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Financial Analysis

Recurring Transactions Analysis

Identify weekly, biweekly, and monthly recurring transactions in your bank statements, subscriptions, rent, payroll, and other repeating cash flows.

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Overview

The Recurring Transactions feature identifies transactions that repeat at regular intervals (weekly, biweekly, monthly). This helps you understand subscription costs, payroll, rent, and other repeating cash flows for budgeting, audits, and financial analysis.

What It Does

  • Automatic detection: Finds transaction patterns that repeat over time
  • Interval classification: Labels patterns as weekly, biweekly, monthly, or unknown
  • Amount and count: Shows the typical amount per occurrence and total number of occurrences
  • Drill-down: View all underlying transactions for any recurring pattern
  • Export: Use the table for reporting or further analysis

How to Use

  1. Navigate: Open the Advanced Analysis tab and select the Recurring sub-tab.
  2. Run detection: The first time you open the sub-tab for a project, DocuClipper detects recurring patterns on its own, so the table matches the Recurring card on the Report sub-tab. Click Detect Recurring to run it again after adding statements or approving transfers. The button reads Detecting… until it completes.
  3. Review the table: The largest totals come first, money out or money in, so the costs that matter most are at the top. Each row is a recurring pattern with:
    • Description: Normalized description for the pattern. Long names wrap onto a second line so the whole payee stays readable.
    • Amount: Typical transaction amount, with cents
    • Total amount paid: Amount × count for the period
    • Interval: Weekly, Every 2 weeks, Monthly or Irregular, the same words the Report's Recurring card uses
    • Count: Number of occurrences
    • First / Last: The dates of the first and last occurrence, exactly as they appear on the statements
  4. Drill down: Click a row to open the Recurring transaction details modal with all individual transactions in that pattern.
  5. Filter and sort: Type in the box under Description to find a payee, and use the Any lists under First and Last to pick a date range. Amount, Total amount paid, Interval and Count are filtered from the menu in their column header. Click any header to sort. On a phone the table scrolls sideways with the description kept in view.
  6. Export: Click Export as CSV to save the table for reporting or spreadsheets.

Advanced Analysis Recurring sub-tab for a bakery client: the Recurring Transactions table lists the largest totals first, rent at -25,200.00, then an equipment loan, insurance, internet, a point-of-sale subscription, an accounting subscription and a monthly service fee, each with its amount, total amount paid, Monthly interval, a count of 6 and first and last dates from January to June 2026, under the Detect Recurring and Export as CSV buttons

Understanding the Results

  • Weekly / every 2 weeks / monthly: The system infers the interval from the spacing of transaction dates.
  • Irregular: The pattern repeats but doesn't fit a standard interval.
  • Total amount paid: Helps compare impact of different recurring expenses (e.g. subscriptions vs rent).
  • On the Report: the Recurring card lists the largest totals first. A payment that ended more than two cycles before the last statement is flagged as stopped and left out of the amount a month; a payee whose amount changed (for example from $600 to $300 a month) is flagged as changed, with both amounts and the month of the change, not as stopped.
  • Transfers between your own accounts: Once a transfer is approved in Transfers, both of its sides are left out of Recurring, so a monthly move to savings is not listed as a recurring payment or deposit. Run Detect Recurring again after approving transfers. Transfers still waiting for review are included.

Common Use Cases

  • Budgeting: List all recurring outflows to build or update budgets
  • Audits: Verify recurring payments (rent, subscriptions, payroll)
  • Cost reduction: Identify subscriptions or recurring charges to review or cancel
  • Cash flow: Understand fixed vs variable outflows
  • Compliance: Document recurring payments for investigations or reporting

Best Practices

  • Run Detect Recurring after importing new transaction data so new patterns are included.
  • Use date filters on the transaction set (e.g. account/period) so detection runs on the relevant range.
  • Combine with Transaction Tagging to tag recurring patterns for quick filtering later.
  • Export the table to CSV for use in reports or spreadsheets.

Troubleshooting

  • No results: Ensure you have enough transaction history (at least a few months) and that the account/period selection includes the right data.
  • Missing pattern: Some recurring transactions may be grouped under a different description; check similar descriptions or run detection again after categorization.
  • Wrong interval: Intervals are inferred from dates; if statements have gaps, the interval may show as "unknown."