Moving from YNAB

You can bring your YNAB transaction history into Pennyweight, account by account. You export your plan from YNAB, your AI reads the transactions file and sends each account's rows to Pennyweight, and you approve a preview before anything is saved. New to importing? Start with how importing works.

Export from YNAB

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

• Use the web app. Exporting plan and transaction data is only available in the web version of YNAB.
• Export the whole plan. Click the name of your plan at the top of the left sidebar, then select Export Plan. You get two separate files: your plan, with its categories and category groups, and your transaction history.
• CSV or TSV. The files are CSV, or TSV (tab-separated) for currencies that use a comma. The downloaded file name starts with "YNAB Export -" and your plan name.
• Or export a selection. Open an account, or All Accounts, tick the transactions you want, then click More and Export. The file name starts with "Selected Transactions for".
• Not included. YNAB's export leaves out targets and category notes.

Give your AI the transaction history file. The plan file holds your budget, which doesn't move.

How to do it

1. Share the transaction history file with your AI.
2. Ask it to import each YNAB account into the Pennyweight account of the same name. If an account doesn't exist yet, your AI adds it. See add a manual account.
3. A new account needs an opening balance before its first import: the balance just before its first row. For a credit card, give what you owed as a positive number.
4. 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.
5. Say yes to import. Then check your transfers and balances with after you import.

What you'll see

For the first prompt, your AI splits the file by its Account column and finds Everyday Checking and Rewards Card already in Pennyweight, so it adds no accounts. It combines each row's money-out and money-in amounts into one signed amount and converts the dates to YYYY-MM-DD. Each preview shows 8 new rows. After you say yes, it reports 8 rows saved in each account.

For the second, your AI finds one transfer: a $200 card payment listed twice, once leaving Everyday Checking and once arriving in Rewards Card. Nothing is saved.

For the third, your AI imports both accounts, then reports the $200 payment linked as a transfer. Pennyweight may already have linked it during the import, so your AI may only need to confirm it.

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 YNAB's when the import is saved, unless you ask your AI to import with rules turned off. Your budget, targets, category notes and category groups stay in YNAB, and an imported row has no field for flags or cleared status. See the full list of what doesn't move. To budget again, see set a budget.

Good to know

• Your AI does the reading. Pennyweight has no YNAB importer. Your AI reads the export and sends the rows.
• Let your AI read the export, not a direct upload. Pennyweight can also read a CSV uploaded straight to it. That route reads separate money-out and money-in columns, such as Outflow and Inflow, and converts dates like MM/DD/YYYY when your AI names the date order. It doesn't split a file by account, so an export that holds several accounts needs your AI to read it.
• One account per import. Each import goes into a single account, so your AI sends one batch for each YNAB account.
• Signs come from the account's side. Money out is negative and money in is positive. On a credit card, a purchase is money out and a payment is money in. The preview shows each account's new balance, so a flipped batch is easy to spot before you say yes.
• The Starting Balance row. Per YNAB's help center, an account's Starting Balance is the earliest transaction in its register and stands for all the history before it. If your export includes that row, don't import it as a transaction. Give its amount as the account's opening balance instead, as a positive number for a card. Otherwise the balance counts that history twice.
• Transfers appear in both accounts. Per YNAB's help center, a transfer shows up in both accounts' registers, one side in each. Import each side into its own account, then check that the pair is linked. Pennyweight links a pair during an import only when a row is categorized as a transfer and the other side matches it with clear evidence. To link the rest, see link transfers.
• Finding unlinked pairs. Ask your AI to look for the same amount leaving one account and arriving in another. Its duplicate scan lists a pair by default only when the two descriptions look alike, so ask it to include pairs whose descriptions differ.
• Duplicates are checked in one account. The preview compares rows only with the account you're importing into.
• Rules don't move. Recreate the ones you rely on in Pennyweight. See rebuild your rules after moving.
• Foreign currency. Pennyweight stores each amount as it is and never converts it. See multi-currency.