Moving your money spreadsheet into an app

Decide what you are moving

A money spreadsheet usually holds up to three kinds of data. Transactions are individual dated amounts. Positions are what you hold in each investment account. Net worth history is a series of dated totals or per-account balances. Each has its own columns, so move them separately.

You do not have to move everything. Many people bring over net worth history and start fresh with transactions, since old transaction detail rarely changes decisions.

Exporting CSV from banks and brokerages

CSV stands for comma-separated values, a plain text table that any spreadsheet can open. Most banks, card issuers and brokerages offer a download option on the activity or statements page. Look for download, export or a file icon.

• Date ranges are often limited, so export in chunks, such as one year at a time.
• Each institution uses its own column names and sign conventions. Some show spending as negative numbers, others as positive.
• Brokerages usually export positions and activity separately. Positions are a snapshot; activity is a log.

Open each file and look at it before importing. Check the date format, the amount column and any extra header rows above the data.

The columns that matter

• Transactions: date, description or payee, amount, and account. A category column is useful but optional.
• Positions: account, symbol, quantity, and the as-of date. Cost basis is helpful if you have it.
• Net worth history: date, then either one total or one balance per account.

Use one date format throughout, such as year-month-day, which sorts correctly. Make amounts plain numbers with no currency symbols or thousands separators where you can. Decide on a sign rule: spending negative and income positive is the most common.

Clean before you import

A few minutes of cleanup prevents most problems.

• Remove blank rows, subtotal rows and notes above the header.
• Check for duplicates where two exports overlap, such as the last week of one file and the first week of the next.
• Make sure an account name means one thing. If you renamed an account partway through, use one name.
• Keep one header row, with a name for each column.

Check the totals

After an import, compare the result with something you trust. For transactions, compare the total for one month with the statement. For positions, compare the account value with the brokerage's own figure on the same date. A mismatch usually comes from a duplicate, a missing row or a sign error, and it is easier to find with one account and one month than with everything at once.

Keep your history

Do not delete the spreadsheet. Save a read-only copy with the date in the name. Even when the app holds your data, the original is a record of how you worked and a fallback for anything that did not import cleanly.

If you track net worth over time, import the history so the chart starts at your first record, not on the day you switched. A trend with years behind it is more informative than one that begins today.

How Stridefly handles imports

Stridefly imports transactions, positions and net worth history from CSV files. Most transaction CSV formats are detected automatically, and rows Stridefly cannot read are reported rather than silently dropped. If you import net worth history, the chart starts where your records start.

You can also connect US banks and brokerages through Plaid, or add an account by hand. If the same account arrives twice, Stridefly flags possible duplicates for you to review. Your data is saved on your phone and in your iCloud account.

Read more on the transactions page and the net worth page, or join the waitlist for the private beta.