A common example of needing to merge history is when you need to change the data provider of your already-connected financial institution. Let’s say you have Bank of America as a financial institution, and you have a checking account, savings account and credit card connected in Monarch. If the connection breaks, or we recommend connecting to a different data provider (Plaid, Finicity, MX), these steps will ensure you can successfully merge your data from the old connection to the new one.
For this example, we’ll refer to Bank of America as the financial institution and Checking, Savings and Credit Card as the financial accounts.
These steps are for Monarch web:
- First, it’s important to connect your institution with the new data provider before you remove your old institution.
- Pro Tip: Rename your existing accounts so you can easily tell them apart. We can rename the existing “Checking” account to “Checking Old” for example.
- Once the new institution connection is added, go to the Institutions Settings page and click View on an account (e.g., Checking Old) from the original connection. Then click Edit at the top right > Copy balance history. A new dialog box will pop up.
- Choose the new account (Checking) in the “Copy history to” box, choose a Cutover date (usually the current date), and then click Copy balance history.
- Download transactions for the account (Checking Old) on the original connection by clicking Edit > Download transactions on the Account details page, and that will download a CSV file as a backup.
- Pro Tip: Once you download your transaction CSV file, make sure to rename that file on your computer so you know what it is.
- Click on the same account (Checking) added on the new connection and delete all of the transactions it imported for the time period included in the transaction history file of the old account connection.
- You can do this on the Account details page for the new account connection by clicking “Edit multiple” > select All transactions > de-select any recent transactions not included in the old connection's transaction history > Edit > Edit transactions > Delete transactions.
- Now you can move the transactions from the old account (Checking Old) to the new account (Checking) connection.
- In the old account (Checking Old), click Edit Multiple in the transactions section > click to Select All transactions, click Edit on the right side, and then Move to account (Checking).
- You could upload the transaction file you downloaded, but that will mark all of the transactions as "Need review." By moving the transactions in step 6, it will retain more metadata like the review status.
- Once you have verified all of the new information is there, you can delete your old account, or hide it.
Do this for each account you have connected with your financial institution in order to keep all of the data.