Want to track your lifetime spend on Zomato, Swiggy or Amazon? Here's how

There are dozens of Google Chrome extensions that can help you take stock of how much you've spent

It has become almost instinctive to use the internet to order food, book a cab or shop. A burger here, a pair of shoes there, a jacket bought while aimlessly scrolling through Amazon or Myntra just before turning in for the night. Seldom does one think about the cumulative price of everything one orders online.

But what if someday you want to calculate the total money you have spent on Swiggy? Or Zomato? Or, say, Amazon? Or maybe Uber or Ola?

There are dozens of "spending calculators" that can track this and give you the exact number – within seconds. A simple online search will lead you to the Google Chrome extensions that offer such tracking.

One such extension, Amazon Order History Reporter, extracts order history from a person's Amazon account and shows the total lifetime spending.

Another extension, Swiggy Order Stats, analyses the orders and gives the results through visualisations. It shows your top dishes ordered, monthly average spending on Swiggy, and average delivery time, among other things. Swiggy Order Stats has over 4,000 users.

Fooddy, meanwhile, calculates total spending on both Swiggy and Zomato. It currently has over 10,000 users.

To check their spending, users need to install the extension on their Google Chrome browser and log into it. The extension will automatically track the orders from various websites (see box: How to download and use these extensions).

Why these tools?

These tools have sprung up because of greater user awareness towards saving and wealth management, and the lack of a social security net, experts tell Business Standard.  

"As awareness grows about managing money for better budgeting, apps and tools that track lifetime spending are on the rise," says Edul Patel, a personal wealth management expert and CEO and co-founder of crypto investment firm Mudrex.

"The spending avenues are manifold, but the lack of a social security net also makes people fearful of the future. Therefore, the need to map spending and saving better," says Monika Halan, author and adjunct professor at the National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM).

High inflation and concerns of a possible recession have also made people more conscious about their spending.

"The need to budget and track cash inflow and outflow has increased manifold amid record-high inflation," says Manish P Hingar, founder of financial planning platform Fintoo.

The majority of the tens of thousands of users of these extensions are millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, or belong to Gen Z, born after 1996.

"Millennials and Gen Z are contributing the most to the increasing usage of such money management apps," Hingar adds.

Along with these extensions, there is a rise in the number of platforms that allow people to track general expenses –an extension of the growing focus on digitisation in India's financial ecosystem.

"Data has shown that most millennials hold their cash in digital-only check-in accounts," says Sonali Jindal, co-founder and COO of digital payments app Ring.

The proliferation of such extensions and platforms is because millennials "value experiences such as travel, dining, and shopping online" but they are also "goal-driven" and want to save, Jindal adds.

How safe is it to use these tools?

Experts caution that the threat to data security remains when people use extensions such as these. That’s because for tracking your spending, you also end up putting out your personal data on these tools.

"There is the desire of the platforms to collect as much data as possible before a regulation arrests this free-for-all party," Halan says. India currently does not have any data protection norms.

The Centre in November released the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 (DPDP Bill, 2022) for public comment. The revised Bill is expected to be tabled in Parliament in the Budget session of 2023.

BOX 1

How to download and use these extensions

• Go to https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions
• Enter the name of the extension
• Click on the result and then "Add to Chrome"
• The extensions will be added to the Google Chrome browser. It will reflect on the top right of the screen
• Now, log into the extension
• It will automatically track the orders from various websites
• When you click on it and generate the report, it will show the statistics on the screen

BOX 2

The extensions

Amazon

• Amazon Order History Reporter

Uber

• RideShare Trip Stats

Swiggy and Zomato

• Swiggy Order Stats
• Zomato-spending-calculator
• Spending calculator for Swiggy and Zomato (Fooddy)
• Swiggy Zomato Spendings Calculator
• Snackalytics