SK
Sarah K.
Freelance UI/UX Designer, Stockholm
The situation
Running a solo design practice means subscriptions spread across personal and business cards with no central record. Sarah was paying for Figma, Canva Pro, Adobe Express, Unsplash Premium, and three additional tools she had forgotten about. Two of those forgotten tools had already charged for the full year without her noticing.
What she did
She added all her subscriptions to CostLoop and set 30-day renewal reminders on every annual plan. She also stored each tool's cancellation link directly in the dashboard so she would not have to hunt for it when a renewal came up.
The result
She cancelled unused tools that had been quietly charging. Three weeks before her Figma annual renewal, she received a reminder and used the lead time to contact Figma about the renewal instead of letting it auto-renew without review.
Before / after
Monthly spend reviewed
Review
Renewal checked before charge
2
Unused tools cancelled
MT
Marcus T.
Co-founder, 12-person marketing agency, London
The situation
A marketing agency runs on SaaS tools spread across client projects and internal operations. Billing is distributed across multiple cards, there is no single view of total spend, and no formal review process for renewals. The tipping point came when an annual project management tool auto-renewed without any review or notice.
What he did
Marcus imported the agency's full subscription list via CSV, then worked through the stack assigning a named owner to every tool. He set up a monthly health score review so the team had a regular forcing function to evaluate whether each tool was still earning its place.
The result
The review surfaced tools with no active owner - meaning no one in the agency was accountable for them and no one was sure they were being used. Some were cancelled outright. Others were consolidated to lower tiers. The important change was operational: every tool now had an owner and a renewal decision process.
34
Subscriptions tracked
34
Tool owners assigned
Review
Unused tools evaluated
Owners
Assigned before renewal
JR
James R.
Operations Manager, 8-person e-commerce team, Berlin
The situation
Different team members had signed up for tools independently over time, leaving no central record of what the company was actually paying for. When James joined as operations manager, he inherited an undocumented stack and needed a reliable way to compare expected spend with actual recurring charges.
What he did
James used CostLoop's CSV bank import to surface all recurring charges from the company's accounts. He matched each charge to a tool, added an owner for every subscription, and built out a renewal calendar so the team had visibility on upcoming commitments.
The result
The import revealed subscriptions that had no record in any internal system. Some were eliminated entirely. Others were reassigned to active owners and retained. The team moved from scattered charges to a reviewable subscription inventory.
Gap
Estimated vs actual spend
7
Subscriptions found via import
Owners
Subscriptions reassigned
Review
Recurring spend cleaned up
AP
Anna P.
Independent Business Consultant, Toronto
The situation
Anna's consulting practice runs on 14 subscriptions covering CRM, invoicing, project management, communications, and storage. The tools themselves were all justified - the problem was annual plans renewing without any advance warning. She had been caught twice by charges she did not see coming.
What she did
She added all 14 subscriptions to CostLoop and set 14-day renewal reminders on every annual plan. She also stored the cancellation link for each tool so she could act quickly if a reminder triggered a cancellation decision.
The result
CostLoop caught annual renewals before they charged. She reviewed each one with time to decide. One tool was cancelled outright. One was downgraded to a lower tier. When she decided to cancel, she used the stored cancellation link instead of searching through account settings at the last minute.
3
Annual renewals caught before charge
1
Tool cancelled before renewal
1
Tool downgraded before renewal
Review
Annual renewals checked