Tracking Subscriptions (cost, renewal date, etc)

[TJ Luoma]

Hello all. I have never used Tap Forms before, but I bought a license awhile ago and would like to finally start using it.

The first thing that I’d like to do is come up with a database that will allow me to track subscriptions.

These fields would be required:

+ What is it for?
+ How much is it for?
+ How many months is the subscription for?
+ What date is it due to renew?

These fields would be optional:

– Which email address did I use to register? ¹
– What payment source does it use? ¹
– URL to go to for support
– Email for support
– What’s the URL to manage/change my subscription?
– Other Notes

For the fields marked with a ¹ that means that I would like the DB to remember previously-entered answers and offer them as auto-complete options (if that’s even a thing that is possible) _OR_ I would like to be able to define about 3-5 options and choose them from a dropdown or something

Finally, the whole purpose of compiling this information is to see how much that I am paying per month/year for subscriptions, so I would like to be able to calculate how much I’m spending per year on a each subscription (i.e. if I put in that it’s $3/month then it should put $36 as the annual fee, but if I put that it’s $24/year then it ought to figure out that I’m paying $2/month, etc) _AND_ then I want to be able to get the numbers from _ALL_ of the subscriptions and show me the monthly / annual total.

I have no idea if this is even possible, but I figured this was a good project to start with, since it is something I am actually interested in, and it seemed like a good fit for a database program.

Thanks for any advice / pointers … on the off-chance that someone has already invented this wheel (or something like it) please pass it on!

[Brendan]

Hello TJ,

I moved this post to the Using Tap Forms forum because I think it’s better placed there. The Template Exchange is mostly for posting your templates that you want to share with others.

Tap Forms does have an Auto-Complete function built-in to it. You just have to click on a checkmark button to turn it on for your Text fields. Then Tap Forms will keep track of the previously entered values for that field and will provide a popup menu of those values.

Also, Tap Forms has Pick Lists, which are pre-defined lists of values that you can setup and then choose from as you enter data into your fields.

For your calculations, you can definitely do that.

However, you would probably need a couple of fields to store the subscription costs based on whether they’re annual fees or monthly fees. Because Tap Forms wouldn’t be able to detect if you typed in “$2/month” or “$24/year”. So having a couple of different fields would handle that for you. For example you would maybe have a Monthly Fee number field and an Annual Fee number field.

Then you could have a couple of Calculation fields to do the calculation for you.

For Monthly Fee the formula would be:

Monthly Fee * 12

And for the Annual Fee, the formula would obviously be:

Yearly Fee / 12

And Tap Forms can also do grand totals for you and display the results at the bottom of the records list view.

With Saved Searches you can create sub-lists of your subscription records based on different years.

Hope that answers your questions ok.

Thanks!

Brendan

[TJ Luoma]

Thanks! I wasn’t sure where to put it, but originally planned to ask if someone had something like what I was describing, but then as I went on I realized it was probably something I needed to make because of the way that I would like it to be.

Thanks for the tips. I’ll try to give it a go and see how far I get.

[jolinwarren]

TJ, I just read your blog post on Bobby (an app which I installed a few years ago and then never used), and after reading about its limitations, thought, “I should set up a Tap Forms database to track my subscriptions instead”. Your blog post helped clarify in my mind what I would want to track for subscriptions, and why (which match yours). I’ve been using Tap Forms for many years, so it’s the place I would naturally want to do this. I headed over to the forums here to look into a couple of things and came across your post, a nice little circle!

However, you would probably need a couple of fields to store the subscription costs based on whether they’re annual fees or monthly fees. Because Tap Forms wouldn’t be able to detect if you typed in “$2/month” or “$24/year”.

I was thinking of handling this a different way, basically having a ‘price’ currency field and then a tickbox for “annual” (default being monthly for me, but you could reverse that). Or there could be a choice field if weekly, biannual, or other frequencies need to be supported. Then I would have two calculation fields, “monthly cost” and “annual cost”, and using the price and tickbox fields, it would be possible to calculate and display both.

I haven’t built anything yet, but I’m happy to share it when I do if you’re still interested.

Cheers,
Jolin

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