Import a bank statement (PDF or CSV)

Statement import is the middle path between typing everything by hand and linking your bank. You download a statement from your bank's website, upload it to Money Manager, and the transactions are extracted, categorized and added to your ledger. No connection to your bank is created, and the file is deleted after processing.

The free plan includes two uploads, which covers a couple of months of history. Premium makes it unlimited.

Download the statement from your bank

Sign in to your bank's website or app. Look for Statements, Documents or Activity. Most banks offer two formats:

• PDF, the formatted monthly statement. This is the one to use if your bank offers nothing else. Money Manager reads the transaction table out of it.
• CSV, a plain spreadsheet export. If available, CSV is slightly more reliable because there is no layout to interpret. Choose the widest date range the bank allows.

Download one file per month, or one CSV covering several months. Save them somewhere you can find them.

Choose Upload Bank Statement

On the web, open Import in the sidebar and drag the file onto the drop zone, or click to browse. On the phone, tap the plus button on the dashboard and choose Upload Bank Statement, then pick the file from your downloads.

Choose the Money Manager account the statement belongs to. If you have not created one yet for that bank account, add it first from Accounts, with the balance from the top of the statement as the opening amount.

Enter the PDF password if asked

Some banks protect PDF statements with a password, often your date of birth or the last digits of an account number in a format the bank explains in the email. If the file is protected, Money Manager asks for the password and unlocks the file on the spot. The password is used once to open the file and is not stored.

Wait for processing

The upload shows a progress state while the statement is processed. Most monthly statements finish in under a minute. Longer CSV exports covering many months can take a little more.

You can leave the screen; the import continues and a banner on the dashboard shows when it is done. If a statement cannot be read, you get a clear message rather than a partial import. The usual causes are a scanned image rather than a text PDF, or a CSV with the columns in an unusual order. In both cases, try the other format from your bank.

Review the categories

Imported transactions land in the daily list with a category chosen from the merchant name and description. Most are right: a supermarket lands in Food, a fuel station in Fuel, a streaming service in Entertainment.

Skim the list for the month. For anything filed where you would not file it, open the transaction and change the category. Money Manager remembers the correction for that merchant and applies it to future imports and bank syncs.

Two things to check while you are there:

• Transfers. A payment from checking to a credit card should be a transfer, not an expense, or it will double-count. Edit the transaction, change the type to Transfer, and choose both accounts.
• Income. Payroll deposits should be Salary or another income category. Imports usually get this right, but a one-off deposit may land in Others.

Repeat for older months

Import up to twelve months of history. Duplicate detection compares the date, amount and description of each row against what is already in your ledger, so overlapping statements do not create double entries.

Once the history is in, the reports fill out immediately: month-over-month comparison, top categories and the seven-day trend all work off imported data the same as typed data. Set a budget on the categories that stand out using the first-budget guide.

If you would rather not repeat this each month, bank sync does the same thing automatically through a read-only connection.