Three shapes a qualifying period can take
Every month — the calendar month, 1st to last day. This is the default for most Korean cards and the benefit applies to the month after, which is why the Korean name is 전월실적, “previous-month spend”. The period key is simply the year and month, so February being 28 days long changes the daily target, not the goal.
Every month from a set day — for cards whose cycle follows the statement date rather than the calendar, which is how Hyundai cards and many corporate cards work. Pick the start day and the period runs to the day before the next cycle starts. The end is derived, never clamped independently: with a day-31 cycle, 28 February is the start and 30 March is the end, so consecutive cycles meet exactly with no gap and no overlap. A tool that clamped both ends would silently lose 1–3 days every February.
Fixed period — one window with a start and an end date, for a welcome bonus (“spend $4,000 within 90 days”) or a limited-time promotion. It does not repeat and it does not roll over; when the end date passes the card is marked as ended rather than reset, because a bonus window that quietly restarts would be worse than useless.
The three numbers on a card, and how each is derived
Remaining is max(0, goal − spent) — it never goes negative, and once you are past the goal the card shows the overshoot instead so you can tell “just made it” from “way over”.
Daily needed is remaining ÷ days left, counting today, then rounded up to a whole 100 won (or 0.50 in a decimal currency). The rounding is deliberate: 6,733 is arithmetic, 6,800 is something you can act on at a till. With 90,000 left and 8 days to go the answer is 11,300 a day.
Pace looks the other way. The run rate is spent ÷ days elapsed, and the projection is that rate applied to the whole period. Spend 210,000 in the first 22 days of a 30-day month and the run rate is 9,545 a day, projecting 286,364 — against a 300,000 goal you are on course to miss by about 13,600. The comparison figure “expected by now” is goal × elapsed ÷ total, here 220,000, so you are 10,000 behind schedule.
Amounts are held as whole minor units — won, or cents — so “have I reached the goal?” is an exact integer comparison. Adding 30 amounts one at a time can never drift by a rounding error into showing 499,999.99 against a 500,000 goal.
What almost never counts towards the requirement
- Anything that is not a purchase: the annual fee, interest, late charges, cash advances, card loans and revolving balances.
- Money moved rather than spent: gift cards, prepaid top-ups, and the portion of a payment settled with points or vouchers.
- Transactions that were cancelled or refunded — these are removed from the qualifying total, usually in the month the refund posts rather than the month of purchase.
- Public charges: national and local taxes, fines, the four major social insurances, and in most cases school fees.
The genuinely card-specific ones are utility bills, interest-free instalments and mobile-wallet payments, and two cards from the same issuer routinely differ. Interest-free instalments are excluded on most Korean cards; where they are included, the whole principal usually counts in the month of purchase rather than being spread over the instalments. This tool deliberately holds no card database, because a rule copied from a product page a year ago and applied confidently is worse than no rule at all.
Benefit tiers, and the trap inside them
Many cards have steps rather than a single threshold — 300,000 / 500,000 / 1,000,000 won a month, each unlocking more discount. Add up to four tiers to a card and the panel shows which one you are currently in and how much more the next one needs.
Then do the arithmetic the card issuer would rather you skipped. If reaching the next tier needs 200,000 more and the extra benefit is a 10,000 discount, you are buying 10,000 with 200,000 of spending you had not planned. That is only worth it if you were going to spend it anyway — which is exactly the sentence the tier structure is designed to make you say.
The same logic applies to the last few days of a period. Spending 90,000 you did not need in order to keep a 15,000-a-month benefit is a loss dressed as an achievement — and it is a decision you can only make once the remaining figure is in front of you, which is the reason to track it at all.
What happens when a period ends
When today moves past the end of a period, the card rolls over: the closed period is filed under previous periods with a met or missed mark, the spend resets to zero and the goal carries forward. Up to 12 closed periods are kept, which is a year of history — enough to see that you have missed the requirement four months running and should probably change cards.
A rollover can be undone if it fired early — you settled a purchase late, or the issuer’s cycle differs from what you entered. The undo holds that period open, and the hold survives the next clock tick, so an undo cannot be quietly reversed a minute later by the tool re-checking the date. Close the period yourself when you are ready.
Nothing carries over between periods. Spending 700,000 against a 500,000 goal does not bank 200,000 towards next month — the overshoot is shown so you can adjust, not because it is worth anything. Almost every issuer works this way.
Welcome bonuses and US minimum spend
A sign-up bonus is the fixed-period case: “spend $4,000 in the first 90 days for 60,000 points”. Set the period to Fixed, use the account opening date as the start, and count 90 days — not three calendar months, which is usually one to two days longer and is where people miss by a hair.
US issuers usually count by posting date, not transaction date, so a purchase made on day 89 that posts on day 91 does not count. Plan to finish about a week early. Excluded almost everywhere: balance transfers, cash advances, the annual fee itself, gambling and cryptocurrency purchases, and anything reversed.
Two or three cards with overlapping bonus windows is where a tracker earns its keep, because the deadlines are different lengths from different start dates. Add each as its own card with its own fixed period and read the summary bar for the combined amount still to spend.
Keeping the number honest
Copy the qualifying figure from your issuer’s app rather than adding up receipts. The app already applies the exclusions above; a receipt total does not, and the two can differ by tens of thousands of won in a month with one instalment purchase in it.
Use “set to” when you copy a fresh figure from the app and “+ add” when you log a purchase yourself; a refund is an add with a negative amount. The activity log keeps the last 30 entries so you can see what you did, but it is a display trail only — the total is a single stored number, so a lost log entry can never corrupt it.
Limits: 10 cards, 4 tiers each, 12 archived periods, 30 log lines, and a 30-character nickname. The name field is a nickname on purpose — the tool never asks for a card number and there is nowhere to put one.