Small charges, large totals
Recurring spend is the part of a budget that nobody looks at, because each line is small and none of them require a decision. Fourteen subscriptions at forty a month is nearly seven thousand a year, and it never appears as a single number anywhere on a statement.
Karchu makes it appear. It groups the repeating charges out of your transaction history and shows the yearly figure next to the monthly one, which is usually the moment a few of them get cancelled.
How the pattern is found
Transactions are grouped by normalized merchant, which strips the reference numbers, store codes and payment processor noise that make the same subscription look like twelve different merchants. Within a group, Karchu looks at the spacing between payments and the spread of the amounts.
A group qualifies as recurring when the interval is consistent and the amounts sit close together. Two coffee purchases a month apart are not a subscription. Twelve identical charges on the same day of each month are.
Catching the quiet increase
The most common way a subscription costs more than you think is a price rise you never noticed, because it arrives as an email you did not read and a charge that looks like every other charge.
Because each detected charge keeps its full payment history, a change in amount shows up as a step: the old price, the new price and the date it moved. You can also have Karchu raise an alert when a recurring amount changes, so you hear about it in the month it happens rather than the year after.
Where it feeds through
Detected recurring charges are used by the cash flow forecast, so an annual renewal appears in the month it is due rather than being smoothed across the year. They also appear in the daily brief when a new one is found, and in the recurring expense report alongside your other reports.
Frequently asked questions
How does Karchu find recurring charges?
It groups transactions by normalized merchant name and looks for a repeating interval: weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or annual. A group becomes a recurring charge when the spacing and the amounts are consistent enough to be a pattern rather than a coincidence.
Will it spot a price increase?
Yes. Because each recurring charge keeps its payment history, a change in the amount is visible as a step. Karchu shows the old amount, the new amount, and the date it changed, so a quiet subscription increase does not slip past.
Does it cancel subscriptions for me?
No. Karchu shows you what you are paying and what it costs per year. Cancelling is something you do with the provider, and no tool that promises to do it for you can do it reliably.
Does it need a bank connection?
No. Recurring detection runs on the statements you upload. Karchu never asks for online banking credentials and is not a bank aggregator.
What does it show per charge?
Merchant, frequency, typical amount, last payment date, the next expected date, the monthly equivalent and the annualized cost, plus the payment history the pattern was derived from.