Importing transactions from your bank

What you'll import

Your bank and credit-card websites let you download your transactions as a CSV file (a plain spreadsheet — look for "Export," "Download," or "Download transactions," usually with a CSV option). Once you have that file, the app reads it and fills in your actual spending.

Importing requires an account. Every free account gets one free statement import — enough to see your real spending against your plan — and Premium lifts the limit to unlimited imports. Setting category targets works without importing anything.

The four steps

1. Choose the file. On the Spending tab, in the Import a statement box, click Choose CSV… and pick the file you downloaded.
2. Map the columns. Tell the app which column is the Date, which is the Description, and which holds the Amount. Some banks split money in and money out into separate Debit and Credit columns instead — if so, map those two and leave Amount as "(none)." The app tries to fill these in for you; just check they look right.
3. Check the preview. The app shows how many rows are new, how many are duplicates it will skip, and how many are unparseable (rows it couldn't read, like a summary line), with a short reason for the first few. A sample lists a few transactions with their sign.
4. Import. Click Import to add the new transactions. Duplicates are left out automatically.

The app won't guess an amount it can't read confidently — an unusual number format, or a file that mixes European and US decimal marks. A row like that is skipped and counted as unparseable rather than imported as a figure that might be a hundred times out. If the unparseable count looks high, check the file's amount column before you import.

The amount sign is detected for you

Banks and cards don't agree on how to write a purchase. On a bank statement, spending is a negative amount. Credit cards vary: some (like Discover) list purchases as positive, while others (like Chase) list them as negative.

You don't have to know which is which. The app looks at your actual numbers and figures out the sign automatically, then shows a short readout of what it decided. Your only job is to confirm the preview shows purchases with a minus sign (−) in front of the dollar amount.

If it guessed wrong (rare — usually on an income-heavy account), there's a "Purchases are positive amounts" checkbox you can tick or untick to flip the sign yourself.

Refunds and money coming back

A credit whose wording leaves no doubt — REFUND, CHARGEBACK, PURCHASE RETURN, MERCHANT CREDIT — is imported as money back on a purchase: it reduces what that category cost you rather than counting as income. Anything less clear-cut (a tax refund, interest, a dividend, a returned cheque) is left as income for you to file, because guessing wrong there quietly corrupts a category's totals. See Refunds and credits.

Payments and transfers are set aside for you

When you move money between your own accounts, or pay your credit-card bill, that isn't spending — it's the same dollars changing hands. On import, the app automatically sets aside transactions that look like card payments and transfers so they don't get counted as spending. You'll see a note telling you how many were set aside; they land under the 🚫 Excluded category, where you can review them.

This matters because counting both a card payment and the purchases it paid for would double-count your spending. See Transfers and exclusions for the full picture and a worked example.

When a row looks like one you already have

The preview also flags rows that match something already stored on amount and a near date but are worded differently — the exact-duplicate check can't see those. It happens when two downloads of one account describe a payment differently (a bill-pay payee name in one, the raw bank memo in the other), or when a statement arrives carrying a purchase you'd entered by hand.

Same-day matches are skipped by default, since a same-amount, same-day repeat is nearly always the same payment; tick one to import it anyway. Matches a few days apart are kept and merely flagged, because posting dates legitimately drift and dropping a real expense is the worse mistake.

One kind of match is always skipped and can't be ticked: a row the app can prove you already have, stored before it could tell refunds and credits apart from ordinary money in. It says so — already imported, skipping — because importing it would record the same dollars twice, once as money in and once as money out.

Made a mistake? One-click Undo

Every import can be undone, and not only in the moment. Right after importing, an Undo this import button appears. Later, the Recent imports list at the bottom of the import box shows every file you've loaded — filename, date, and how many rows — each with its own Undo. So noticing a bad import the next day is fine.

This is the fix when two exports of the same account overlap: undo the one whose dates the other already covers.

For a bigger cleanup, use Clear imported transactions in the Spending tab. It removes imported rows either all at once or across a month range you pick, and it never touches transactions you added by hand — those stay. (Undo removes a single batch; Clear is the broader reset.)

Import every account

For an accurate picture, import all of your accounts — your checking account and each credit card. If you skip a card, the spending on it simply won't appear. Bring in everything, and let the app's exclusions keep the payments from double-counting.

Next: learn how to file everything into the right buckets in Categorizing transactions.