Credit Card Year-End Summary: Amex and Chase Versions

Quick Answer: A credit card year-end summary is a report your card issuer prepares that totals a calendar year of charges, typically by month and by spending category. American Express provides an annual Year-End Summary for the previous calendar year through your online account, and Chase offers a year-end spending report to signed-in credit card holders. It is a spending overview, not a tax form.

A credit card year-end summary is the issuer's own annual roll-up of your card activity: twelve months of charges grouped so you can see where the money went. American Express says its version lets you evaluate yearly spending by month and spend category. It is useful for budgeting and for a first look at business expenses, but it replaces neither the monthly statements nor your own categorized records.

Issuer summary or your own annual report?

Before chasing down the issuer's report, decide what you need it for. The two options answer different questions.

If the second column is what you need, the annual credit card spending report guide walks through building one. The rest of this page is about the issuer's version.

What does an Amex year-end summary include?

American Express's help article "Where can I find my Year-End Summary and how do I download it?" (read on 26 October 2026) says that with your Card Membership, each year you receive an annual Year-End Summary of charges, which lets you evaluate yearly spending by month and spend category. It also says:

• The Year-End Summary is available for the previous calendar year.
• You access it through your online account, alongside current and past billing statements.

That is the extent of what Amex's page states, so treat other details, such as the exact category names or the file formats on offer, as something to confirm when you open it. Spend categories on issuer reports generally follow the type of merchant rather than the purpose of the purchase, so a hardware store purchase for a client job and one for your kitchen land in the same bucket.

How do you get the Amex year-end summary?

1. Sign in to your American Express online account for the card in question.
2. Find the Year-End Summary in the online account; Amex lists it next to current and past billing statements among the documents available there.
3. Choose the Year-End Summary for the previous calendar year and download it.
4. Repeat for each card; summaries are per account.

If you want transaction rows rather than a summary, Amex's separate help article on exporting (read the same day) says you can download recent activity and the past six billing statements to Quicken, QuickBooks or as a CSV file through your online account. That covers roughly half a year. For the rest of the year you need the monthly PDF statements.

How do you get the Chase credit card year-end summary?

Chase's public year-end summary page (read on 26 October 2026) describes "your year-end spending report" for Chase credit card holders and asks you to sign in to access it. It does not list the categories, the formats, or how many past years are kept, so this article does not either.

What you can do:

1. Go to Chase's year-end summary page and sign in, or sign in to the card account directly and look for the year-end report among the card's statements and documents.
2. Open the report for the card you need.
3. If you cannot find one, call the number on the back of the card and ask whether a year-end summary is available for that card.

The searches "chase credit card year end summary" and "chase business credit card year end summary" are common because the business side is less obvious. Chase's page does not say whether business cards are included, so check from the business card's own sign-in rather than assuming either way. The Chase bank page covers the statements themselves.

What can you actually use a year-end summary for?

A spending review. Seeing a year of dining, travel or subscriptions in one total is the main reason these reports exist. It is the quickest way to spot a category that grew without you noticing.

A starting point for business expenses. If one card is used only for the business, the summary gives you a first estimate of totals by type. The IRS's recordkeeping guidance explains that business transactions generate supporting documents containing the information you record in your books; the summary is a convenience on top of those records, not a substitute.

Cross-checking your books. If your accounting software says you spent a given amount on a card and the issuer's summary disagrees, something is missing from one side. Look for a statement that was never imported.

What it is not good for:

• Tax categories. Merchant categories do not map to tax lines. A software subscription and a client dinner may both be under "business services" or "restaurants" in a way that does not match how you report them.
• Partial-year or fiscal-year reporting. The summary follows the calendar year.
• Combining accounts. Each card is a separate report.
• Proof of a single purchase. For that you need the statement line and the receipt.

The last statement of the year already has some annual totals

Even with no year-end summary at all, one figure is easy to get. Federal rules (Regulation Z, section 1026.7) require every monthly statement to show interest charged and fees with totals for the period and for the year to date. So the last statement that closes in December carries the year's interest and fees for that card up to its closing date; anything charged after that lands on a January statement and has to be added by hand. What no statement carries is a year of purchases by category; that is what the issuer's summary, or your own report, is for.

Building your own year-end report when the summary falls short

If you need custom categories, a non-calendar year, or several cards together, the monthly statements are the raw material:

1. Download twelve monthly PDF statements for each card, or the CSV export for the months the issuer offers.
2. Convert the PDFs into transaction rows. QuickBankConvert reads each card statement and returns a sheet with date, description, category and signed amount, which you can download as Excel or CSV and stack into one table; the credit card statement to Excel page shows the layout.
3. Add your own category column and fill it with a lookup on merchant names.
4. Summarise with a pivot table: categories down the side, months across the top.
5. Check each month's total against the statement's purchases figure so you know nothing is missing.

For a personal version that also pulls in your bank accounts, the bank statement year in review guide takes the same approach across every account. American Express cardholders converting their statements can also see the American Express page.

Related guides

• Annual credit card spending report
• Bank statement year in review
• How to read a credit card statement
• American Express Help Center: "Where can I find my Year-End Summary and how do I download it?" (read on 26 October 2026)
• Chase: Year-end summary (read on 26 October 2026)