Import a Bank CSV Into a Private Budget With a Preview
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The problem
A year of bank history is sitting in your online banking as a downloadable file, and the usual advice is to hand it to a website that promises to categorize it for you. That means uploading every merchant name and amount to a company you have never met, just to get a chart. You would like the chart without the upload.
Burrow can import transactions from CSV and shows a preview first, so you see what is about to be added before anything is written. The file is read by the app on your computer, and the result lands in the same local database as the rest of your budget. This page is about the import itself: preparing the file, running the preview and checking the result. Burrow is a Windows 10 and 11 app, so that is where these steps apply.
Steps
Download the export from your bank
Log in to your bank's own website as you normally would and look for an option to download transactions, usually labelled export or download, in CSV format. Save the file somewhere you can find it, such as your Downloads folder. Choose a date range you actually need, since a shorter file is quicker to review.
Look at the file before Burrow does
Open the CSV in any text editor or spreadsheet program and glance at the first rows. Confirm that it holds dates, descriptions and amounts, and that nothing sensitive you did not expect is in there. Close the file before importing so it is not locked by another program.
Start the import from the Budget page
In Burrow, open the Budget page and click Import transactions. A dialog opens with four steps: Choose a file, Match columns, Check and import, and Done. On the first one, use the Choose a CSV file field and select the file you saved.
Match the columns
Tell Burrow how your file is laid out. Pick My file has one amount column if a single column holds every amount, or the option for separate money in and money out columns if your bank splits them. For a single column, say whether spending is shown as Negative numbers or Positive numbers. Then choose the columns for Date and Description.
Read the preview carefully
Click Check my transactions. Burrow shows a preview and checks for duplicates, marking any row it will skip. Check that dates read as dates, that expenses and income are on the right side and that the counts match what you expect. If something looks off, go back and fix the layout or the file rather than cleaning up afterwards.
Confirm the import and look at the chart
Once the preview looks right, click the import button, which shows the number of new transactions, as in Import 42 transactions. The Done step reports how many were added and how many duplicates were skipped. Compare the budgeted versus spent chart by category against what you know about the month. A quick sanity check now saves you trusting a wrong total later.
Take a backup you can see
Imports and backups both appear in Settings > Privacy & activity. Automatic daily backups are on by default. For an extra copy before a big import, open Settings > Data & storage and click Back up now. If an import goes wrong, each backup there has a Restore button, and a restore makes a safety copy first.
Why a preview matters
Bank files are inconsistent. One bank writes expenses as negative numbers, another as positive ones in a separate column, and dates arrive in whichever order the bank prefers. A preview turns those surprises into something you see in a few seconds instead of something you discover in your totals three weeks later.
Because the import runs on your computer, the preview is also a privacy check of sorts. You are looking at exactly what the app has parsed, and nothing has been sent anywhere to produce it.
What happens to the numbers afterwards
Burrow adds up spending with plain code. If you later use the helper, Javi, to talk about your budget, it explains the finished numbers instead of calculating them, which is why a clean import matters: the helper will faithfully describe whatever the arithmetic produced.
Pros and cons
Pros
- The preview lets you catch sign errors and date problems before they enter your records.
- The file never has to be uploaded to a third-party categorizer.
- Importing is part of the free app, with no limit on the number of transactions.
- Everything can be exported again as JSON, CSV and Markdown in one ZIP.
Cons
- You do the downloading, so it is a manual routine every time you want fresh data.
- Burrow handles a single amount column or separate money in and money out columns, with spending shown as negative or positive numbers, but a file laid out some other way may need tidying first.
- Windows only, with no date given for other systems.
- Burrow does not put its own password on the data file, so a shared Windows login means shared access.
Frequently asked questions
Is CSV import a paid feature?
No. Importing transactions from CSV with a preview is part of the free app, along with every module.
Does Burrow connect to my bank for me?
Its documented route for bank data is the CSV import. This guide does not describe any automatic bank connection.
Can I undo an import I regret?
Daily backups are on by default with one-click restore, and a restore makes a safety copy first. That lets you return to an earlier day's data.
Will the imported data leave my computer?
Not by default. Nothing goes online unless you flip a switch in Settings > Network, and all of those start off.
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