Two ways to bring in your bank's transactions
Typing a month of card payments by hand is slow, and connecting an app to your bank means handing over access. SpendWe takes a third route: you download a file from your bank's website or app, and SpendWe reads it on your device. Nothing is fetched from the bank, and SpendWe never asks for your bank login. More on that approach in no bank connection.
There are two kinds of file, and they are treated differently:
- A PDF bank statement, the document most banks give you each month. PDF statement import is part of SpendWe Pro, which is planned and not on sale yet.
- A bank export file from your bank: CSV, TSV or TXT, Excel (.xlsx and 97–2003 .xls), OpenDocument (.ods), OFX and QFX, QIF, CAMT.053, .052 and .054, and MT940. Importing these files is free on every plan and never gated.
How to import a PDF bank statement
- Open Settings → Data and choose Import a statement (PDF), then select the PDF you downloaded.
- Choose the statement date format: day/month or month/day. It defaults to your app language.
- Review the rows. Each transaction is listed with its merchant, amount, date, direction (expense or income) and a suggested category. Edit any of them, and untick the rows you do not want.
- Confirm the statement currency. If the statement is not in your app currency, SpendWe converts each amount and keeps the original. It says plainly that it uses the latest available rate, not your bank's historical rate.
- Import. The selected rows go into your history and your budgets at once.
If no exchange rate is available, for example offline with no saved rate, the import button stays disabled and SpendWe asks you to connect and try again, rather than importing foreign amounts at face value. A statement in several currencies is imported one currency at a time. On iPhone and iPad, a PDF that is only a scanned image is read with on-device text recognition; on Android every page is rendered and read the same way.
How to import a CSV, Excel, OFX or other bank export
- Open Settings → Data → Import a file and pick the file. SpendWe recognises it by its content, not its name, so a ".xls" that is really a web page or a text file with semicolons still works.
- Check the columns. For spreadsheets, SpendWe proposes which column is the date, the amount, the description and so on, and works out the decimal separator and the day/month order from the file itself. It shows how confident it is: when confidence is high you see a short preview with Looks right; when it is low, you choose the role of each column with sample values in front of you.
- Review and import. Pending and reverted lines are skipped and counted. Merchant names are cleaned up, removing card masks and codes such as "PRLV SEPA", and each row is filed in one of your existing categories. A bank file never creates new categories.
The layout you confirm is remembered on that device, so the next file from the same bank goes straight to the review.
No duplicates when you import again
Statements often overlap by a few days. SpendWe marks every imported bank row with a reference, the bank's transaction id or a fingerprint of its date, amount and description, so on a re-import the rows already in SpendWe are unticked for you. That reference is synced and kept in the backup, so it works across your devices too. Account numbers are only ever stored as a hash.
Changed your mind? For 7 days after an import of expenses, Settings → Data offers Undo last import. It removes the rows that import added, except those that were changed or commented on since; categories it created stay. Your imported expenses follow the same privacy rules as everything else, described in the Privacy Policy.
What is free and what is Pro
Importing bank export files (CSV, Excel, OFX, QIF, CAMT, MT940), the CSV and JSON import, and export of all your data are free on every plan. PDF bank-statement import is part of SpendWe Pro, which is not on sale yet; see pricing. Once rows are in, they are categorised like any other expense, and you can adjust your categories at any time.
For a step-by-step guide, read How to import a bank statement PDF.