or Annual.
Renews on: a renewal date. Any past one works, like last year's: EscBooks rolls it forward (see Renewals and reminders).
Renews automatically: on to start. Turn it off for a term that ends unless you renew it.

More details, folded away to start, has Subscribed since (the day it started, which is where your reports start expecting its charges), Seats / licenses (a whole number, shown in the list as 3 seats), Paid With, Account email (the login or billing address on the account), Vendor (who bills you, picked or added like an expense's) and Notes.

Paid With is the same control as an expense's: Not recorded, Paid personally (your own card or cash), one of your accounts, or Add an account…, which asks for the new account's name and adds it under Accounts when you save. It's a record of how the subscription is paid; each charge you record as an expense has its own Paid With. Link an expense that doesn't say how it was paid to the subscription, and its Paid With fills in from the subscription's (you can change it before saving). A charge from a statement keeps the account the statement is from.

Click Add Subscription. To change one later, click its pencil in the list (on a phone, tap it): Edit Subscription has the same fields, and Save Subscription.

Icons

The icon comes from the website's own page (its largest icon, or its favicon). It's saved with your books, so it stays even if the site changes, and the site isn't contacted each time the page opens.
A site with no icon, or no website at all, gets the first letter of the service's name on a colored tile. The color comes from the name, so it's the same every time.
Only public web addresses are fetched: anything else says That doesn't look like a website address.
Change the website and the icon is fetched again. The name you've typed stays.

The Subscriptions page

Across the top, three totals, counting active subscriptions only:

Monthly Total: what they cost a month, with annual plans spread monthly: an annual plan counts a twelfth of its cost, a quarterly one a third. A $192 annual plan is $16.00 a month.
Annual Total: what a year of them comes to (a monthly plan twelve times, a quarterly one four).
Next Renewal: the soonest renewal date, with the service and its cost. Its icon turns red when that's within two weeks. Without any renewal dates, it says Add renewal dates to see what's next.

By Type of Service: each type's share of the monthly total, largest first.
Search by service or type finds a subscription by its name, plan, type or website.
The status menu shows Active ones to start; pick Paused, Cancelled or All for the others.
Costliest first, by monthly cost. Click the Service, Type, Cost, Monthly or Next Renewal heading to sort by it; on a phone, the Sort menu does the same.
Each row has the service's icon and name, its plan and seats (or its website), its type, its Cost per period (/mo, /qtr or /yr), its Monthly cost, and its next renewal. The arrow opens the service's website.

Renewals and reminders

The next renewal is worked out from Renews on, stepping whole billing periods (a month, a quarter or a year) until it reaches today or later. Calendar months, so the 15th stays the 15th, and January 31 becomes February 28. You never have to update it.
Soon marks a renewal in the next two weeks.
From a week before, the bell in the header lists it under Renewing soon, like Figma renews in 5 days, with its cost. That's time to cancel what you no longer use. Dismiss it and that renewal stays dismissed; the next one is a new reminder.
With Renews automatically off, Renews on is the date the term ends, and it isn't rolled forward. The list marks it Ends, and the bell says it ends, and that it's set not to renew.
A subscription with no Renews on date has no next renewal, and no reminder.

Pausing and cancelling

Click the subscription's pencil.
Set Status to Cancelled, or Paused for one you've put on hold.
Click Save Subscription.

The day it was cancelled or paused is kept (today, in your business's time zone), and shows in the list as Cancelled Oct 29 or Paused Oct 29.
It leaves the totals, By Type of Service and the Active list, has no next renewal and no reminders. It's shown dimmed under Cancelled, Paused or All.
Your reports stop expecting its charges after that day. Charges you recorded before it stay where they are.
Set it back to Active and the date is cleared: it counts, renews and reminds you again.
A cancelled subscription stays as a record, out of the way under Cancelled. A cancelled one isn't offered on new expenses.

Deleting a subscription

For one added by mistake, or that you don't want kept at all:

Click the subscription's pencil.
Click Delete, at the bottom left of Edit Subscription.
The confirm names it (Delete Figma?) and, when expenses are linked to it, says how many. Click Delete, or Keep to go back.

Its expenses stay in your books, with their amounts, categories and accounts, and are no longer linked to it. So do statement lines linked to it that are still waiting for review. Nothing you've recorded is removed.
Your reports stop expecting its charges, for every month, including the ones before today.
It can't be undone. To stop tracking a subscription but keep its history, set its Status to Cancelled instead.

Subscriptions and your expenses

The tracker isn't your books. What you spend is counted from expenses: the charges on your card and bank statements. A subscription is what you expect to pay, and EscBooks checks it against what's recorded.

A month the tracker expects a charge with none recorded is listed apart, as Expected subscription charges not yet recorded: a reminder to record it, never in your costs or profit. Try it:

Adobe Creative Cloud, billed

Charges linked to it

$59.99 a month, subscribed since January 2026. Click a month to record a charge in it, or take it away.

Charges recorded, in costs and profit$179.97

Expected subscription charges not yet recorded$419.93

Each month with no charge from it is expected, as a reminder. It's listed beside the profit and loss, never in it.

Charge recordedPaid for by an earlier chargeExpected, not recordedNothing expected

Expected months start at Subscribed since (or the day you added it, if that's blank) and run to today, or to the day it was cancelled or paused.
A month with a recorded charge from it isn't expected. Nor are the months that charge pays for: a quarterly charge covers three months, an annual one twelve. A charge counts when it's linked to the subscription, or when it's from the subscription's vendor or paid to a payee with its name.
Once a charge is linked, from that charge's month on, the expenses are the record and nothing more is expected.

Linking a charge:

An expense has a Subscription field once you have subscriptions. Pick one, or Not a subscription. On a new expense it links itself when the vendor is the subscription's vendor, or the subscription's name is in the vendor or description, and just one fits. A choice you make yourself wins. See Expenses.
A statement line, uploaded or from a connected bank, whose vendor is an active subscription's name or its vendor's name is linked to it. In the review it shows a badge like Figma subscription, and if it would otherwise be filed under Other, it's filed under Software. See Reviewing and approving.
A connected assistant bringing in a statement sees your active subscriptions, and can link a charge that's clearly one of them. See Connected assistants.

Where it shows:

The Profit & Loss lists Expected subscription charges not yet recorded below net profit, apart from the totals. The quarterly and annual reports show the same reminder under their profit and loss. See Reports.
Reports → Taxes has Subscription Charges to Check: each subscription's expected charges this year with no expense recorded. Under Spreadsheets for Your Accountant, Subscriptions not recorded downloads the same list.
A recorded charge counts in its own expense category, like any expense, on your tax form's lines.

Vendors

The Vendor under More details is who bills you. The vendor's page under Vendors then lists the subscription with its monthly cost, and its charges link to the subscription by that vendor.