Scan bank statements for recurring subscriptions
Have an agent sort bank statements, spot repeat charges, and turn them into a subscription dashboard.
- What they did
- The person put their bank statements into one folder, with a separate subfolder for each bank and month names in the filenames. Then they asked Claude Cowork to read files in CSV, XLS, XLSX, and PDF form, compare charges across months, and ignore one-time purchases, groceries, and bank fees. The agent built an inline dashboard with one card for each subscription and also saved an .xlsx file in the same folder.
- How it went
- The dashboard and report were shown only as screenshots, so there were no visible totals for subscriptions or savings. One example it surfaced was a €5-per-month Glovo Premium charge that had gone unnoticed for seven months.
- Tips
- It can help to run this on a schedule each month. If you want the status column to show cancellations, you still need to confirm those yourself.
Try it yourself with Claude Cowork
Review the bank statements in [folder path]. Look through all CSV, XLS, XLSX, and PDF files, and identify charges that repeat in at least two different months. Ignore one-off purchases, grocery spending, and bank fees. For each recurring subscription, list the merchant, the monthly cost, the most recent charge date, and whether it appears active or cancelled. Create a simple dashboard or spreadsheet with these results, and include an estimated monthly total I could save if I cancelled the subscriptions you flag. Before you do anything irreversible, such as sending, submitting, deleting, or cancelling, pause and ask for my approval. Do not make any cancellations yourself.
Fill in the [brackets]. Agents can make mistakes, so review anything before it is sent, paid or deleted.
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