Moving from Monarch Money

If you've been budgeting in Monarch Money, you can bring your transaction history into Pennyweight. You download a CSV from Monarch, and your AI reads it and sends the rows to Pennyweight, one account at a time. New to importing? Start with how importing works.

Download from Monarch

These steps are per Monarch's help center, and its menus can change.

• Every account at once. Go to Settings, then Data, and select Download Transactions. You get one CSV file with your transactions across all of your accounts.
• One account. On a desktop, open the Accounts page, choose the account, select Edit in the top right corner, then select Download transactions. A CSV file downloads to your device.
• Keep downloads small. Monarch recommends downloading 5,000 transactions or fewer at a time. For a long history, split the download by date range.
• Balance history. From the same Edit menu you can download an account's balance history as a CSV.
• After you cancel. Per Monarch, you can download your full transaction and balance history in Settings at any time, even after your subscription or trial ends.

How to do it

1. Share the CSV with your AI.
2. Tell it which Pennyweight account each Monarch account goes into. A file from Settings mixes all your accounts, so your AI splits it and imports one batch per account. To bring in only some accounts, say which.
3. Check the signs. If money out is negative in your file and money in is positive, that already matches how Pennyweight stores amounts, so your AI keeps each sign as it is.
4. If an account doesn't exist in Pennyweight yet, ask your AI to add it. A new manual account needs an opening balance before its first import: the balance just before the first row. For a credit card, give what you owed as a positive number. The balance history you downloaded from Monarch can help you find that figure. See add a manual account.
5. Your AI shows a preview for each account: new rows, likely duplicates and rows that need a look. Nothing is saved yet. See reading an import preview.
6. Say yes to import, then work through after you import.

What you'll see

For the first prompt, your AI picks out the 7 Everyday Checking rows and previews them for that account. All 7 are money out, and the preview shows the balance going down by $247.31. The Rewards Card rows stay out. After you say yes, it reports 7 rows saved.

For the second, your AI lists two accounts with 7 rows each. Everyday Checking has 7 rows of money out, totaling $247.31. Rewards Card has 3 rows of money in, totaling $2,164.34, and 4 rows of money out, totaling $152.51. Nothing is saved.

What carries over

Each row brings its date, amount, payee, category text, currency and notes. If one of your Pennyweight rules matches a row, the rule's category replaces Monarch's when the import is saved, unless you ask your AI to import with rules turned off. Your Monarch tags and transaction IDs don't move, and neither do budgets, rules or attachments. See the full list of what doesn't move.

Good to know

• Your AI does the reading. Pennyweight has no Monarch importer. Your AI turns each line into a row with a YYYY-MM-DD date, a signed amount and a payee.
• One account per import. Each import goes into a single account. If each line names its account, your AI uses that to split the file. Pennyweight doesn't read it, so your AI sends one batch per account.
• Each category is a single label. Each Monarch category arrives as one label, since categories have no parent and child levels in Pennyweight. Your AI can map them onto the names you want before saving.
• Tags can be added again. Imported rows carry no tags. After the import, your AI can tag transactions in Pennyweight.
• Transfers between your accounts. If a transfer shows up in both accounts' rows, each side goes into its own account. Then ask your AI to find the pairs and link them. See link transfers.
• Many accounts or years of history. Ask your AI to plan the import first. The plan lists each account in the file, whether it matches one you already have, and the batches to import. See import years of history across many accounts.
• Rules don't move. Ask your AI to recreate the rules you rely on. See rebuild your rules after moving.