After you import: balances, transfers, categories
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Once your history is in, three checks make it trustworthy: the balance matches your statement, money moved between your own accounts is linked, and your categories say what you want. Each one is a short conversation with your AI. If you haven't imported yet, start with moving to Pennyweight.
How to do it
- Check the balance. Ask your AI to compare each account's balance with the closing balance on your last statement.
- Fix the opening balance if it's off. Tell your AI what the account held before the first imported transaction.
- Find unlinked transfers. Ask your AI to look for money that left one of your accounts and arrived in another, and link each pair you confirm.
- Tidy categories. Ask your AI which categories came over, then change the ones you want changed.
Import iso-with-balance.csv into my Holiday Fund account. The balance before the first row was $1,000.00, so use that as the opening balance. Then check that the account's balance matches the statement's closing balance.
Find transfers between my accounts that aren't linked yet. Include pairs where the two descriptions don't match, as long as the same amount left one account and arrived in another. Don't link anything yet.
Every Daily Grind Coffee charge in Everyday Checking is uncategorized. Set them all to Coffee as a one-time change. Don't create a rule.
Balances and the opening balance
A manual account's balance is its opening balance plus every transaction in it. The opening balance is what the account held before the first transaction you imported, not what it holds today.
Pennyweight won't save an import into a manual account that has no opening balance. It never assumes $0. Your AI either sets the opening balance first or sends it with the import. After saving, Pennyweight reports the account's new balance so your AI can compare it with the statement. For a credit card or other debt, give the amount you owed as a positive number. See set or correct an opening balance.
If the balance is off by a fixed amount, the opening balance is usually wrong. Ask your AI to correct it. To zero it, set it to 0. If every row moved the balance the wrong way, the signs were flipped: undo the import and import again. See balance looks wrong after an import.
Transfers between your own accounts
When you import both sides of a transfer, each side goes into its own account. Rows your AI categorizes as Transfer are checked after saving: Pennyweight links one when it finds exactly one unlinked row in another of your accounts with the opposite sign, the same amount and currency, within three days, that is also categorized as a transfer, worded as one, or names the other account. Anything else stays unlinked, so check.
Your AI can scan for pairs of the same amount across two accounts, then link the ones you confirm. See link the two sides of a transfer.
Categories
Your old app's category names come over as written, unless one of your rules matches the row. Your AI can map them onto the names you want before saving, or change them afterwards in bulk. A change you ask for counts as your decision, so a rule never overrides it later.
Your active rules run when an import is saved, and a matching rule outranks the category that came with the file. To keep the file's categories, ask your AI to import without applying your rules. To categorize future transactions the way your old app did, rebuild your rules. A rule you add after the import doesn't change rows already saved unless your AI applies it to them.
What you'll see
For the balance check, your AI reports the number of rows saved, the account's new balance and whether it matches the statement's closing balance. For transfers, it lists each candidate pair with the dates, amounts and both accounts, and waits for you before linking. For categories, it previews how many rows will change and asks before saving.
Good to know
- Duplicates are checked against one account. An import compares each row only with the target account, between the first and last date in the file. Dates must match exactly. A copy in another account isn't flagged during the import: see find and fix duplicates.
- Transfer legs are often described differently. The duplicate check only lists a pair by default when the two descriptions look alike. "Online Banking Ref 4417" and "Deposit Ref 4417" don't, so ask your AI to include pairs whose descriptions differ.
- The scan covers the last 60 days by default. Your AI can look back up to 365 days, or check any date range of up to 366 days, such as the year your imported history covers.
- Bulk changes cover up to 500 rows per request. Pennyweight doesn't flag it when more rows matched, so for a large history ask your AI to work in batches, for example one month at a time.
- Undo and the opening balance. Undoing an import also clears the opening balance that import set, once the account has no rows left. An opening balance you set yourself afterwards stays. Sending a new opening balance with a later import replaces one you set yourself.
- A row holds one link. Your AI can't link a row that's already linked. It has to unlink it first.