Import bank and card statements from CSV or Excel

A file import, on purpose

Thendoo Money works from files you download yourself. You stay in charge of when your bank data comes in, and Thendoo never stores a bank password. Once a month, or whenever you sit down to look at money, download a statement and drop it in. The whole import usually takes a couple of minutes, most of it spent glancing at the preview.

What Thendoo works out on its own

Bank exports are messy, so the importer tries to read them as they are:

• File types: CSV, Excel workbooks (.xlsx), and the web-page tables many banks save with an .xls name. The type comes from what the file contains, not its name.
• Workbooks: the first visible sheet that holds a statement is picked, so a summary sheet in front doesn’t matter.
• The header row, even under a few title lines. Total lines and repeated header rows are left out.
• Headers in English and Hebrew, some Arabic and French, and a few German and Spanish words.
• CSV details: comma, semicolon, tab or pipe between columns, and UTF-8, Windows-1255 or Latin-1 text.
• Dates in 11 formats, the decimal mark, which sign means a charge, and separate debit and credit columns.

Card statements often list the original amount and currency for purchases abroad. Map them to Original amount and Original currency to keep both, and use Charge date when your card shows a separate billing date.

Why importing twice is safe

Every transaction gets a fingerprint built from the account, the date, the amount, a cleaned-up description and its position among identical lines. When you import a file that overlaps last month’s, the lines you already have are counted as “already here” and skipped. Two genuinely identical charges on the same day, such as two coffees, are both kept. That means you can export a generous date range without trimming it first.

Entries you added by hand

If you note a purchase yourself and the bank lists it a day later under a different name, the import offers to merge them: same account, same amount, within 3 days. A clear match shows Merge and is ticked for you; a less certain one shows Merge? Check it and waits for your tick. The merged entry keeps your payee, category and notes and takes the bank’s date and wording, so nothing is counted twice. Undoing the import restores your entry.

Categories

Your money rules run first. Where no rule matches, the preview suggests the category you used most often for the same payee (Like last time). Change any line, or select several and use Set category. Always for this payee saves your choice as a rule. Repeating charges then feed Find repeating charges on the Bills tab, which can turn a monthly subscription you forgot about into a bill with a reminder.

Card payments

When you import both your bank account and your credit card, the monthly line that pays the card would count the same spending a second time. Set Paid from account on the card, and Card payments on the Transactions tab suggests the bank line whose amount adds up exactly to the card’s unpaid charges. Link card payment turns it into a transfer to the card: spending counts once, the charges keep their categories and show Paid, and the card’s balance comes back down. Link a card payment by hand covers months that don’t add up exactly, such as when interest or fees were added. Unlink undoes either.