Statement import

What this does

Import Statement on the Banking Overview reads a CSV export from your bank or card issuer, compares every line to what's already posted, and turns the rest into Transaction Inbox rows. Nothing in an import posts directly to the ledger; every line goes through the same approval, duplicate gate, and period lock as a forwarded receipt.

Manual entry and forwarded alerts remain the everyday feed. The importer is the catch-up (you were away from the inbox for a month) and the audit (does the statement contain anything the books don't?).

Before you start

accounting.manage. Export the statement as CSV from the bank's site. The importer recognizes a file by its header row. Apple Card and Capital One (Transaction Date, Posted Date, Card No., Description, Category, Debit, Credit) are matched exactly. Amarillo National Bank matches a provisional set of common checking headers until a real ANB download is added. Any other header opens a column map: date, description, and amount or debit/credit, plus an optional check number and balance. That map can be saved on the account. The account you're importing into must exist under Bank Accounts or CC Accounts.

Steps

1. Banking Overview → Import Statement. Pick the Account the statement belongs to and choose the Statement File (.csv). The page names the preset it detected and the date range. A file it does not recognise shows the header and the first rows and asks you to map the columns. Remember this mapping for this account stores that choice for the next file with the same header.
2. Continue to Review. The app runs your bank rules to categorize lines, then matches each line against the books. The review shows four groups:
   • Already on the books. Matched to a posted transaction on this account (same amount, within three days). Never imported again. A card payment is matched against the checking-side transaction already categorized to that card's liability, and a checking payment to the card is matched against the card payment if that was imported first. These aren't a choice; they're a fact about the books.
   • Will post. Unmatched lines with a category from a rule. They'll be approved on commit.
   • Needs a category. Unmatched lines with no category. They'll land in the inbox as Pending for you to categorize.
   • Skipped. Lines you excluded by hand with Skip (personal spending on the shop card, say). Include puts one back.
3. Commit. Every unmatched, unskipped line becomes an inbox row and the categorized ones are approved. The result shows how many were matched, created, posted, and held, with links to the register and the inbox.

Re-uploading the same file is safe: every line matches, nothing is created.

What happens in the books

A committed, categorized charge posts exactly as an approved inbox row does: Dr the expense / Cr the card (or bank) account. A card payment line posts Dr the card / Cr the funding account. A credit posts Dr the card / Cr the expense. Held lines post nothing until you categorize them in the inbox. Every posted transaction's audit entry records the import batch it came from, and the batch itself is listed at the bottom of the import page with its counts.

Common problems

"Preset not configured." That message is for a file the importer was asked to read without a column map. On the import page, an unknown header asks for the columns instead. If a known bank's export changed its header, add that header rather than renaming the file to look like another bank.

A line I know is new shows under Already on the books. Something with the same amount posted within three days on this account. Open the register for that date; if the earlier entry is wrong, fix it there and re-import.

A line I already entered by hand shows under Will post. The hand entry differs in amount or is more than three days away from the statement's clearing date, so it didn't match. Skip the imported line and correct the hand entry from the register.

Everything landed in Needs a category. No bank rules matched. Categorize a few in the inbox with remember ticked, or build bank rules for your regular merchants, then next month's import mostly posts itself.