You can upload transactions to any Monarch account using a CSV file. Many banks and apps like Mint, Personal Capital or YNAB allow you to export transactions in the CSV format which you can use to import into Monarch. Note that only bank account and credit card transactions can be imported into Monarch. Balance history, investments, budgets, or aggregate cash flow total can not be imported but many of them are derived from the underlying transactions once you import transactions.
Once transactions are imported they are added to the cash flow reports and budgets just like transactions in a sync'd account. Account balances in manual accounts are calculated by the sum of all transactions in the account so importing transactions into a manual account will change the balance for that account. However sync'd account balances are not impacted by imported transactions since the balance is updated live from the bank and not derived from transactions.
There are two ways to import a CSV:
- Single Account - on each account page there is an option to "Upload a CSV" in the Summary section to the right of the transactions.
- Multiple Accounts - using the "add account" button similar to linking a new account at the top right of the accounts section.
Importing a Single Account
You can upload a CSV for a single account on the account details page using the edit button in the top right:
This same button has an option to Download a CSV which is a great way to see the format required to import a CSV. The CSV format for importing and exporting is 7 columns:
- Date
- Merchant
- Category
- Account
- Original Statement
- Notes
- Amount **
** Monarch uses positive numbers for income and negative numbers for expenses. So +$100 would be seen as income and -$100 would be seen as an expense. Some apps and banks export expenses as positive numbers which means they will show up incorrectly if imported directly into Monarch. You may need to play around with your CSV file to convert positive to negative numbers in this case.
Importing Multiple Accounts
If you have more than 1 account you would like to import or you are importing from Mint we recommend using the multi-account importer. It can be found in the "add account" screen:
The format for the multi-account import is 9 columns (Mint field -> Monarch field)
- Date -> Date
- Description -> Merchant
- Original Description -> Original Statement
- Amount -> Amount
- Transaction Type -> ignored since amounts are used instead to determine credit/debit
- Category -> Category
- Account Name -> Used to map the multiple accounts
- Labels -> Tags
- Notes -> Notes
All 9 of these columns must be in the file even if they are blank for the import to be successful.
Importing from Mint
Monarch will import the default CSV file that Mint exports at the bottom of the transaction page shown in the screen shot below (export all 6702 transactions). There is no need to open or edit the Mint file once you download it before you import it into Monarch.
If you are new to Monarch or just getting started, we recommend you import your Mint CSV first to set up your accounts in Monarch which will also walk you through syncing them after the CSV import. This also will make sure that you keep all your Mint history and then append new transactions after the import. You may notice that Mint account names are very generic - multiple credit cards may all have the same name "Credit Card" so it may be best to rename accounts in Mint before exporting the CSV so you can easily map them in Monarch.
Categories
All of the default Mint categories are mapped to a corresponding default category in Monarch. If you disabled a category or changed/created new categories in Mint they will either show up as Uncategorized (if importing as a single account) or with a generic white dot emoji (if importing multiple accounts):
Once the CSV file is processed you will be asked to map the accounts found in the CSV to a Monarch account. If you do not have your accounts setup in Monarch yet you may choose to add a new manual or sync'd account when importing or ignore an account from the CSV entirely:
Caution
It is not possible to undo a CSV import so it may be helpful to practice the import on a blank manual account first. You can however delete transactions that are imported (just not ones that are sync'd).