How To Track Your Progress Toward an American Express Credit Card Sign-Up Bonus

Congratulations, you were just approved for a new American Express credit card, and you’re ready to earn the bonus from its welcome offer. That comes with a spending requirement and a deadline, so how do you keep track of those?

Unfortunately, Amex no longer offers a simple tool for checking your progress toward a welcome bonus offer, but there are some workarounds to help you ensure you complete the requirements on time. Here’s how you can track the progress toward your bonus on the Amex website and mobile app.

Chat With a Representative

Hands down, the simplest way to confirm this information is by logging into the Amex website and starting a chat. First, inform the chat agent that you want to confirm the requirements for your bonus and track your progress, then you’ll go through the process of verifying your identity.

From here, the agent can provide useful details like the day you opened the account, the bonus you’re working toward, its spending requirement, and the deadline. You also can check how much you’ve spent on the card so far.

Getting all of this information in 1 place — while also being able to ask questions — makes the process simple. You’ll know the bonus deadline and how much progress you’ve made.

Use Spending Trackers on the Website

First, the bad news: There’s no dedicated tracker for your American Express welcome bonus offer. While you can find bonus trackers with other banks online, Amex sadly doesn’t offer this. However, you can accomplish roughly the same thing in a few ways.

Benefit-Related Spending Trackers

American Express offers spending-related benefits on several of its credit cards. Whether you’re working toward a free night award on a hotel credit card or elite status benefits on an airline card, you can track your spending progress toward these.

While that’s not the same as explicitly tracking the spending toward a welcome bonus, all spending on your card should show up in these trackers, helping you know what you’ve spent so far toward your new Amex card’s welcome offer.

To access these spending trackers, log into your account and select the relevant card in the top right corner. Then, click on Rewards & Benefits in the menu.

On the next page, click Benefits to see the perk offered on your card — as well as the spending trackers for those that require spending on your card to unlock the benefit. Depending on how many benefits there are, you may need to click Show all.

Not all of the spending trackers will be helpful here. For example, the tracker for the airline fee credit on The Platinum Card^® from American Express won’t help you know how much you’ve spent toward a welcome bonus offer because only certain purchases apply with a preferred airline that you select in advance.

However, another benefit on the Amex Platinum card does count all of your year-to-date spending: earning guest privileges at the Centurion Lounges. You could use this tracker to see what you’ve spent on your card, and this number should be the same — or relatively close — as the spending that counts toward the welcome bonus offer you’re working on.

Spending Reports

It’s also possible to find a year-to-date spending report and use that to check your bonus progress. This can be helpful if your card doesn’t have the trackers discussed above — or if you just wish to see the information in a different way.

To access this report, click on View All in the recent transactions when looking at the home page for your credit card. On the next page, under your charges and balance, look for the option View Your Spending Report.

The default view for your spending report will be recent transactions — those that posted since your last statement closed. In the Date Range menu, choose the option for Year to Date. Voilà, you’re now seeing how much you’ve spent on your card this year. That helps you know how much you’ve spent toward the welcome bonus offer.

Caveats

It’s worth noting that these reports aren’t an exact measure of how much progress you’ve made toward an Amex welcome bonus offer. When you apply for a new card, American Express always highlights certain types of purchases that don’t count toward completing the welcome offer.

Excluded purchases include prepaid gift cards, person-to-person payments, and cash-like transactions, such as buying traveler’s checks. If you’ve made any of these types of purchases, then you might see spending on your report that doesn’t count toward the welcome bonus. Be sure to clarify with Amex directly how much progress you’ve made toward the spending requirement before the deadline.

Final Thoughts

Some credit card issuers make it easy to track progress toward the new account bonus on your credit card. Unfortunately, American Express lacks a specific tool for tracking your welcome bonus offer progress. You can use reports to get close to this number, but the chat function is the winner for finding this information easily.