Audit Digital Subscriptions With AI

The Task

Digital subscriptions are easy to start and easy to forget. A monthly bank statement can contain software, SaaS tools, advertising platforms, and services that are no longer useful.

The test was simple: upload the same business bank statement to three AI tools and ask each to identify spending on digital goods, software subscriptions, and SaaS tools.

ChatGPT-4o

ChatGPT-4o identified several digital expenses and returned the results in a clean table. It also created exportable data.

Strengths:

• Good structure.
• Easy to reuse the output.
• Clear tabular format.

Limitations:

• Missed some entries.
• Required manual review to catch omissions.

Claude Sonnet 3.5

Claude Sonnet 3.5 performed best in this test. It identified more relevant expenses, calculated the correct total, and presented the output in a publishable format.

Strengths:

• Most complete identification.
• Correct total.
• Useful spending observations.
• Strong formatting.

Perplexity

Perplexity performed poorly for this specific task. It misclassified some services, missed important entries, and produced an incorrect total.

Strengths:

• Fast.
• Easy to access.

Limitations:

• Misclassification.
• Missing data.
• Calculation errors.

Practical Takeaway

AI can make a subscription audit faster, but the output is not a financial record. Treat it as a first draft.

For financial work, always compare the AI output against the original statement before acting on totals, classifications, or recommendations.