Re-importing deleted transactions from Mint or template CSV

pcheyne

I'm new to Simplifi and did not realize if I deleted transactions they could not be re-imported. Is there ANY way to trick Simplifi to allow me to re-import data from either Mint or the CSV template? I wanted to start a fresh month so I deleted the 9 months of old data it brought in from all accounts. When I realized I could import all my data from several years in Mint, it will not bring in those transactions I deleted. I did not realize Simplifi had a "safeguard" to prevent users from importing duplicate data, but I want those transactions to be re-added and it is way too much data to enter again manually. Is there a workaround to allow me to import any data I want, whether it has been previously in the tool before? Changing the date didn't work. Thanks for any help.

Fletcherr

I had this same question having also just come from Mint and learned this lesson too. Luckily I only deleted 10 recent transactions to test re-importing them (which of course does not work) so I was able to manually add them back in without too much trouble.

The best solution I've thought of (but have not tried beyond a quick test) is to create 'archive' manual account(s). The idea being that the archive covers all transactional history up until 'yesterday' and your live accounts have all history from 'today' forward (or wherever you choose to draw the line). You still cannot import your Mint categories (I hate this!) but you can load them as a tag to then filter on that and mass update in simplifi. It's still going to suck, but it's the best thing I've come up with. My primary goal is to capture my historical spending by category to track my YOY expenses so I'm less worried about them appearing in the exact account where they were incurred. I will probably try formatting and backloading all of my mint transactions into a single archive account then mark it closed. If that looks good, then I will delete all history in my active. As long as they don't overlap I think this will work. I've only just started in simplify so at worst I dump and re-connect all my accounts and start over and just live with having to look at my history in excel.

Here's an example of 2 transactions that I split several ways in Mint originally and how I got them into simplify for this test

Here's the mint export, converted into the standard csv import template for simplify… don't forget to make the Amount negative, and yes you have to give up your tags and notes from Mint, which also sucks

For reference, this is what simplifi pulled in automatically and auto categorized when I linked the accounts at setup.

This is what they look like after using the standard .csv import template to load them into a test 'archive' account. The categories are blank (grrrr!), but my Mint categories are in the tag so at least I stand a chance of filtering on these tags. I still hate this because the whole point of splitting the Partzilla transaction was to use tags to further sub-categorize, which I've now lost, but I can get creative in excel and join category and some simple tags to help with mass category cleanup.

Pretty bummed I have to go through these lengths when there is a 'mint import' button that is basically useless but I'm leaning toward forcing simplifi to work as I don't really like the other apps I've tried, and they cost twice as much.

good luck fellow Mint refugee

Coach Natalie

@pcheyne, thanks for reaching out!

The only things that may work are:

1. Deleting the account and starting over. Just so you don't end up losing data, I'd suggest testing the import in a different account before deleting the original account. To do so, you can create a new test account and then try to import the data again. If it works, since you can't merge accounts, you can just finish importing everything into the newly created account, and then delete the original account.
2. Try importing using a different import option; i.e. if you imported straight from Mint before, try downloading our CSV template, plugging the data in there, and then seeing if that will import.

I'm not sure if either of these options will work for you, as it is by design that deleted transactions don't re-import or re-download, but it's worth a try. Let us know how it goes!

-Coach Natalie